From Sonic Art to Visual Music: Divergences, convergences, intersections

This paper introduces strategies for the electroacoustic community to relate to, and engage with, the visual music phenomenon. It addresses technological, historical, cultural and idiomatic intersections between the two art forms. From the personal viewpoint of a trained synaesthete of acousmatic origin, the boundaries between sonic and audiovisual compositional practices appear somewhat porous. The electroacoustic language is intrinsically visual, even within its acousmatic paradigm. Visible morphologies acquire a sonorous dimension as soon as we uproot them from their cinematographic habitat and plunge them into the cauldron of a new alchemy. Multi-disciplinary lines of enquiry are essential to elucidate the workings of complex multimediatic interactions such as those at play in visual music. Yet, a holistic view of the creative and technological pathways is equally significant so that artistic truths, and myths, can be (re) discovered amidst lines of code or loops of wire connecting our computer peripherals. Thus this article is written both with the language of an analyst and, perhaps more, with the expressions and idiosyncrasies of an academic composer. A few selected examples from the contemporary repertoire are discussed to exemplify a variety of approaches to visual music composition, including extracts from the work Patah (Garro 2010).