Pellegrino's Recommended
Sites of Music Visualizers
- Sandy Cohen <bindu@slip.net> (the organizer and host extraordinary of the gathering)
- Scott Draves <spot@transmeta.com>
- Stephen Malinowski <smalin@well.com>
- Greg Jalbert <greg@imaja.com>
- Fred Collopy <flc2@po.cwru.edu>
- Ron Pellegrino <ronpell_1@earthlink.net> (you're already here)
- Andrew Schloss <aschloss@finearts.uvic.ca>
- David Tristram <david@tristram.com>
- Jeff Hoekman <hoekman@apple.com>
- Larry Cuba <cuba@well.com>
- Bernard Mont-Reynaud <bernard@mont-reynaud.com> (no website yet)
- X<>POSE, software by Belgian artist Jessie Deep: a MIDI visual sampler
and real-time effects processor for the Macintosh that maps stills,
QuickTime, and FX to a MIDI keyboard for live performance or video
output. The 2001 version of this software can be found through
this link.
- "Meet MediaBand", one of my personal favorites in the early world of multimedia
CD-ROMs. Marc Canter and company show an ultra high level of creative
thinking in producing an interactive experience with canned materials;
"House Jam", their interactive music video, is conceptually a
gem and a kick to play.
- Digidesign is a company that creates software and hardware for recording,
editing, mixing, and mastering of sound. They have been around
since the mid-1980s creating affordable leading-edge digital audio
products and setting the pace for the visualization of the new
music theory, the music theory that is based on the actual fundamentals
of music - the nature of sound, how we hear, and the nature of
music instruments.
Pre-January 15, 1997 Site Set
Pixound, a software technology that enables the interpretation of graphic data as music and sound. It can be used to create both on-line and off-line interactive environments.
ScreenDance, a full-featured music visualization system for PCs, produced by Dave Young and Madeira Software, Inc. The product includes an integrated CD player, a variety of real-time music interpretation modules, and an open architecture supporting 3rd party animations.
Techno Light & Sound, a father and son experimental operation to make their interests in computers, graphics, and music available to others.
Imaja, Greg Jalbert's company that publishes outstanding animation, multimedia, graphics, music, and educational software for the Apple Macintosh.
- Music Animation Machine, one of a collection of Stephen Malinowski's edifying music visualization
software products.
- company of award-winning producer, Michael Wanger, offers film
and video production, stock footage research & acquisition, and
editing of all media for business, education and entertainment.
Bindu, Sandy Cohen's music visualization process for MIDI where loudness is shown as brightness and size, and musical pitch represented as relative position in the display. Color may be used to show instruments, scale, voice, etc.
For more information see the section on Academic Visual Music Sites.
February 28, 2004 Addition
The ANIMUSIC DVD. A technical tour de force. A highly imaginative, inventive,
and playful approach to creating cartoon-like music instruments
perfectly synchronized to a digitally created soundtrack. All
the material is based on virtual instruments that correspond to
the synthesized music track. This is the sort of animation that'll
appeal to folks to don't normally take to cartoon-like animation.
March 8, 2001 Addition
Arkaos, "A downloadable MIDI authoring/editing tool that empowers VISUAL
ARTISTS and PROFESSIONAL VJs to create, record and play their
own graphical/effect videos using video sequences and images."
(This product began its life in an earlier form - X<>POSE, software by Belgian artist Jessie Deep: a MIDI visual sampler
and real-time effects processor for the Macintosh that maps stills,
QuickTime, and FX to a MIDI keyboard for live performance or video
output. The X<>POSE link doesn't work any longer because the company morphed
into Arkaos. Four years is a long time in the emerging technology world.)
August 14, 2000 Addition
This is not a mistake! I'm listing it again because the deeper I get into their work
the stronger my feeling that this is an enterprise that deserves
emphasis. The home of U? software products representing the creative output of Eric Wenger and
company. What follows is an excerpt from a post I made recently
drawing attention to what I consider to be the first electronic
arts synthesizer:
"Another thought to consider seriously is that MetaSynth can be considered one of a collection of modules in what amounts to the U? electronic arts synthesizer (MetaSynth, MetaTrack, Xx, ArtMatic, and Videodelic). A number of times I've observed Eric move from application to application (module to module) in the process of demonstrating his approach to the creative process. Seen from the MetaView, that collection of modules is beginning to look like my dream synthesizer (for decades I've been creating visual music systems configured with various module sets from my hardware and software collections). I've been actively involved in the electronic arts world since 1967 and I've worked with and collected an enormous number of hardware and software instruments. My U? electronic arts synthesizer (fully configured now) is easily one of the best tools I've ever had the pleasure of exploring. For the most part my other studios have been sitting there waiting for me to finish my U? explorations. At the rate that U? turns out software, those studios may be sitting silent for awhile."
