79 Underground and avantgarde films explore issues of time, space, dreams, fantasy, and perception. Most are shocking and disturbing. The viewers are not just watching the film, but living an experience that involves thinking and perceiving. These films aim at challenging the audience with a radical break from tradition. Like all young, socially-aware US citizens of their era, The Doors were affected by their nation s involvement in the Vietnam War. The protracted conflict began in 1955 and saw the Soviet Union, backing North Vietnam, against the US, backing South Vietnam. VISUAL MUSIC Over the years, music has undergone a marked change and evolution thanks to electronic instruments which have changed our relationship with art and music in general. The beginning Initially, it was necessary to attend a music performance in person. Later, instruments capable of reproducing music were created, and it was not until 1877 that the first audio recording device was invented by Thomas Edison. Since then, the evolution has been continuously uphill. From visual jukeboxes to YouTube The promotional purpose of the combination of film and music was well understood by the recording industry which produced, from the 1920s onwards, a whole series of jazz-films , short films consisting of short performances with studio footage of the performance, together with dances and sets to accompany them. In the 1940s in America, visual jukeboxes were created, which allowed, in a period still without television, the distribution of music accompanied by images. footage: filmato d archivio onwards: in avanti uphill: in salita word pun: gioco di parole 182 CREATIVE ARTS In 1967, The Beatles embraced the audio-visual language for promotional purposes with their films, using expressive techniques typical of underground and avantgarde films ; the novelty lay in the fact that these productions proposed a visual interpretation of the song, rather than just documenting its performance. This approach was also typical of some of The Doors productions, for instance in the video The Unknown Soldier (1968), which used archive material from the Vietnam War. At the beginning of the 1980s, the creation of MTV (Music television) represented a novelty in the television programming market and in its communication approach, aimed at an extremely well-defined target: the young. The audio-visual language accelerated the visual rhythm and the lighting effects typical of modern video clips were developed, since young audiences were accustomed to decoding images and audio-visual narration more and more quickly. The first music videos were produced. At present music travels in a dematerialised form. Tracks can be accessed anywhere and at any time and having an Internet connection has changed the way people are able to interact with content. Consumers like watching everything, from dance choreography to band interviews and makings of . For this reason, YouTube has become the best channel for promoting songs.