Machines of the Audiovisual: The Development of “Synthetic Audiovisual Interfaces” in the Avant-garde Art Since the 1970s

The translation of the scientific article examines how a number of avant-garde cinematographers and video artists have developed alternative models of the audiovisual apparatus since the 1970s of the twentieth century in order to explore the synthetic connection between sound and image. Rather than depending upon the term ”˜apparatus’ implying a rigid separation of different media arts, I define their artifacts as the “synthetic audiovisual interface” in the light of their two common characteristics: firstly, as experimentations with ”interfacing’ different media components, the artifacts are intended upon translating image into sound, or vice versa, by virtue of unearthing, transforming or recombining material and structural attributes of a media including film, video, and computer; and second, as investigations into ”˜interfacing’ the human and the machine, the artifacts are channeled into pushing the threshold of the relation between two perceptual modes (hearing and seeing) or between human perception and their operation. Drawing on the avant–garde artistic practices of Paul Sharits, Lis Rhodes, Woody Vasulka, Bruce McClure and Ryoji Ikeda and analyzing how their artifacts share a constructive and combinatorial approach to media and the range of their audiovisual effects, the author argues that these two characteristics of the "synthetic audiovisual interface" allow us to consider three phases of the development of audiovisual technologies – celluloid, analog video and digital technology as converging technologies in their conceptual parallel.