Visual Music Series. Bruce Gremo composer and performer. 211205.
The graphic 'animation' in this video follows from control generated by tablet controllers, and from frequency/amplitude analyses of sound made from within the artist's sound generating and control environment application 'OPEN (Open Performance Environment Navigator),' written with Cycling 74's Max. Native Instrument's Reaktor and Kontakt are also used for additional synthesis and sampling. In the control domain, Hexler's TouchOSC is also used to write iPad control surfaces, Keith McMillen's QuNeo tablet is used as is the computer keyboard. Graphic animation routines are written with Cycling 74's Jitter.
This is an improvisational performance. It is multi-track audio recorded and edited. The video is screen recorded. This is a performance medium, not a studio medium. Therefore skill is demonstrated in managing multiple layers of audio and visual material as it is generated for the first time.
This is not always appreciated in production and cinematic centrific cultures such as we live in today.
This is part of a series called 'visual music.' The expression is not new and goes back to the early 20th century work of abstract film pioneer Walter Ruttmann and the synaesthetic aspirations of painter Wassily Kandinsky. Because the images suggest contents and ideas to the performer, like any traditional musical score it is prescriptive, instructing a performer what to do. Because it derives from the control and audio contents the musician is generating, the graphics are also descriptive. It therefore does more than traditional staff notation. It also does more than any traditional prescriptive notation because it instructs on or suggests emotional content, not just sonic content. At least that is true insofar as abstract form and color are emotionally and semantically suggestive and/or evocative. They are very much so in my experience. A large part of the skill of the performer is in managing the back and forth interventions that come from looking and listening at the same time.
visual music
All works © armonia music services / ASCAP