Audio Visual Etudes (AVEs)

I have been working with video and sound for a few years, exploring audio-visual ideas in short etudes in an attempt to learn how the ears and the eyes interact and influence each other. I've also been teaching music composition and video production and have found that young composers and young videographers are very interested in the experimental combination of sound and image.

The AVEs project is an ongoing effort to create a pedagogy for audio-visual art. It is not so much a teaching resource or methodology as it is a set of exercises and examples purposefully designed to produce very different etudes using the same structural suggestions. The suggestions restrict different elements of the composition and thus allow the compositographer to focus on one thing at a time.

The suggestions explore many different aesthetics and practices including animation, music concrete, humor, live-action, dialogue, minimalism, maximalism, performance, ambiance, and color, to name a few.

The goal is that by completing the set and exploring all of the AVEs the compositographer will have created a substantial work that he or she would be able to perform or showcase.

When the book is finished, it will include a DVD of my own set of completed etudes, along with suggested works to explore for additional (probably better) inspiration.

Soon, I will begin posting a few of the etudes on this page along with the relative suggestions and any necessary source materials (some of the etudes will have set visual or auditory resources that will eventually be included on the DVD). I will be asking anyone who would like to participate in creating their own etudes to do so and send them to me. I will be creating a website where participants can share their etudes and have an open discussion about the different works.

If you are interested in being a tester for this project, feel free to email me and tell me a little about yourself.