It is only in recent years that the technology has become available for people of moderate incomes to realize the dream of visual music. With this new technology has come innovation and experimentation in the field of visual music. However, the field itself is not new at all. Theories and methods regarding the use of image as an expressive medium have been prevalent in many cultures and time periods throughout recorded history.

What is Visual Music?

Visual Music comes in many flavors, ranging from the abstract to the common place. Most general concepts of visual music suggest that visual performances can be composed of musical elements and musical structures. (Ron Pellegrino, 1997) Such that, for instance, each musical note or phrase has a corresponding visual element, or simply that a live visual performance can be as expressive as a live audio performance.

In order for there to be visual music, there must be visual instruments. Instruments that allow the musician to use image as an expressive medium. In modern terms this would be a real-time controllable device that is both complex enough to allow expressive playing and consistent enough to make repeated performances possible.

Visual Music has many modern day manifestations. One common examples could be converting music to images like screen savers, which respond to sound, but do nothing apart from synchronization of sound and image. Visual Music could also be expressing music in visual form, such as would require the active involvement of an artist to interpret the music; or Visual Music could be creating visual relationships which change over time. Which are not necessarily correspond to specific music notes or phrases, but rather express with abstract colors and shapes the same types of expression as is reached with music.(Paul Friedlander praskovi@clara.net)

Visual Music History

This idea has been around longer that either the computer or the 'sound light converter' found in night clubs. Some famous people have speculated about this, Goethe for one, and Beethoven also was known to have produced a table of equivalence between musical key and color. Beethoven and Goethe did not agree as to which color corresponded to which key and the whole process of establishing a 'sound light' relationship is an ongoing and unfulfilled activity.(Paul Friedlander praskovi@clara.net)

Division of the spectrum into eleven sections. A modification of the visual to auditory spectrum proposed by De Maistre. (http://home.vicnet .net.au/~colourmusic/maistre.htm)

The earliest proponents used mechanical or optical means. The Whitney Brothers started making what would now look like psychedelic (before the word had been invented) animation's in the 50s and 60s. The first great creation of Visual Music to receive widespread notice by the public was the Stargate sequence in the movie 2001. In the 70s, artists like Tom DeWitt and Richard Monkhouse started creating special analogue electronic 'image synthesizers'. More recently with the advent of desktop computers, there has been an explosion of activity in this area. But much of this work is animation which is restricted by the fact that it must have a beginning, middle and end. (Paul Friedlander praskovi@clara.net)

The advent of the synthesizer signaled an acceleration in the evolutionary spiral of electronic music and the electronic arts in general.(Ron Pelligrino) Moogs initial work into the connection between the Oscilloscopes and the Synthesizers formed the foundation for theory into both electronic music and visual music. After more than a half century of prophetic utterances by composers such as Schoenberg, Varese, Busoni, Cage, and others, a powerful new artistic tool was made available to whomever was willing to explore its potential and realize its implications. Buchla, Moog, and their associates broke the ground, fertilized the soil, and planted the seeds for the new breed of artist/engineer that is an integral part of the present electronics/space-age art and music scene.(Ron Pelligrino)

The events and happenings of the 60s involved a collaboration between different forms: theater, dance music, etc. where no single element prevailed but the performance was a kind of Visual Music. This is also where the word multimedia originated. Rock videos could be said to fall into this category but the most wonderful examples are more abstract and can be spell binding, awesome even. The presentation of a Pink Floyd concert is a perfect example of Visual Music. (Paul Friedlander praskovi@clara.net)

Over the years, the art of light and movement has been expressed in a wide range of media and techniques and has been called by a variety of names. In the world of film, for example, it's known as "Absolute Film" or "Abstract Animation," whereas in video art, it's referred to as "Video Synthesis" or "Image Processing." (http://www.iotacenter.org/)

But in current times appropriately dramatic, humorous, or lyrical music closely synchronized with natural or invented moving imagery is now a mainstay of the popular media scene. (Ron Pelligrino –1997)

Our Place in the History of Visual Music

The LMM Project seeks now to support the growth and develop the burgeoning art of visual music. We are most focused on the applications of visual music as a medium for live performance, and most interested in the developing new ways expressing the hopes, thoughts, and feelings of our particular human experience.

We intend to actively experiment with the advancements of technology with the intention of reinterpreting and evolving the history of this medium. We bring together the skills of artists, musicians, filmmakers, dancers, and engineers to the field of visual music in order to lay the groundwork for what this combinations of these mediums can become.