ABSTRACT
Form in visual music combines the two arts of visual art and music through the artist’s expressive means. This chapter focuses on form in visual music as the artistic product of the means and forms of expression chosen by the artist in the creation of temporal relationships and unities operating in the artwork. It argues that such a view of form in visual music has its origins in the emphasis that the painter Wassily Kandinsky put on the artist’s creativity as being at the forefront of the determination of the form of an artwork. It also draws attention to the evolution of form in art as expressing a visible music, to one that demonstrates the evolution of an artist-led crafting of their formal conception of visual art and music relationships, through the technologies they use, the techniques they devise, as well as with the final medium by which the artistic expression of a visual music is realised. Several examples are examined from history and contemporary practice that illustrate the various forms and means of expression in a visual music art.