November 22, 1999 Additions
The home of U? software products representing the creative output of Eric Wenger and
company. The site includes information and access to ArtMatic,
a visionary graphics synthesizer based on mathematical algorithms
very easy to access and massage for your own creative purposes
in animating textures and terrains integrated with sound. The
site also includes information and access to Metasynth, "the first
synthesis and sound design software that gives you all the power
of advanced computer graphics to explore infinite sonic possibilities.
It combines sampling, wavetable, additive, subtractive, granular
and frequency modulation techniques with the most intuitive means
for visualizing audio information ever created." Relatively inexpensive
software that´s definitely worth exploring.
"My name is Philip Benn and I have just started a company in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY, that proclaims
to create Visual Music for DVD. I am fascinated by the possibilities
of technology fusing together the visual arts and music. I am
interested in the commercial aspects of the term, Visual Music.
I am interested in making the tools available to a mass market.
Finally, I am interested in Techno music (ambient, trance, dub,
drum n bass...) and Techno Visuals."
An Avant-Garde/Experimental Film Webring site owned by Joost Rekveld. "I was caught by the abstract animated
films of the thirties and sixties and by the ideas about light
art from around the turn of the century. A concept which pervades
both of these kinds of moving art is the idea of a form of composed
light which can be compared to the way sound is structured in
a musical piece. In the first instance I started to study musical
composition in order to develop my soundtracks more. Increasingly
I started to apply the compositional approaches I learned to the
visual structure of my films."
July 23, 1999 Additions
This is a special set of links to people who presented their work at a day long visual music gathering at Dennis Keefe's video facility in Alameda, California on July 11, 1999. This was an exceptional event signaling a sea change in the visual music movement; the visual music movement is on the edge of being integrated into mainstream multimedia arts.
The first set is already included in the links of this section of the site:
The second set represents new links:
Onadime Realtime Interactive Software
Andrew Schloss played some representative examples of this fascinating
software. Check out the Onadime website for some visionary educational
thinking.
April 28, 1999 Additions
Colour Music is an Australian site that provides an excellent source of history
and theory of the relationships of musical pitch to color and
form in the art of painting. The research and writing by Niels
Hutchison are outstanding.
iota is an organization dedicated to preserving and promoting the
art of light and movement by constructing a database of information
about artists (biographies) and their works (films, videos, performances,
instruments, etc.) as well as bibliographic references (books,
articles, exhibition catalogs, etc.). It's emphasis on dynamic
media such as film and video animation represents another flavor
of visual music. For more information see the article Visual Music and the iota List written after 18 months of researching the iota list.
Ed Tannenbaum's website focuses on his video work particularly his Recollections systems used in his interactive video installations. People play
in his installations by moving in front of a large video projection
screen while being recorded by a video camera. The video output
is processed by computer to create trails of the player's silhouettes
or outlines that are color-cycled and treated with special effects.
Although there's virtually no effort to integrate music, Tannenbaum's
work definitely fits the dynamic media visual music flavor.
AuVisuals's Performer is a MIDI file player that generates a
correlated animated color display. In the world of integrated
art software mapping MIDI to animated imagery is rapidly growing
in popularity. How it's done provides considerable insight into
how musically sophisticated the software designers are.
December 2, 1998 Additions
I saw and heard the MetaSynth software demonstrated on the floor of the 105th Convention of
the Audio Engineering Society in San Francisco late September
1998; the demo was stunning. This software opens a new chapter
in the history of visual music. A statement from their site: "MetaSynth
is the first synthesis and sound design software that gives you
all the power of advanced computer graphics to explore infinite
sonic possibilities. It combines sampling, wavetable, additive,
subtractive, granular and frequency modulation techniques with
the most intuitive means for visualizing audio information ever
created." Strong statement; strong software.
A site with an exposition of light scuptor Paul Friedlander's personal view of visual music. Describing the thumbnail he says: "I am an experimentalist,
seeking new forms. In this illustration, you see a spinning string
vibrating in harmony, this description sounds like a musical instrument,
but it is a light sculpture. The vibrating form is a superposition
of the second and fourth harmonic: a 'visual chord'."
