When it first appeared over ten years ago, the promo for Talking Heads' Once in a Lifetime, set a creative standard for the newly-emerging form of music video. Combining the latest in video technology alongside innovative formal devices, it features a show-stopping performance from head-Head David Byrne. The Eighties themselves saw a number of artists who took the music-video-and-performance combo off in new experimental directions. John Sanborn's rivetting Ear to the Ground (made with avant-garde percussionist David van Tieghem), Akiko Hada's witty, rapid-fire Ohi Ho Bang Bang and Christian Marclay s Record Players are all pieces that explore the possibility of a new kind of 'visual-music' in which the performance fundamentally shapes the structure of the soundtrack.


In recent years, the tendency for collaborative projects by visual artists and musicians/dancers is represented in a number of dance-based pieces, including those directed by John Maybury, Mike Stubbs and Pascal Baes which all use the twists-and-turns of the camera to add a dramatic new element to the performance. The programme closes with the recent promo for David Byrne's She's Mad: proof that Byrne has lost none of this gift for virtuoso set-piece effects and a fascinating glimpse of the potential interaction of performance with the world of digital and computer technology.

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When it first appeared over ten years ago, the promo for Talking Heads' Once in a Lifetime, set a creative standard for the newly-emerging form of music video. Combining the latest in video technology alongside innovative formal devices, it features a show-stopping performance from head-Head David Byrne. The Eighties themselves saw a number of artists who took the music-video-and-performance combo off in new experimental directions. John Sanborn's rivetting Ear to the Ground (made with avant-garde percussionist David van Tieghem), Akiko Hada's witty, rapid-fire Ohi Ho Bang Bang and Christian Marclay s Record Players are all pieces that explore the possibility of a new kind of 'visual-music' in which the performance fundamentally shapes the structure of the soundtrack.


In recent years, the tendency for collaborative projects by visual artists and musicians/dancers is represented in a number of dance-based pieces, including those directed by John Maybury, Mike Stubbs and Pascal Baes which all use the twists-and-turns of the camera to add a dramatic new element to the performance. The programme closes with the recent promo for David Byrne's She's Mad: proof that Byrne has lost none of this gift for virtuoso set-piece effects and a fascinating glimpse of the potential interaction of performance with the world of digital and computer technology.