Audio-Visualism: Reframing Relationships Between Sound & Image Steve Gibson 9781032975030

Audio-Visualism follows on from Live Visuals: History, Theory, Practice, which covered a broad history of live visual and audio-visual practice.

This volume covers the contemporary audio-visual world in greater detail, focusing on the works of artists who work in the interstices between sound, video, light, immersion, virtuality, and social engagement. This book establishes how the relationship between sound and image continues to be a dominant theme in the 21st century. With contributions by scholars, researchers, and active practitioners, this collection demonstrates the knowledge spectrum of Audio-Visualism as a movement, a practice, a research field, and a philosophy.

This volume will appeal to a diverse audience, including scholars, students, creative practitioners, and professionals in fields such as audio-visual performance, media art, interactive media, VJing, and music technology. The practical sections of the book offer valuable insights that are highly relevant to contemporary audio-visual creation.

Steve Gibson is an audio-visual performer and Associate Professor at Northumbria University. He has presented at many world-leading venues including ISEA2025 Seoul, 404 Festival Mexico City, and Cabaret Voltaire.

Yan Breuleux is a Full Professor at NAD-UQAC. His research-creation practice focuses on visual music for fulldome environments, examining the interplay between narrativity, sensoriality, and immersion in audio-visual practices.

Joseph Hyde's work incorporates a wide variety of influences in live electronics, audio-visuals, and immersion. He is Emeritus Professor at Bath Spa University and is currently working for HVN Labs, developing next-generation drone light shows. josephhyde.co.uk

Donna Leishman is a media artist, researcher, and Associate Professor of Visual Communication and Digital Cultures at Northumbria University. Her practice explores the ethics and politics of our ongoing participation with digital spaces and art forms and the social implications of this relationship.

"Audio-Visualism offers a rigorous and expansive reframing of the relationship between sound and image in contemporary artistic practice. Drawing on long historical trajectories of audio-visual practice, critical reflection, and first-hand practitioner insight, the book moves beyond cinematic models to address live, immersive, and socially engaged work. It captures the vitality and diversity of the field today, standing as an essential scholarly contribution and an engaging resource - an essential guide to where audio-visual practice has come from, and where it may be heading."

Christl Baur, Head Program Director of the Ars Electronica Festival

"Audio-Visualism succeeds as a record of a field becoming conscious of itself. By placing experiential knowledge, Indigenous worldviews, and practice-led inquiry alongside critical analysis, the book captures audio-visual work at a point of heightened articulation. There is an unmistakable sense that these conversations are unfolding at the threshold of longer historical arcs, as tools, practices, and communities converge and are named from within. As the chapters accumulate, the reader senses a period of unusual creative density - one future generations will study not as background, but as origin."

Kelly Snook, PhD, Music Producer, Sonification Researcher, Co-Founder and Co-Director of Mimu Gloves and the Harmonics Institute

"This book is a clear and authoritative analysis of audio-visual practice as a mature artistic discipline. Enriched by the knowledge of artists working in the field, it moves beyond screen-based paradigms to address the evolution of the genre. Both rigorous and accessible, Audio-Visualism establishes itself as the ultimate reference, presenting sound and image as a unified, performative language."

Alain Thibault, Artistic Director of the Elektra Festival & Biennial, and AV Artist