Abstract Composer Gil Mellé boasted that his 1971 music for The Andromeda Strain was Hollywood’s first-ever all-electronic film score. This is demonstrably not the case, yet Mellé’s effort, which for the most part utilised instruments of his own making, nevertheless does count as something of a landmark in the intertwined history of cinema and electronically generated sound. By way of framing, this essay first puts into perspective Mellé’s boastful claim and then suggests that Mellé’s effort impacted little on subsequent Hollywood productions precisely because it was mandated by the film’s director to be more like sound effects than like traditional film music. But the primary content of the essay is Mellé’s Andromeda music, genuinely innovative music that is ear-worthy when heard in isolation and theatrically effective when heard in the context of the film, and at the same time music that to date has been neglected as much by scholars of electronic music as by scholars of film scoring.
Abstract Generative artificial intelligence (AI) has entered music overwhelmingly by way of large industrial models trained on vast corpora, in which the outcome is fixed in advance by an apparatus that the musician neither controls nor understands. This article argues that the essential machine-learning operations of dataset assembly, feature extraction and model fitting can instead be utilised transparently as part of an artist’s creative practice. Looking to David Pye’s concepts of workmanship of certainty and workmanship of risk , this article examines the design of the Tensed Computer Improviser (TCI), an open-source machine improviser built in Max with the Fluid Corpus Manipulation (FluCoMa) toolkit, which trains models from a small audio corpus of the user’s own choosing, with no pretrained component and no external training stage. Situating the TCI within a genealogy of machine improvisation using small data, the article analyses its design through the vocabulary of craft where the corpus curation and training are integrated into the creative act and the characteristic errors of small data are welcomed as tool-marks.
Abstract This article examines how intermedial electroacoustic audiovisual practice can treat perception as artistic material. It proposes Perceptual Translation as an artistic and analytical strategy that extends intermedial concepts beyond formal media relations by reorganising perceptual relations between sound, vision, body, space and technological mediation. The framework is described through four pragmatic strategies: Perspective Shifters, Perceptual Extenders, Perceptual Mimesis and Perceptual Rearrangers. These strategies are developed through Your Localisation Exposed , a wearable sound installation that inverts auditory spatial cues in real time, placing sound and vision into sustained perceptual contradiction. This is complemented by Your Hearing Them , which extends Perceptual Translation into an interpersonal auditory context through the sharing of an embodied listening perspective. Together, these works demonstrate how Perceptual Translation can operate as both an analytical and generative framework for electroacoustic audiovisual practice. By reframing intermediality at the perceptual level, this article argues for expanded approaches to audiovisual composition that engage perception itself as a compositional and conceptual resource.
Abstract This paper examines how text can operate as an intermedial compositional agent in electroacoustic audiovisual performance. Through a focused practice-based case study of a single performance – F2 – in which electroacoustic sound, procedural visuals and projected and spoken text unfold without synchronisation or audio-reactive coupling between the sonic and visual layers, the study considers text not as a thematic focus but as a structuring element that shapes perceptual meaning-making within this configuration. Using Michel Chion’s concept of added value, the article argues that textual narration can amplify and reframe the perception of sonic and visual materials without relying on synchronisation or audio-reactive correspondence. Qualitative audience responses indicate that text functions as an interpretive anchor, guiding attention, emotional orientation and coherence within an otherwise unsynchronised audiovisual environment. On this basis, the paper proposes a triangular added-value model in which text functions as the primary directional mediator; text semantically anchors sonic intensity, metaphorically reframes visual abstraction and enables sound and image to be perceived as jointly significant despite their structural independence. The study contributes a practice-based perspective on how text can be integrated into electroacoustic audiovisual composition to expand approaches to form, perception and artistic communication in contemporary new media performance.
Abstract Coupled audiovisual instruments, in which sound and image are produced from a shared generative process, promise media equality by design. But does causal coupling actually deliver perceptual parity? This article asks how composers experience media equality and intermedial interference when working with such an instrument. We report a practice-based study of the Cellular Au-Tonnetz, a system in which audio and LED light are parallel projections of the same evolving cellular-automaton state. Nine participants composed short pieces under three modality conditions: visual-only, audio-only and audiovisual. Each was followed by replay with both modalities revealed. By withholding one medium during composition and reinstating it at replay, the protocol makes the construction of audiovisual experience observable. Audiovisual access was preferred overall (eight of nine participants), but the audio-only condition most often produced the largest perceived mismatch (six of nine), and replay frequently turned apparent mismatch into coherent re-reading. Mismatch typically took the form of cue conflict: temporal persistence, density correspondence and perceptual masking. Productive interference emerged at replay through rebinding. We position this as foundational practice-based work, offering a method other practitioners can adopt, and design priorities for instruments where sound and image share a single generative substrate.
