Our goal in creating visual music is to share a world beyond the logical, rational world that our eyes usually show us. Yet there is a logic, a structure, in the process of creating the art. Visual music has this duality at its core—the need for focus and discipline in creating the art and the need to express and share something that is fundamentally irrational and undisciplined.
Music is an act of discovery, more than a craft. Yes, you have to learn how to hit all of the notes, play all of the chords but the point is what you are going to do with all of those notes and chords. In Star Trek, they “go boldly where no man has gone before.” A musician does this too. A skilled musician can check out new worlds through her music and communicate something back to her listeners from that new world.
Back in the early 1970s, Bill was living in Boston and beginning to experiment with visual music. His friend Jim Washington was helping him explore obscure Japanese novels and fringe jazz music. One day he told Bill that there was an artist playing downtown at Paul’s Mall that they had to check out.