Quayola's new software language Partitura will transform music into visuals during live performances.
Image: Quayola

Visual artist Quayola has been devising a new form of software “language” to translate music, which will be debuted next month in a show with Jamie XX.

The two will perform in a venue lit only by two 56-foot widescreens, onto which computer-generated artwork will be screened in real time to a musical performance.

Together with artists Abstract Birds, Quayola has created Partitura, software that can both interpret sounds and transform them into visuals as well as being played like an instrument. Partitura’s been two years in the making, and differs from other algorithmic music visualizers in its impeccable attention to detail.

Quayola explains to Wired.co.uk: “Partitura is completely bespoke. We’re trying to develop a kind of coherent visual system, almost like a language, which has certain types of rules and parameters. We don’t just want to engage with sound and paint it, but come up with precise systems and relationships of the elements within the music. It’s not just a plug-and-play visualizer.”

The images produced by Partitura are inspired by the geographic artwork of Kandinsky, Paul Klee and Oscar Fischinger. While the visuals produced are unique to the music they are reacting to, Partitura operates along a horizontal line, reflecting the style of written music. The software offers control of more than 500 different visual parameters, as well as algorithms for creating “hundreds of different colors,” giving the artist a huge amount of power over the way Jamie XX’s music is interpreted. You can see some of the images Quayola’s software has made in Wired UK’s gallery.

Despite the focus on technology, however, Quayola is insistent that the performance will be focused on creativity. He says, “The nature of this project allows a lot of freedom between both fields. There is no narrative structure beside that of the music — I have been given this music and what I will do is give it another dimension. We’ll move forward within the shoe but with complete freedom to improvise, it’s not a presequenced animation.”

As for the audience, they can expect only the best in multisensory disorientation: “The connection I’d like the audience to feel is this ambiguity — that they don’t know if the visuals are reacting to the sound or the other way round.”

Tickets and information for the event can be found at Rizlab.