Forms: Generative Visual Music

Forms is a real-time audiovisual synthesis exercise.

Driven by a set of rules for graphic generation based on randomness and probability, a custom software proposes a series of visual compositions created in realtime and never repeating.

These scores can be framed within the tradition of graphic musical notation that gained strength among twentieth-century composers and which allowed music to be released from tone, bars and the rigidity of classic staves.

Thanks to a real-time "sonification" engine written in MAX/MSP which reads (using the Syphon external) graphics created in realtime with Processing, images are transformed into sound using spectral synthesis algorithms. A header runs through the image from left to right, interpreting that small vertical fragment of the image.

Forms is periodically evolving with new graphic and sonic algorithms, and is being permanently streamed at Playmodes’ Twitch channel, 24 hours a day during the pandemia lockdown.