Panel Statement

Panel: Intermedia Art in the Digital Age

Jack Ox is the visual artist half of a collaborative team consisting of herself and David Britton, programmer. She will talk about the development of their virtual reality immersive project called “The 21st C. Virtual Color Organ” The Organ is an instrument which can visualize multiple musical compositions. It can be outfitted with separate color and image systems, depending on the different needs of various compositions. Ox will describe “Im Januar am Nil”, composed by Clarence Barlow, a computer assisted composition based mathematically on a 2 dimensional spiral and played by chamber orchestra. She will also talk about the in progress collaboration with Alvin Curran to be called “Gridjam “. This piece will be performed by geographically separated musicians inside their own immersive environment over the AccessGrid. jackox.net

• Jack Ox, Leonardo International Co-Editor, USA, has been working on the visualization of music for over 20 years, including research in musicology and phonetics. Ox’s internationally exhibited work includes an 800 square foot visualization of Kurt Schwitters Ursonate and a cycle of 12 paintings based on Anton Bruckner s Eighth Symphony. Long a member of the editorial board of Leonardo, Ox was guest editor, with Jacques Mandelbroijt, of the special section “Synesthesia and Intersense”. Her collaborative project, the 21st Century Virtual Reality Color Organ has received extensive support. Ox was a visiting fellow in Computer Science at Loughborough University, UK, in 2000.

Full text (PDF) p. 126-127