On 10 February 2012, the visual music project Quantum by Florian Breuer was performed for the first time in Studio 1 at the IMM. Quantum stages Beethoven’s final Sonata No. 32 in C minor in an audiovisual concert for piano and projector. The sonata was played by Frank Märkel. The projected images underline the dramatic aspect of the piece and deal with the thoughts behind the composition. The content of the projected images was specially developed by Florian Breuer through analysis of the score, and is projected live onto the concert grand.
The work was supervised by Andreas Kolinski and Prof. Dr. Heike Sperling within the framework of the Visual Music 2 final exam.

The second Visual Music Night of the Institute for Music and Media was held on 18 January 2012 during Cologne Music Week. This year’s event was run in cooperation with the legendary Cologne record shop and label, a-musik.
Of the many different posters designed, one draft by Simon Stimberg was finally jointly selected and printed. The visual space design for the evening itself was undertaken by Andreas Huck, Florian Zeeh and Lilong Li.

Hurdy Gurdy is a Visual Music installation. It consists of a room in which three record players that have been converted into projectors and sound generators each standing on their own pedestal. The three units interact to generate a sound and image composition that in an extended sense is algorithmic, and that is projected onto the wall via magnifying glasses and amplified by means of loudspeakers. The synchronicity of sounds and movements links the image and sound, while the asynchronicity of the three units relative to each other means that the composition is in a state of constant change. Visual complexity is achieved through the continuous overlapping of the projections. The objective of the project was to develop an automated device that uses mechanical processes to generate light movements and sounds, and in this manner plays an endless audiovisual concert. Using the readily comprehensible simplicity of the design and the visibility of the processes producing the sounds and images, the aim was to create an impression of presence and immediacy.　
 

Using real-life examples, the course Typography, Visual Composition, Layout given by IMM assistant professor Christian Schäfer in the two Bachelor courses of Music and Media as well as Audio and Video, discusses the principles of design.

These principles are internalised through practical and experimental work as well as in discussions about design. The goal is to improve the ability to assess design and the representation of ideas and requirements.

The students learn how and why music and design communicate with each other and how they complement each other in the best way. The use of typography, colour and images is applied in practical work using pieces of music chosen by the students themselves. Here is a small selection of the designs created during the 2011/12 winter term.

The work Movie Log by Armin Mieth was created during the Music Visualization in Moving Images course under the supervision of IMM assistant professor Tristan Thönnissen. Armin Mieth selected individual stills from all the films that he watched within the space of a year. The image and sound fragments record the chronology of his movie-watching experience. The idea of the clips pursues an almost mechanical strictness, while the selection of the excerpts took place intuitively. Armin Mieth sees the value of this work principally in the impression of his favourite films in summary. With this collage, he also creates an independent point of view, a new perspective on the material of these films.