Abstract Animation and the Art of Sound

Searching for a true complementarity of music and visual art reflected John Whitney’s desire to develop a methodology that would ensure that computer generated sound and visual imagery could be produced in a way that would go beyond all earlier attempts to simultaneously create an artwork based on a system that would equate individual colours with specific notes. Discussed in his book ‘Digital Harmony’ (Whitney 1980), Whitney argued that all composition in music was firmly based on a methodology that excluded improvisation and if a similarity of scale was applied to the use and development of colour, a system could be devised that met his objective of providing an agreed means of finally equated colour with sound, through computer programing.