Could anyone with experience programming visuals explain how math = art?

Ive been playing with video mixing a bit and seem to be hitting a dead end for producing the type of flowing morphing art i would like to eventually do, which i believe is called generative/audioreactive video synthesis. Ive looked at a number of examples of code generated visuals, but they’re all incomprehensible jumbles of numbers. I dont get it, how does one say, “i’d like to make an audio reactive morphing blob, so to do it i’ll write the following 100 lines of math”? How is one supposed to know how to achieve an abstract visual and all of its related behaviors using only numbers?

Well its where vvvv is your friend
Because of its visual structure you dont need really math. You need just some logical mind.
Practising vvvv will make you a programmer by end.

What is interresting is that vvvv opens also another thing that linear coding languages (processing java c++) cant offer: improvisation.

Because art is not only a conceptual thing ( despite the actual tendance ) but a sensitive field you can open a blank patch and create like when you open a virgin canevas: coming from nothing in mind and evoluating with your construction.

Audio reaction , particles , are ways to do things but will never achieve a true art work if there is not a taste and strong artist behind.
The approach to do like others are doing, or fascination of what is possible to do and what other are doing is always a puzzling time. For myself i have played in a lot of ways with vvvv during one year, and didnt know how to position myself, before knowing:

  • what i want to do with it
  • that other are doing (3d vjying ) is not me
  • on wich side to approach this fabulous software in a manner that is me

Art is also practice and playing around before writting your own way with it. Live patching enables it, definitively, and vvvv offers the best for it.

Now all of those fillings are very personnal and i believe that when you fill a software corresponds to you inits manner, result and usage, well go on it!

How think of math as medium to get something? Starting with looking at works done by other can be deleterious.

It’s better download vvvv and start with some tutorials; here you can find lots of them, plain and clear; then you’ll be able to understand how math and numbers are media to art.

So you’ll find that math is not everything in vvvv, though it’s a huge part of it.

Thinking of vvvv as a chance of self-expression, summarizing what Karistouf stated, will help a lot.

Ciao