Editor's Notes

Anyone who has been attending international conferences of electro-acoustic and computer music over the last decade has noticed the increasing frequency and sophistication of works that include video. During the years that might still pass before this new medium merits its own chapter in computer music textbooks, the current plethora of appellations for it may well coalesce into an accepted few. Some of my personal favorites are "visual music," "computer music video," "intermedia art," and "audiovisual art." At present, the choice of terminology is often a compositional prerogative (there being insufficient history to settle upon a single, standard usage), and the divergence of opinions about which term is most suitable reflects the interdisciplinary nature and the nascent self-definition of the field in relation and in opposition to the worlds of video art, experimental film, and abstract animation. What these visual music works have in common is their eschewal of dialog and actors, and their search for a commensurate importance of the visual and musical elements. In working out the aesthetic and formal challenges of these constraints, many contemporary composers and audiovisual artists draw lessons from the study of pioneers such as John and James Whitney, Jordan Belson, Len Lye, Mary Ellen Butte, Oskar Fischinger, Norman McLaren, Stan Brakhage, Stan VanDerBeek, Steina and Woody Vasulka, and Nam June Paik.

By issuing a call for manuscript contributions to this themed issue of Computer Music Journal, we aimed to expedite the development of seminal writing on this important topic. The result is a set of five articles that represent specific compositional, theoretical, and technical perspectives.

The article by Brian Evans examines the visual principles of balanced proportion and movement from dissonant points of tension to consonant release, relating these principles to specific examples from the history of visual music. Working towards a visual music theory, Mr. Evans makes use of Sergei Eisenstein's theory of montage as a taxonomic framework for thinking about duration, thematic content, and cinematography. While computer-based composers who encounter software for video synthesis and processing are often struck by its similarity to the analogous, familiar software for audio, Mr. Evans's article points to the reality that working in the time-based visual domain requires a knowledge not only of tools, but also of visual form, abstract art, color theory, film editing, and cinematography.

Roger Dannenberg, who has developed interactive systems involving computer animation and music since 1987, describes his work, including the artistic and technical challenges that arose as the systems evolved. As we have only recently reached an era of real-time video processing and consumer-based DVD production, it is worth reflecting on the historical context, in terms of not only prior developments but also the inevitable video-processing and image-making techniques yet to be invented. Many composers share Mr. Dannenberg's holistic perspective, one that seeks to unify the musical and visual elements as related expressions of a fundamental and singular deep structure.

Jøran Rudi discusses representational and mapping issues in the context of four of his cross-media works, in which the camera typically plays a highly functional role in exploring the virtual audiovisual worlds of the composer's creation. Bill Alves's article articulates an artistic correspondence between abstract animation and computer music, one that extrapolates from the ideas of John Whitney. In a discussion of his own works, Mr. Alves draws connections between Mr. Whitney's differential dynamics and his own use of Just Intonation and combination product sets.

Lastly, Ben Neville and Randy Jones examine strategies for the mapping of sound to image and give an overview of the Jitter visual programming language. After presenting a brief overview of ways to analyze and extract event data from musical input, the authors focus on practical considerations and effective strategies when working in the visual domain. The article concludes with an in-depth discussion of Jitter's variable frame-rate architecture and threading implementation.

The annual Computer Music Journal disc accompanying this issue is a DVD of video–music works for which I served as curator. I hope that the diverse, stimulating work on the disc will reveal the range and talent of...