Partitura

Partitura is a very interesting software that generates moving images from an audio track.

NB: Generation is not immediate. Partitura is a programming language with a graphical interface in the style of MAX/Msp and its graphics module Jitter.

The software is a collaboration between Abstract Birds and Quayola and is free for non-commercial use (the commercial license costs €500, discounts for quantities). It was created using the vvvv toolkit, from which it can be downloaded.

Partitura is a custom software built in vvvv.org to generate realtime graphics aimed at visualising sound. The term “Partitura” (score) implies a connection with music, and this metaphor is the main focus of the project. Partitura aims to create a new system for translating sound into visual forms. Inspired by the studies of artists such as Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Oscar Fischinger and Norman McLaren, the images generated by Partitura are based on a precise and coherent system of relationships between various types of geometries. The main characteristic of this system is its horizontal linear structure, like that of a musical score. It is along this linear environment that the different classes of abstract elements are created and evolve over time according to the sound. Partitura creates endless ever-evolving abstract landscapes that can respond to musical structures, audio analysis and manual gestural inputs. It is an instrument that visualises sound with both the freedom of spontaneous personal interpretation/improvisation and at the same time maintaining the automations and triggers of mathematical precision.

Partitura defines a coherent language of its own for the creation of new contemporary abstractions. It is within this system that Partitura creates worlds that expand from a single dot to multiple galaxies, from minimalism to complexity, from rigid to elastic, from solid to liquid, from angular to smoothness, from tentative to boldness, from calm to agitation, from slow to fast, from desaturated to saturation, from dark to lightness, from predictable to unpredictability. Literally ‘everything’ and its opposite… just like a musical flow.

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