Visual music, sometimes called colour music, refers to the creation of a visual analogue to musical form by adapting musical structures for visual composition, which can also include

silent film A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound (or more generally, no audible dialogue). Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements (such as a setting or era) or key lines of dialogue may, when ...

s or silent Lumia work. It also refers to methods or devices which can translate sounds or music into a related visual presentation. An expanded definition may include the translation of music to painting; this was the original definition of the term, as coined by

Roger Fry Roger Eliot Fry (14 December 1866 – 9 September 1934) was an English painter and critic, and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Establishing his reputation as a scholar of the Old Masters, he became an advocate of more recent developme ...

in 1912 to describe the work of

Wassily Kandinsky Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky (; rus, Василий Васильевич Кандинский, Vasiliy Vasilyevich Kandinskiy, vɐˈsʲilʲɪj vɐˈsʲilʲjɪvʲɪtɕ kɐnʲˈdʲinskʲɪj; – 13 December 1944) was a Russian painter a ...

. There are a variety of definitions of visual music, particularly as the field continues to expand. In some recent writing, usually in the

fine art In European academic traditions, fine art is developed primarily for aesthetics or creative expression, distinguishing it from decorative art or applied art, which also has to serve some practical function, such as pottery or most metalwork ...

world, visual music is often confused with or defined as synaesthesia, though historically this has never been a definition of visual music. Visual music has also been defined as a form of

intermedia Intermedia is an art theory term coined in the mid-1960s by Fluxus artist Dick Higgins to describe various interdisciplinarity art activities that occur between genres, beginning in the 1960s. It was also used by John Brockman to refer to work ...

. Visual music also refers to systems which convert music or sound directly into visual forms, such as

film A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere ...

video Video is an electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving visual media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, which were quickly replaced by cathode-ray tube (CRT) syste ...

computer graphics Computer graphics deals with generating images with the aid of computers. Today, computer graphics is a core technology in digital photography, film, video games, cell phone and computer displays, and many specialized applications. A great de ...

, installations or performances by means of a mechanical instrument, an artist's interpretation, or a computer. The reverse is applicable also, literally converting images to sound by drawn objects and figures on a film's soundtrack, in a technique known as drawn or

graphical sound Graphical sound or drawn sound (Fr. ''son dessiné'', Ger. ''graphische Tonerzeugung'',; It. ''suono disegnato'') is a sound recording created from images drawn directly onto film or paper that were then played back using a sound system. There are ...

. Famous visual music artists include Mary Ellen Bute, Jordan Belson,

Oskar Fischinger Oskar Wilhelm Fischinger (June 22, 1900 – January 31, 1967) was a German-American abstract animator, filmmaker, and painter, notable for creating abstract musical animation many decades before the appearance of computer graphics and music vid ...

, Norman McLaren, John Whitney Sr., and

Thomas Wilfred Thomas Wilfred (June 18, 1889 in Naestved, Denmark - August 15, 1968 in Nyack, New York), born Richard Edgar Løvstrøm, was a musician and inventor. He is best known for his light art, which he named '' lumia'', and his designs for color organs ...

, plus a number of contemporary artists.

Instruments

Sometimes also called "color music", the history of this tradition includes many experiments with

color organ The term color organ refers to a tradition of mechanical devices built to represent sound and accompany music in a visual medium. The earliest created color organs were manual instruments based on the harpsichord design. By the 1900s they were ele ...

s. Artist or inventors "built instruments, usually called 'color organs,' that would display modulated colored light in some kind of fluid fashion comparable to music". For example, the ''Farblichtspiele'' ('coloured-light-plays') of former

Bauhaus The Staatliches Bauhaus (), commonly known as the Bauhaus (), was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined crafts and the fine arts.Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edn., 200 ...

student

Ludwig Hirschfeld Mack Ludwig Hirschfeld Mack (11 July 1893, in Frankfurt-am-Main – 7 January 1965, in Allambie Heights, in Sydney) was a German-born Australian artist. His formative education was 1912–1914 at Debschitz art school in Munich. He studied at the ...

. Several different definitions of color music exist; one is that color music is generally formless projections of colored light. Some scholars and writers have used the term color music interchangeably with visual music. The construction of instruments to perform visual music live, as with sonic music, has been a continuous concern of this art. Color organs, while related, form an earlier tradition extending as early as the eighteenth century with the Jesuit

Louis Bertrand Castel Louis Bertrand Castel (5 November 1688 – 11 January 1757) was a French mathematician born in Montpellier, who entered the order of the Jesuits in 1703. Having studied literature, he afterwards devoted himself entirely to mathematics and natu ...

building an ''ocular harpsichord'' in the 1730s (visited by

Georg Philipp Telemann Georg Philipp Telemann (; – 25 June 1767) was a German Baroque composer and multi-instrumentalist. Almost completely self-taught in music, he became a composer against his family's wishes. After studying in Magdeburg, Zellerfeld, and Hild ...

