hello Crumbs
The following is not really concerning the theme of the month (about
existing new media art spaces), but maybe some of you are interested
still. (It seems like one of those pieces in the puzzle of media art
history, like Les Immateriaux was) I found it when looking for the
precise definition/use of the word 'Gesamtkunstwerk' on the net. In one
thesis (?) at
http://www.vislab.usyd.edu.au/user/alyons/digi_c.html
I found this about the combination of space, sound and 'visuals':
Two young Parisians greatly influenced by these ideas were the architect
Le Corbusier and the composer Edgar Varese. These two men were prominant
in the creation of an exhibit for the 1958 world fair that is often
regarded as both a forerunner of Virtual Reality and as an example of
the Gesamtkunstwerk. "Although a little building of brief life span, the
1958 Philips Pavilion, with its spectacle of amplified sound and
rhythmically orchestrated light and colour, was a landmark in electronic
media technology that concomitantly tested the limits of Architecture,
both concrete and virtual. When seen against the buildings and arts of
its time, when seen as Le Corbusier's synthesis of the arts, the Philips
project assumes justified importance. While in some ways neither the
Architecture nor the spectacle fully realized its complete potential, in
other ways all aspects of the project were prescient. If the Philips
project did not locate the precise point at which all the arts -
traditional and electronic -would intersect some time in the future, it
did provide the unquestionable directional signs toward that point." [4]
([4] Marc Treib. Space Calculated in Seconds. Princeton, N.J. :
Princeton University Press, 1996. p.33)
regards
J
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