ABSTRACT
The author’s Estuaries series of audiovisual compositions (2016-19) draw together investigations into novel methods of abstract animation, generative music and audiovisual counterpoint. This chapter explains key aspects of some of these concerns and how they contribute to particular aesthetic qualities of the works. The animation technique was based on visualisation of Nelder-Mead search processes that seek the brightest or darkest points in a source image. This process can create unpredictable and complex textures and temporal behaviors that can seem perceptually unified and coherent due to the consistent shape and behavioral vocabulary of the algorithm. The music was created with the assistance of the author’s Nodewebba software, which implements his concept of variable-coupled iterated maps. Algorithmic integration of these two techniques, and mixing discrete events with articulation of continuums, helped to establish a hierarchically organized “fluid” audiovisual counterpoint. Given the limits of automated linking of visual and musical algorithms that are not perceptually informed, the author argues for an “audiovisualisation-assisted composition”, where generative audiovisual materials serve as a starting point from which an artist elaborates and edits heuristically.
