Abstract
Dubbed ‘occult aesthetics’ by Kevin Donnelly, the synchronization of sound and image in audiovisual media has been a topic of academic discussion since the early days of sound film. Musical synchronization specifically has raised aesthetic questions that have been answered differently in different eras and media, e.g. the scoring practice of ‘Mickeymousing’, the close match of musical rhythms and movements with those on screen that was deemed inappropriate for the Hollywood film, but effective in certain cartoons. In addition to narrative media where music is composed or selected to match the action on screen, the last century has seen the development of audiovisual genres where synchronization could be said to occur vice-versa: the musical number, the MTV music video, and more recently the TikTok dance video feature diegetic movement, cinematography, and editing to musical features. Moreover, the development of interactive media such as video games and virtual reality experiences has added an extra dimension of synchronization, that of the user’s or player’s movements.
The purpose of this talk is to survey recent developments in musical synchronization, focusing on recent media such as video games and TikTok videos that coexist with traditional audiovisual media such as films and music videos. Drawing on the work of Donnely, Michel Chion, and Sergei Eisenstein, it explores the historical dimension of the aesthetics of synchronization, asking to what extent concepts like Mickeymousing, synch points (Chion), and plesiochrony (Donnelly) are period- and medium-specific, and to what extent they are understandable through Bolter & Grusin’s idea of remediation.
Bio
Michiel Kamp is Assistant Professor of Musicology at Utrecht University, where he teaches on music and audiovisual media. Michiel is co-founder of the UK-based Ludomusicology research group, which has organised yearly conferences on video game music in the UK and abroad since 2011, and he has co-edited a volume Ludomusicology: Approaches to Video Game Music based on these conferences. His research currently centres on video game music and other screen media, with a particular interest in phenomenologies and hermeneutics of listening. His monograph Four Ways of Hearing Video Game Music is set to be published by Oxford University Press in 2024.