ABOUT SOUND:FRAME

In the fifth year of its existence, the sound:frame festival has quite a successful history to look back at. The festival rings a bell in most people's minds in Austria and has also been quite successful throughout the whole world. Next to countless co-operations with festivals from all over Europe, sound:frame staged an exhibition at the ACF in New York at the end of 2009 and performed at the Austrian Pavilion during EXPO 2010 in Shanghai. For 2011, projects in Melbourne, Moscow, Milan, Istanbul and Krakow are already planned.

From the very beginning, the name sound:frame displays the equal alliance of music and (moving) image. The name contains frame, as in, the still of a film clip. Wrongfully treated as an orphan by many, the visual layer of the performance does not function as a frame to the music. Just like a sound that is a part of the track, a frame is a fraction of the moving image and thereby creates a little part of the artistic interplay. The musical layer receives just as much attention as the visual layer does. Intercreativity and the team-play of different art forms are at the core of the festival and its very thoughts, beliefs and intentions. Alongside audio:vision, the festival program was enriched by other artistic genres such as architecture, design, literature and classical music.

Every year, sound:frame tries to go deeper and deeper into the subject matter, and continues to ask fresh and different questions. While in 2009, "evolution remixed!" was a review of audio:visual art history, paying close attention to the technological and artistic strategy of remixing, 2010's "dimensions" focused on the audio:visual aspects of rooms and spatial structures. In 2011, the festival theme "perFORMance" tries to shed light on the importance of processuality and performativity for audio:visual forms of expression and their different FORMally aesthetic shapes.

The festival tries to be able to look at these questions in different contexts and implementations, and to discuss them in theory as well as in real time. To ensure maximal coverage, every year's festival encompasses all kinds of formats, like exhibitions, live events, workshops, screenings and public discussions. sound:frame wants to be a platform that enables current artistic trends to be heard. The festival is supposed to be a meeting point to facilitate the international communication of audio:visual artists from all around the world, making artistic, formal and content-wise innovations possible.