Relating Timbre and Shape in the Audiovisual Composition S Phase

Abstract

S Phase is a computer-generated audiovisual composition that was led by a desire to create an abstract form that had a sense of living and breathing and to associate sound and graphics on a deep level. This article discusses the motivation for the work, details of its construction and compositional interface, and some of the timbre-shape associations explored in the work. Basic sound synthesis parameters were used to control higher-level features of the graphical representation such as rotational and translational symmetry and roundedness.