Around
book-sheet music, colour photographs; video
30 х 21 cm, 20 pages; 4′
1984-2021
Around is a vocovisual work recorded as a video in 1984. Centro Videoarte from Ferrara had commissioned this work with the purpose of participating in the Immagine e suono Festival in Ferrara, in February 1984.
The whole work “revolves” around the English word around. The number of segments of the work corresponds to the number of letters/sounds of the word. Each segment deals vocally and visually with each letter and sound of the word. For the purpose of creating the work, the artist manufactured all the props from cardboard and personally performed all the movements and sounds that were planned. Each segment brings a variation to the interpretations of the letter that is “revolving.” The last letter, “d,” is placed in front of a mirror, whereby the letter “g” is formed above “d,” which the voice actualises as “god.” Vladan Radovanović had suggested the vocovisual as a multi-media genre of art, which in addition to the sound, visual, and spatial elements can also include the kinetic and tactile, always with the corresponding meaning. The work encompasses all the sound and visual phenomena, movements, and poetics, from glossolalia and rhopalic verse, through carmina figurate, to concrete, kinetic, visual, and sound “poetry.”
© Belgrade Cultural Centre, the October Salon Collection, and the artist
Purchase agreement: III-5-299/22.10.2021.
Inventory number: 1709
Photo: video frame, courtesy of the artist
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Vladan Radovanović (1932, Belgrade, Serbia) graduated in Composition from the Belgrade Music Academy, under the mentorship of professor Milenko Živković. With three other artists he founded Mediala in 1958 and left it in 1959. He initiated the foundation of the Electronic Studio at Radio Belgrade, which he managed from 1972 to 1999. In 1993, he proposed a project and founded the SINTUM open group. In 2000, he proposed the establishment of the Multimedia Art programme at postgraduate interdisciplinary studies of the University of Arts in Belgrade.
He does research and creative work in 10 fields. Since 1953, he has been recording and drawing dreams. Since 1954, he has been involved in character-meaning-sound, later vocovisual and proto-conceptual projectism. In 1955, he introduced the concept of action (similar to the later concept of performances). That same year, he also introduced minimalism or reductionism into music, and between 1958 and 1959 he developed cosmically sacral hyper-polyphony. Since 1956 he has been conducting research in tactilism. Since 1957, he has been developing the polymedium (later renamed into synaesthetic art), ideograms, and body work (similar to later body art). Since 1958 he has nurtured semi-abstract structuralism in visual arts.
As regards the purely technological development, he has been making tape music since 1960, pure electronic music since 1966, computer music since 1977, and computer graphics since 1988.