Educational Media Reviews Online

Curated by Universal Everything, a design firm whose work includes, among other things, the re-branding of MTV, Advanced Beauty is a collection of 18 short digitally-born art works from artists and creative directors in 7 countries. The project was initiated in 2007 as an exploration of moving image and sound works. This first collection is a series of audio-reactive ‘video sound sculptures’ that have been inspired by synasthesia, the sensory experience in which sound may be seen and colors tasted. Each artist was provided with the same set of parameters to work with, namely, to start, finish, and work within a white space and visually manifest sound, thus sculpting the image through volume, pitch or structure of the soundtrack.

Karsten Schmidt’s work shows a refracting prism moving to sound; Mate Steinforth’s submission features vividly colored balloon-like objects, similar to clouds, dispersing; and Marc Kremers provides us with a beautiful devolution of a CD. There are several other more representational works and the final one submitted by Matt Pyke and Trevor Henderson of Universal Everything revolves around of the movement of colored paint. This work is very reminiscent of the kind of work done by Simon Goulet in Oio (2003), where jets of paint were catapulted in the air and shot with a high-speed camera. Here the work is done digitally on a computer.

This compilation is recommended for anyone looking to examine current concerns in animation and its relationship to other arts. I might add that the price makes it accessible to individuals and libraries on a budget.