The poetry of things: anecdotes and mimesis in Visual Music.

Abstract

Computers and dedicated software applications, allow us to create audio-visuals entirely in the digital domain, by means of sound and animation synthesis. In line with the spectro-morphological tradition of much of the electroacoustic repertoire, Visual Music works produced by artists of sonic arts provenance, are predominantly abstract, especially in terms of the imagery they resort to. Nonetheless, despite the ensuing non-representational idiom that typifies many Visual Music works, composers enjoyed the riveting opportunity to employ material, both audio and video, which possess clear mimetic potential (Emmerson 1986, p.17), intended here as the ability to imitate nature or refer to it, more or less faithfully and literally. Radical alteration of materials open new avenues in the compositional idioms, both as a result of digital manipulation and as consequence of audio-visual montage. The discussion in this article stems from my particular perspective of an audio-visual composer of acousmatic origin, from the use of mimesis in the sonic arts, to the exploration of a few important aspects of Visual Music composition.