Visionsonic

ℹ️ Festival discontinued. Visionsonic has not been held since 2012. This page is kept as an archive to document this event which marked the French digital arts scene. No new edition has been announced.

Visionsonic: when sound met image

Visionsonic was one of the most unique events on the French digital arts scene at the turn of the 2010s. Carried by the Pixels Transversaux collective and the V-Atak label, the festival established itself as a space for research and presentation dedicated to artistic forms located at the crossroads of sound, image, and new technologies.

A festival at the frontier of disciplines

The singularity of Visionsonic lay in its desire to transcend established artistic categories. The festival welcomed artists and collectives who refused to separate sound creation from visual creation, producing works where electronic music, visual arts, experimental cinema, and live performance merged into a total experience for the spectator.

Audiovisual performances constituted the core of the program: artists manipulated sound synthesis and image generation in real-time, creating unique sensory landscapes with each performance. Live cinema — this practice where a musician improvises live on images — held a special place, exploring the dialogue between the legacy of silent film and contemporary electronic tools.

Immersive installations and workshops

Beyond performances, Visionsonic offered immersive digital installations inviting visitors to traverse sound and visual environments designed as spaces to be freely explored. Workshops complemented the program, allowing curious individuals to learn about digital creation tools — visual generation software, modular sound synthesis, creative programming — under the guidance of invited artists.

An international opening

Visionsonic distinguished itself by its international openness: alongside French creators, the festival invited artists from Canada, Belgium, New Zealand, Italy, Spain, Germany, England, and Austria, making the Paris region a convergence point for the VJing, experimental electronic music, and generative art scene.

History and venues of the festival

The first edition was held from October 29 to 31, 2009, at the Centre Madeleine-Rebérioux in Créteil and Le Cube in Issy-les-Moulineaux. The festival then continued its Île-de-France itinerancy before presenting its last edition, the 4th, on November 16 and 17, 2012, at Mains d'Œuvres (Saint-Ouen), with a program notably featuring Derek Holzer, Bernard Szajner, Synchronator, and Strom Varx.

The end of an adventure

After the 2012 edition, the festival ceased its activity. The organizing collective publicly announced the discontinuation of Visionsonic, and no edition has been organized since. The page remains online as a memory of a project that contributed to making live cinema and audiovisual performance practices known in France. If a new edition were to see the light of day someday, this page would be updated accordingly.