Abstract | Michel Chion has famously and provocatively referred to film as a sound art (Chion 2009), developing his earlier reading of cinema in the synaesthetic audiovisual terms of Audio-Vision (Chion 1994). Similarly, it is possible to argue that industrial music from its beginnings with groups like Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire, SPK and others was an audiovisual art-form, as much as a musical one, and never simply a generic sonic style. The visual aspects of industrial music were not necessarily limited to film and video and included such things as the development of logos and other design features on record sleeves and as concert backdrops, as well as specific uses of photography and other visual arts. These visual elements were often deployed via strategies of anonymity and ambiguity, generating meanings out of a deliberate and playful constitutive vagueness. However, whenever it was technically feasible to do so, industrial groups made use of both film and video technologies, and in terms of the latter were pioneers in the combination of music and video, before and outside of its commercial codification. This chapter examines this field of audiovisual activity as a form of audiovisuology that goes well beyond the promotion and iillustration of popular music. |
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