Lens 7 (2015)
Duration: 7’34
Format: audio-visual

Lens 7 investigates audio-visual synthesis through the multi-disciplinary practice of fabrication, analogue modular synthesis and generative digital image processing. The starting point was the fabrication of a ‘bricolage’ Texture 1 (2013) that provides a physical framework. A single photographic image of Texture 1 is digitally transformed using generative and stop-frame animation processes to form a graphic score-in-motion. The motion-image reveals a temporal virtual landscape containing spatial, textural and spectromorphological properties often associated with the composition of electroacoustic music.

The sound material for Lens 7 consists of improvised recordings made with a Buchla 200 modular synthesiser during a residency at Stockholm EMS, May 2014. The analogue sounds were left untreated and later re-positioned to correspond to inherent musical properties of the graphic score-in-motion. Composing with modular synthesisers shares many similarities to the creation of visuals; the modular synthesiser acts as a tactile surface in which a composer/performers produce sound by altering sonic architecture. The performer listens and responds to the sounds emitted by making parametric changes: listening is inherently combined with physical gesture. Similarly, visual transformations occurred through interaction between performative or generative systems. Throughout the process of composition aesthetic judgement is contained between nodes of an audio-visual contract set within a system requiring programmed (no-input) and/or active participation (input). In the audio-visual realm, the predominate factor is ‘motion’ the appliance of which promotes cross-modal correspondences between sound and image.

Realised at Stockholm EMS, Thought Universe EMS, LICA Lancaster University and NOVARS Research Centre at the University of Manchester.

Technical requirements .pdf.


Lens 7 at Sound as Being 2 concert at Lancaster University.

Creating sounds using the Buchla 200 modular synthesiser at Stockholm EMS, 2014.


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