, who composed for it). Other prominent color organ artist-inventors include:

Alexander Wallace Rimington Alexander Wallace Rimington (1854–1918), ARE, RBA, Hon. FSA was an etcher, painter, illustrator, author and Professor of Fine Arts at Queen's College, London. He also invented a keyboard instrument that was designed to project different c ...

Bainbridge Bishop Bainbridge may refer to: People *Bainbridge (name) Places * Bainbridge Township (disambiguation) United States * Bainbridge Island, Alaska * Bainbridge, Georgia * Bainbridge, Indiana * Bainbridge (town), New York ** Bainbridge (village), New Yo ...

Charles Dockum Charles is a masculine given name predominantly found in English and French speaking countries. It is from the French form ''Charles'' of the Proto-Germanic name (in runic alphabet) or ''*karilaz'' (in Latin alphabet), whose meaning was " ...

Mary Hallock-Greenewalt Mary Elizabeth Hallock-Greenewalt (Sept. 8, 1871 – Nov. 27, 1950)Ancestry.com. Pennsylvania, Death Certificates, 1906-1963 atabase on-line Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2014. Original data: Pennsylvania (State). Death certific ...

and

Kurt Laurenz Theinert Kurt is a male given name of Germanic or Turkish origin. ''Kurt'' or ''Curt'' originated as short forms of the Germanic Conrad, depending on geographical usage, with meanings including counselor or advisor. In Turkish, Kurt means "Wolf" and i ...

On film

Visual music and abstract film or video often coincide. Some of the earliest known films of these two genres were hand-painted works produced by the Futurists

Bruno Corra Bruno Corra is the pseudonym of Bruno Ginanni Corradini (Ravenna, 9 June 1892 – died in Varese Varese ( , , or ; lmo, label= Varesino, Varés ; la, Baretium; archaic german: Väris) is a city and ''comune'' in north-western Lombardy, n ...

and

Arnaldo Ginna Arnaldo Ginna, also known as Arnaldo Ginanni Corradini, was an Italian painter, sculptor and filmmaker. He was born in Ravenna, 7 May 1890; he died in Rome, 26 September 1982. Biography The son of Count Tullio Ginanni Corradini (who was also m ...

between 1911 and 1912 (as they report in the Futurist Manifesto of Cinema), which are now lost.

produced several reels of hand-painted films (although not traditional

motion pictures A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere ...

) that are held by the Historical Society of Philadelphia. Like the Futurist films, and many other visual music films, her 'films' were meant to be a visualization of

musical form In music, ''form'' refers to the structure of a musical composition or musical improvisation, performance. In his book, ''Worlds of Music'', Jeff Todd Titon suggests that a number of organizational elements may determine the formal structure of a ...

. Notable visual music filmmakers include:

Walter Ruttmann Walter Ruttmann (28 December 1887 – 15 July 1941) was a German cinematographer and film director, an important German abstract experimental film maker, along with Hans Richter, Viking Eggeling and Oskar Fischinger. He is best known for dire ...

, Hans Richter,

Viking Eggeling Viking Eggeling (21 October 1880, Lund – 19 May 1925, Berlin) was a Swedish avant-garde artist and filmmaker connected to dadaism, Constructivism, and abstract art and was one of the pioneers in absolute film and visual music. His ...

Len Lye Leonard Charles Huia Lye (; 5 July 1901 – 15 May 1980) was a New Zealand artist known primarily for his experimental films and kinetic sculpture. His films are held in archives including the New Zealand Film Archive, British Film Institute, M ...

, Jordan Belson, Norman McLaren, Harry Smith, Hy Hirsh,

John John is a common English name and surname: * John (given name) * John (surname) John may also refer to: New Testament Works * Gospel of John, a title often shortened to John * First Epistle of John, often shortened to 1 John * Secon ...

and James Whitney, Steven Woloshen and many others up to present day.

Computer graphics

The

cathode ray tube A cathode-ray tube (CRT) is a vacuum tube containing one or more electron guns, which emit electron beams that are manipulated to display images on a phosphorescent screen. The images may represent electrical waveforms ( oscilloscope), pictu ...

made possible the

oscilloscope An oscilloscope (informally a scope) is a type of electronic test instrument that graphically displays varying electrical voltages as a two-dimensional plot of one or more signals as a function of time. The main purposes are to display repetiti ...

