Abstract visuals resist narrative analysis but can be composed and critiqued using the perceptual principles of music

Because abstract, non-figurative visuals have no story to follow, montage (which builds narrative meaning) is a poor analytic tool for them. Makela’s key bridging claim, drawing on Alan Belkin’s musical-composition framework, is that the same human perceptual principles govern hearing and sight, so abstract visuals can be analysed and designed as if they were music — their compositional strengths and weaknesses, rhythmic structure, and beauty. The practical consequence: a live visualist working with abstract material should reach for composition (pacing, contrast, tension, balance over time) rather than narrative or montage logic. The obstacle is habit — audiences are trained to watch visuals hunting for a story rather than to ‘listen’ to them as time-based composition.

Examples

Critiquing a five-minute abstract set the way you would a piece of music: does it have a rhythmic pulse, a build, a climax, a return? Steina/Woody Vasulka’s keyed video layers analysed as simultaneous ‘instruments’.

Assessment

Take a section of an abstract live visual set and analyse it in musical terms (pulse, dynamics, contrast, resolution), explaining why narrative analysis would fail for the same material.