Playing keyboards takes on new meaning for illustrator Jonathon Rosen. Known for his collage-based editorial work, sophisticated packaging design, and surreal paintings, Rosen has taken animation to a new zone: performance illustration. Starting this weekend, he's on a U.K. tour with fellow artist and designer Stephen Byram, performing art for Tim Berne's jazz collective, Paraphrase.

Rosen, who began making films a decade ago, was a featured performer at the experimental music and art show, Visual Music, at LA MoCA in 2005. In his live video mixes, he uses digital platforms to explore the immediate relationship between sonic and visual material. In a recent conversation, he said: "I like to call myself a Synaesthesiast," which refers to the idea that there's a connection between color harmony and musical harmony." Illustration, below: Screenshots of live video contamination by Jonathon Rosen and Stephan Byram for the UK tour of Tim Berne's Paraphrase.

For his current work, Rosen is using the Beta version of animation software that has no pre-sets; this enables him to create his own digital building blocks. He makes film loops of various durations, accessing a library of over 200 clips. To give a more concrete idea of the visuals, Rosen compared it to music by Philip Glass, in which overlapping sound loops of different durations create a mesmerizing, trance-like state. In this case, the overlapping visual loops of different durations "echo" that effect. For the U.K. tour, he and Stephen Byram will be creating side-by-side live-action animation loops for jazz performances by Paraphrase.

The tour launches this weekend at CBSO Center, Birmingham, one of England's premiere performance venues. The rest of the tour is as follows:

Mar 25-27: Vortex Jazz Club, London

Mar 28th: The Wardrobe, Leeds

Mar 29th: The Jazz Centre at The Lot, Edinburgh

Mar 30th: The Lighthouse, Poole

About Tim Berne, from the CBSO Center website: Paraphrase is Tim Berne's improvising trio with regular partners Drew Gress on bass and Tom Rainey on drums. Tim Berne is noted for the diversity of his composed work, and the inherent logic of his writing extends into his improvised music. The latest album Pre-Emptive Denial, on Screwgun Records (2005) reveals a trio that knows each other well and can develop a whole conversation from the tiniest motif.