, an early electronic device that can produce images that are easily associated with sounds from microphones. The modern

Laser lighting display A laser lighting display or laser light show involves the use of laser light to entertain an audience. A laser light show may consist only of projected laser beams set to music, or may accompany another form of entertainment, typically mus ...

displays wave patterns produced by similar circuitry. The imagery used to represent audio in

digital audio workstation A digital audio workstation (DAW) is an electronic device or application software used for Sound recording and reproduction, recording, editing and producing audio files. DAWs come in a wide variety of configurations from a single software pro ...

s is largely based on familiar oscilloscope patterns. The

Animusic Animusic, LLC is a dormant animation company specializing in the 3D visualization of MIDI-based music. Founded by Wayne Lytle, it is currently a registered limited liability company in New York and had offices in Texas and California during its ...

company (originally called 'Visual Music') has repeatedly demonstrated the use of computers to convert music — principally pop-rock based and composed as

MIDI MIDI (; Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a technical standard that describes a communications protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers, and re ...

events — to animations. Graphic artist-designed virtual instruments which either play themselves or are played by virtual objects are all, along with the sounds, controlled by MIDI instructions. In the image-to-sound sphere, MetaSynth includes a feature which converts images to sounds. The tool uses drawn or imported bitmap images, which can be manipulated with graphic tools, to generate new sounds or process existing audio. A reverse function allows the creation of images from sounds.

Virtual reality

With the increasing popularity of head mounted displays for virtual reality there is an emerging new platform for visual music. While some developers have been focused on the impact of

virtual reality Virtual reality (VR) is a simulated experience that employs pose tracking and 3D near-eye displays to give the user an immersive feel of a virtual world. Applications of virtual reality include entertainment (particularly video games), educ ...

on live music or on the possibilities for

music video A music video is a video of variable duration, that integrates a music song or a music album with imagery that is produced for promotion (marketing), promotional or musical artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a m ...

s, virtual reality is also an emerging field for

music visualization Music visualization or music visualisation, a feature found in electronic music visualizers and media player software, generates animated imagery based on a piece of music. The imagery is usually generated and rendered in real time and in a way ...

and visual music.

Graphic notation

Many composers have applied graphic notation to write compositions. Pioneering examples are the graphical scores of

John Cage John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading fi ...

and

Morton Feldman Morton Feldman (January 12, 1926 – September 3, 1987) was an American composer. A major figure in 20th-century classical music, Feldman was a pioneer of indeterminate music, a development associated with the experimental New York School ...

. Also known is the graphical score of

György Ligeti György Sándor Ligeti (; ; 28 May 1923 – 12 June 2006) was a Hungarian-Austrian composer of contemporary classical music. He has been described as "one of the most important avant-garde composers in the latter half of the twentieth century" ...

s Artikulation designed by Rainer Wehinger, and

Sylvano Bussotti Sylvano Bussotti (1 October 1931 – 19 September 2021) was an Italian composer of contemporary classical music, also a painter, set and costume designer, opera director and manager, writer and academic teacher. His compositions employ graphic n ...

. Musical theorists such as

Harry Partch Harry Partch (June 24, 1901 – September 3, 1974) was an American composer, music theorist, and creator of unique musical instruments. He composed using scales of unequal intervals in just intonation, and was one of the first 20th-century com ...

Erv Wilson Ervin Wilson (June 11, 1928 – December 8, 2016) was a Mexico, Mexican/United States, American (dual citizen) music theory, music theorist. Early life Ervin Wilson was born in a remote area of northwest Chihuahua (state), Chihuahua, Mexico, wher ...

Ivor Darreg Ivor Darreg (May 5, 1917 – February 12, 1994) was an American composer and leading proponent of microtonal or " xenharmonic" music. He also created a series of experimental musical instruments. Biography Darreg, a contemporary of Harry Part ...

Glenn Branca Glenn may refer to: Name or surname * Glenn (name) * John Glenn, U.S. astronaut Cultivars * Glenn (mango) * a 6-row barley variety Places In the United States: * Glenn, California * Glenn County, California * Glenn, Georgia, a settlement ...

, and

Yuri Landman Yuri Landman (born 1 February 1973) is a Dutch inventor of musical instruments and musician who has made several experimental electric string instruments for a number of artists including Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth, Liars, Jad Fair of Half Japan ...

applied

geometry Geometry (; ) is, with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. It is concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. A mathematician who works in the field of geometry is c ...

in detailed visual musical diagrams explaining

microtonal Microtonal music or microtonality is the use in music of microtones— intervals smaller than a semitone, also called "microintervals". It may also be extended to include any music using intervals not found in the customary Western tuning of t ...

structures and

musical scale In music theory, a scale is any set of musical notes ordered by fundamental frequency or pitch. A scale ordered by increasing pitch is an ascending scale, and a scale ordered by decreasing pitch is a descending scale. Often, especially in the ...

Notes

External links

{{Visual music History of film Film theory Video art Digital art Visual arts Abstract animation

Instruments

On film

Computer graphics

Virtual reality

Graphic notation

See also

Science

Industry

Similar types of art

Notes

Further reading

External links