Visual music

Visual music, sometimes called "colour music," refers to the use of musical structures in visual imagery, which can also include silent films or silent Lumia work. It also refers to methods or devices which can translate sounds or music into a related visual presentation. An expanded definition may include the translation of music to painting; this was the original definition of the term, as coined by Roger Fry in 1912 to describe the work of Kandinsky.^[1]

Visual music also refers to systems which convert music or sound directly into visual forms, such as film, video or computer graphics, by means of a mechanical instrument, an artist's interpretation, or a computer. The reverse is applicable also, literally converting images to sound by drawn objects and figures on a film's soundtrack, in a technique known as drawn or graphical sound. Filmmakers working in this latter tradition include Oskar Fischinger (Ornament Sound Experiments), Norman McLaren, Steven Woloshen and many contemporary artists. Visual music overlaps to some degree with the history of abstract film, though not all Visual music is abstract.

There are a variety of definitions of visual music, particularly as the field continues to expand. In some recent writing, usually in the fine art world, Visual Music is often confused with or defined as synaesthesia, though historically this has never been a definition of Visual Music. Visual music has also been defined as a form of intermedia.

Instruments

Since ancient times artists have longed to create with moving lights a music for the eye comparable to the effects of sound for the ear.
– Dr. William Moritz, the best-known historian of visual music writing in English, his speciality being the work of Oskar Fischinger.^[2]

Sometimes also called "color music," the history of this tradition includes many experiments with color organs. Artist or inventors "built instruments, usually called 'color organs,' that would display modulated colored light in some kind of fluid fashion comparable to music."[1] Several different definitions of color music exist; one is that color music is generally formless projections of colored light. Some scholars and writers have used the term color music interchangeably with visual music.

The construction of instruments to perform visual music live, as with sonic music, has been a continuous concern of this art. Color organs, while related, form an earlier tradition extending as early as the eighteenth century with the Jesuit Louis Bertrand Castel building an occular harpsichord in the 1730s (visited by Georg Philipp Telemann, who composed for it). Other prominent color organ artist-inventors include: Alexander Wallace Rimington, Bainbridge Bishop, Thomas Wilfred, Charles Dockum and Mary Hallock-Greenewalt.

Visual music on film

Visual music and abstract film or video often coincide. Some of the earliest known films of these two genres were hand-painted works produced by the Futurists Bruno Corra[2] and Arnaldo Ginna between 1911 and 1912 (as they report in the Futurist Manifesto of Cinema), which are now lost. Mary Hallock-Greenewalt produced several reels of hand-painted films (although not traditional motion pictures) that are held by the Historical Society of Philadelphia. Like the Futurist films, and many other visual music films, her 'films' were meant to be a visualization of musical form.

Notable visual music filmmakers include: Walter Ruttmann, Hans Richter, Viking Eggeling, Oskar Fischinger, Len Lye, Jordan Belson, Norman McLaren, Mary Ellen Bute (who made a series of films she called Seeing Sound films), Harry Smith, John and James Whitney, and many others up to present day.

In 2005, a US exhibition called "Visual Music" at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art and The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington DC included documentation of color organs and featured many visual music films [3] and videos as well as paintings and some color organs.

The Center for Visual Music in Los Angeles has the world's largest collection of visual music resources, including the papers of Oskar Fischinger and the original research collection of visual music historian Dr. William Moritz. Their collections contain films, video, digital media, papers, monographs, clippings, artwork, posters, artifacts and much more. CVM distributes a number of visual music DVDs as well as curated film programs of visual music work, from historical to contemporary.

Computer graphics

Oscilloscope showing a single pitch, a sinewave

The cathode ray tube made possible the oscilloscope, an early electronic device that can produce images that are easily associated with sounds from microphones. The modern Laser lighting display displays wave patterns produced by similar circuitry. The imagery used to represent audio in digital audio workstations is largely based on familiar oscilloscope patterns.

