Austrian Abstracts

This programme differs in visual style and music greatly from traditional music videos. These are radical avant-garde works that emerge logically from modern electronic music. The images sometimes tie in with the earliest pure abstract avant-garde films, but reveal themselves in everything to be exponents of contemporary digital technology. The selection presented here, in its diversity and topically - and not least in the quality of the films - reveals that Austria (or rather Vienna) is a fertile breeding ground for innovation in the audiovisual field.Most of the videos are, as befits the music video, short and sharp, not lastly to enable the use of the Internet as screening platform. Most are geometric and abstract and consist of purely digitally generated images (and sounds), but some also incorporate more realistic pictures. The images are never only to illustrate the music, nor vice versa: the excitement of these works is that picture and sounds drink from the same spring.îMany of these video/sound-makers are also DJ and/or VJ and present improvised variations on these works in live performances. The Austrian Abstracts seem to belong to a clear generation: they were all born around 1970, attended a variety of higher (arts) education, are often active in several different (digital) fields and develope artistic and commercial activities side-by-side. Programme: Programme: lia: G.S.I.L. VI/almada (video, 2001, 4 min) maia: air.E (video, 2001, 5 min) [n:ja] : track 09 (video, 2001, 4 min) Michaela Schwentner: The Future of Human Containtment (video, 2001, 5 min) reMI: uta zet (video, 2001, 5 min) Pfaffenbichler/Schreiber: 36 (video, 2001, 2 min) plan-c: plan-c (video, 2001, 5 min) Dariusz Krzeczek: Unterwerk (video, 2000, 2 min) Billy Roisz & Dieter Kovacic: Smokfraqs (video, 2001, 4 min) karo goldt: ILOX (video, 2001, 3 min) Michaela Grill & DJ Pure: kingkong (video, 2000, 9 min) tinhoko: Spatial Lines (video, 2001, 4 min) Timo Novotny: Sofa Rockers (video, 2001 4 min) Michaela Schwentner: #z (video, 2001, 5 min)