Hugues Dufourt’s Cinematic Dynamism

This article appears in the Oxford Handbook of Sound and Image in Digital Media edited by Carol Vernallis, Amy Herzog, and John Richardson. This article analyzes French spectral composer Hugues Dufourt’s composition titled L’Afriqued’après and examines the influence of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo’s paintings on his works since 2005. It explains that Tiepolo’s fresco technique evoked for Dufourt the realism of American cinema and discusses how Dufourt has translated his visual perceptions of the fresco images and their three-dimensionality into musical terms. It also highlights the characteristics of Tiepolo’s art similar to the cinema. These are the effects of dramatic acceleration and the simultaneous coexistence of fragments from disparate realities.