The Animusic company (originally called 'Visual Music') has repeatedly demonstrated the use of computers to convert music — principally pop-rock based and composed as MIDI events — to animations. Graphic artist-designed virtual instruments which either play themselves or are played by virtual objects are all, along with the sounds, controlled by MIDI instructions.^[3]

In the image-to-sound sphere, MetaSynth^[4] includes a feature which converts images to sounds. The tool uses drawn or imported bitmap images, which can be manipulated with graphic tools, to generate new sounds or process existing audio. A reverse function allows the creation of images from sounds.^[5]

Some media player software generates animated imagery or music visualization based on a piece of recorded music:

• autom@ted_VisualMusiC_ 4.0 planned and realized by Sergio Maltagliati. This program can be configured to create random multiple visual-music variations, starting from a simple sonorous/visual cell. It generates a new and original audio-visual composition each time play is clicked.

See also

The Art of Science of ...

• Music visualization
• Color organ
• Cymatics
• Synesthesia in art

The Industry of ...

• VJing - The art of performing visual music
• Audiovisual art
• Motion graphics - a process or technique often used in contemporary visual music

Similar Types of Art

• Abstract film or Experimental film or Video art
• Sound art or Sound sculpture or Sound installation

References

1. ^ The man who heard his paintbox hiss - Telegraph
2. ^ Moritz, William (1986). "Towards an Aesthetics of Visual Music". ASIFA Canada Bulletin,. http://www.centerforvisualmusic.org/TAVM.htm. Retrieved 15 June 2010. 
3. ^ Alberts, Randy (March 22 2006). "Inside Animusic's Astonishing Computer Music Videos". O'Reilly Media, Inc. http://digitalmedia.oreilly.com/2006/03/22/animusic-computer-music-videos.html. Retrieved 15 June 2010. 
4. ^ U&I Software, Inc.
5. ^ Sasso, Len (Oct 1, 2005). "U&I SOFTWARE MetaSynth 4 (Mac)". Electronic Musician. http://emusician.com/mag/emusic_ui_softwaremetasynth_mac/. Retrieved 15 June 2010. 

• William Moritz, "The Dream of Color Music and Machines That Made it Possible." Animation World Magazine, Apr 1997
• William Moritz, "Visual Music and Film as an Art before 1950." In Karlstrom, Paul J., editor, On the Edge of America: California Modernist Art, 1900-1950. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.
• Jack Ox and Cindy Keefer. On Curating Recent Digital Abstract Visual Music 2006. Has explanations of several definitions of Visual Music.
• Michael Betancourt, "Mary Hallock-Greenewalt's Abstract Films." [Millennium Film Journal no 45, 2006]
• Martin Kemp, The Science of Art: Optical Themes in Western Art from Brunelleschi to Seurat. [Yale, 1992]
• Maarten Franssen, "The Ocular Harpsichord of Louis-Bertrand Castel." [Tractrix: Yearbook for the History of Science, Medicine, Technology and Mathematics 3, 1991]
• Hermann von Helmholtz, Psychological Optics, Volume 2. [The Optical Society of America, 1924] DjVu, UPenn Psychology site
• Dina Riccò & Maria José de Cordoba (edited by), "MuVi. Video and moving image on synesthesia and visual music", Edizioni Poli.design [Milano, 2007]
• Campen, Cretien van. "The Hidden Sense. Synesthesia in Art and Science." Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007.

External links

• Center for Visual Music online library
• Visual Music Archive by Prof. Dr. Heike Sperling
• Color and Sound - Visual Music by Maura McDonnell
• Oskar Fischinger - Oskar Fischinger, The Father of Visual Music; and Oskar Fischinger Research Pages at CVM
• What is Visual Music?
• RhythmicLight.com, site dedicated to visual music; includes timeline, annotated bibliography & many links
• A Lifetime in Animation: The Glamorous Dr. William Moritz by C. Keefer, 2003, in Animation World Magazine online.
• Correspondence of Sound and Colour creativelab.kiev.ua
• The Electric Collage light show
• 'Visual music: an inquiry into the musical potential of the image by Stefan Beyst
• Music Animation Machine, generates piano-roll-style graphics
• autom@ted Interactive net >VisualMusiC by Sergio Maltagliati.
• scientific and curatorial project on visual music by fluctuating images
• VJ Theory - Publishes online texts, interviews and discussions related to philosophy and theory within VJing and realtime interaction.
• The Middle Of Nowhere - the online art gallery created by visual music artist Steven Johannessen featuring 3D worlds, 3D surreal and landscape art, visual music videos and music compositions
• iota - an organization devoted to Abstract Cinema and Visual Music
• Visual Music Village - a global network of artists, venues and fans of Abstract Visual Music
• VJ Central - Largest online community of realtime video artists