A site with a decidedly mystical bent by Dr. Paradise (Todd Stock). "PARADISE is about raising consciousness on Earth
through a synthesis of natural and technological tools specifically
aimed an awakening, purifying and accelerating evolution of consciousness
into The Light. Specifically we are using the medium of multi-layer
digital video synaesthetically linked to certain types of psychoactive
music to induce cybershamanic states of experience."
Visual Music: The Linux Port of Cthugha: "a computer program which would transform recorded music into
moving colored patterns..."The input to the program can be any
audio source, such as a microphone, a CDROM drive (though you
must have the drive connected to your soundcard), or even a sound
file. Cthugha takes the digital audio information and, after passing
the data stream through any combination of filters, displays it
to the screen in real time. The keyboard is used to change the
various parameters either specifically or randomly. The simplest
displays resemble the screen of an oscilloscope being fed audio
data (Cthugha has been called "an oscilloscope on acid") but as
more optional filters are added the display becomes baroquely
intricate."
The site of Sergio Maltagliati, an Italian composer. He says: "I have been carrying out an experimental
programme of work in composition where the score is always a picture.
At present the scores are only in the digital data; that allows
an interactive participation on the part of the listener."
October 8, 1998 Addition
The site of Laurie Spiegel, composer and creator of Music Mouse - An Intelligent Instrument.
If you use the Macintosh or Amiga you´ll want to explore the visual
interface for making music with Music Mouse, a piece that´s been
evolving since 1986. The visual interface is a simple yet powerful
dynamic visual map of the Music Mouse´s ongoing pitch world as
it´s articulated by a mouse-driven cursor in the two dimension
matrix created by a square of piano keyboards six-plus octaves
on each side. In terms of pitches what you hear is what you see
and vice versa. It's easy to get lost for a long time playing
with this instrument and the trial version is a free download.
A classic.
September 24, 1998 Addition
Here's the site of an art explorer having a good time with his personal flavor of visual music - a dancing robot. What follows is part of an email message he sent to me: "My name is Ashraf Nehru (otherwise known as Ash). I run a "virtual live performance company" called Autopilot, producing real-time 3D graphics that are projected onto large screens at clubs (i.e. nightclubs) in the UK (and sometimes in the US). The software, which I write myself, uses the power of the new generation of PC 3D accelerator cards (the 3Dfx Voodoo and Voodoo2) to deliver smooth, high-quality graphics at an affordable cost. The show consists of an animated dancing robot that dances in time to the music, under control of a human performer while flying through a Star-Wars-style "hyperspace tunnel", shooting laser beams, lighting itself on fire, spinning at thousands of rpm, changing faces, and generally doing crazy things to reflect the energy and dynamic of the music. The human performer (called the "pilot") selects different combinations of movement patterns for hips, hands, feet, lights, auxiliary objects and changes the speed of movement through the tunnel; combinations can be assigned to function keys and invoked instantly. The idea is that the human interprets the music by controlling the character's dancing, but also responds to the energy of the people on the dancefloor (we also put the computer on the dancefloor to give the dancers a go). As the energy and tension of the music rises, the energy of the dancing increases and becomes more complex, but the lights stay off and the speed through the tunnel stays low; as soon as the music "breaks", the lights come on, the dancing becomes more fluid and the hyperspace tunnel explodes into action. The effect is to amplify the effect of the music on the crowd and noticeably charge up the atmosphere."
January 24, 1998 Site Set
Bomb is a visual music instrument by Scott Draves of Carnegie Mellon
University. It runs on a PC and produces animated organic graphics
on its own or in response to the keyboard and/or audio input.
Draves has integrated "chunks of code and various rules" from
a variety of people and sources. He's created a fascinating mix
of modes and effects including non-representational textures with
cellular automata, harmonic geometry, fractals. and a library
of scanned images and characters. I've spent many pleasurable
hours studying and playing with this fine piece. It's available
for download; try it, you'll love it.
A window to Free Play Productions' Visual Music Tone Painter, a program that converts MIDI signals into visual display in
real time. Used by performance artist Stephen Nachmanovitch as
an instrument for releasing and inspiring the creative spirit.
April 22, 1997 Site Set
Avant-garde pianist Jeffery Burns gives performances on The Piano of Light, a MIDI-equipped piano
that drives a video beamer and 60 colored lights in conjunction
with his musical performances. One of the rare sites providing
information on visual music history, theory, and philosophy.
Ralph Abraham, a pioneer in visualizing mathematics with a special interest
in dynamical systems, also explores the "use of massively parallel
technology for simulation of forced reaction-diffusion and reaction-wave
equations, with application to visual music."
Pre April 22, 1997 Site Set
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