We live in a visual era, don’t we? Digital communication is still massively geared towards sight first, though gradually improving voice recognition and the rampant rise of the touchscreen are starting to give sound and touch more space. Display boards, signs and maps take the place of announcements wherever possible except in satnavs. Presenting information by photoreels, charts and tables has an ever-increasing predominance over block text (which, as an aural-preference learner, can be treated as a kind of frozen sound. Ever tried reading a table to yourself? I end up doing it a lot and it’s fairly painful).

These reflections are probably partly brought on by watching the circa 1980 TV adaptation of Day of the Triffids (one half of the premise of which is that most of the world goes blind), which BBC4 are rebroadcasting and so is on iPlayer at the moment. But it’s also to do with the interactions of my music work with video at the moment.

I’ve already blogged about the music video I’m set to appear in next month. Tonight, I’m doing a semi-live recording with the String Project (yeah, check out the new WordPress site!) which will also include our collective of visual performance artists (everything from video projection to real-time painting) and be filmed. Youtube videos are as important as audio demos now, for any musician not just pop singers. And I’ve been talking to a singer about doing violin in her music video – a particularly interesting situation as you need someone who can play the instrument so they look convincing, but I won’t actually be playing the part (or if I am, and I might learn it just for kicks, it’ll be irrelevant) as of course it’s already recorded – my job is just to mime for the video.

Music seems inherently audio – I mean, isn’t that the nature of it? Sound? But maybe if you want to make headway, like The Filthy Spectacula, you need to create a literal look (if not necessarily a literal feel, thank God) to go with your music, and have a cinematic-theatrical brand that’s as much visual as acoustic.