Synaesthesia, or effects alluding to it, seems to be the order of the day. The new Chemical Brothers video, by Michel Gondry, syncs its visuals to sound perfectly - simple, but brilliantly done. The forthcoming video game Rez, by Sega, not only promises to be one of the purest game experiences ever (as with say, Tempest or Tetris), but essentially places the central character as the guiding force within a world of Jeff Mills. Ostensibly a shoot-em-up, each character action has an aural effect, in sync with a soundtrack 'bed' - audio/visual effects are in perfect (psychedelic) unison.
Gondry's vid leads Matt Webb (scroll down) to speculate on mp3 players which can generate visual effects from audio input. Of course, iTunes and the like do psychedelia synched to sound all fine and dandy (in fact iTunes is incredibly compelling these days) but I'm yet to see one which could work along the lines of Len Lye or Malcolm LeGrice and the like ... something a little more abstract expressionist?
Related: Conor J Curran in a Rhizome mailout reports on Parallel software.
"It is a real-time graphics engine in Java using the Java 2D API. This engine is controlled via MIDI messages received from various pieces of equipment. This engine combines image manipulation and both generative and deterministic techniques to create an visualisation of music and rhythm."
And of course, Synaesthesia Jackson.
