On Visual / Sonic Form Jaime Munárriz Ortiz Universidad Complutense de Madrid c/ Greco, 2 Madrid 28040 - SPAIN 34 91 3943653 munarriz@art.ucm.es ABSTRACT Dual media composition and live performing needs special tools and new strategies. We should be able to control and manipulate form, structure, micro and macro elements on both media simultaneously. As there’s no existing commercial platform that can fulfill this requisites, we have to design and build a suitable tool from scratch. I’ll be analyzing different alternatives on software and hardware, and describe several prototypes I’ve developed and tested on stage in the last five years. We’ll see how this tools work, and focus on the conceptual difficulties, as the technical aspects can be solved with ease. Keywords Form, composition, visual, sonic, PureData. 1. INTRODUCTION Form constitutes the structure of a visual / sonic piece. Form can be divided into parts. Parts can be subdivided into smaller entities, reaching the micro-cosmos of notes and even further, into grains and small particles. A piece evolves in time due to it's structure. Form guides change, and helps understanding of the overall. Working with Form on visual and audio media needs special tools, and new ways of thinking when composing. 2. ON VISUAL AND SONIC FORM Antecedents As an experimental musician and visual artist, I found myself working on different scenes, with a dual role. As a musician, I was recording and playing live, often with previously elaborated projections. The complex physical and mental actions involved in playing music, even on a modern computer based environment, prevent the musician from controlling the visual projections. This activity is usually performed by another person, or just triggered and left running by itself. As a visual artist, coming from a fine arts background, my work has evolved into photography, video and digital image, and I found myself performing live at art institutions and festivals. Live visuals, controlled and interacted by the artist, are consolidating as a new genre. This artistic work has been enriched by my professional work at theater and stage projections, where I’ve been able to develop and test new tools and maintain contact with the industry and it’s expensive products. The need to unify This dual work slowly made clear the need to combine both compositional and performing activities. It was evident that I had to develop a system that could allow me to create sonic and visual material simultaneously, with enough freedom to perform live, triggering events, modifying existing material, remixing and interacting with both media. Analyzing the existing platforms that could suite this tasks, I soon realized that none of them offered enough power to compose freely and simultaneously on both media, nor they had the capabilities necessary to perform live with fast synchronization and enough human interaction to make it a true live act, and not just playback. Dual composing / dual thinking At the first tests I soon found out that it is really difficult to keep yourself focused on both media at the same time. The mind quickly concentrates on one composition area, forgetting about it's relationship with the other part. That made clear the need to elaborate a system with true interconnectivity, a system that facilitates, and almost obliges to work and think on sound and visual elements at the same time. Systems tested In order to build this system I've been testing several platforms, audio tools, programming environments and different physical controller alternatives. Each system is typically good at some tasks, but not so good at others. The dual system needs a platform that works well on both media, and also allows a good integration of both parts of the material. This balance has proved difficult to attain. Some of the difficulties found are: poor overall performance, separate ways of composing and manipulating the Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. PdCon09, July 19-26, , 2000, São Paulo, SP, Brazil. Copyright remains with the author(s).