8The gift of sound and vision
Visual music as a form of glossolalic speech
Introduction
Glossolalic speech (also known as speaking in tongues) uses intonation, accent and rhythm to generate something that approximates recognisable language and yet isn’t (Samarin 1972). Similarly many visual music practitioners have sought to develop a vocabulary that in part echoes the language of music, but again isn’t. This chapter argues that the history of visual music across its various trajectories can be viewed as a quest for a singular audiovisual language. This quest ranging from early experiments in the form of colour organs, up through abstract film and video to contemporary computer-generated work has been doomed to failure ...
