CHAPTER 3 WHAT IS MULTIMEDIA? The exponential outgrowth of technological innovation has left digital multimedia without a cohesive sense of definition. Lacking specific criteria for categorization, multimedia indiscriminately encompasses the visual arts, theater, virtual environments, music, and, according to John Cage, "...all sounds, sights, and other sensory experiences that occur in and around a performance situation..." New media has transformed the notion of art through the lenses of postmodern plurality. Clicking a mouse may make a computer user the active conductor of a sound synthesis ensemble, or a dancer can choreograph a duet in real-time with her own shadow. A computer can generate algorithmic music by analyzing the color of an accompanying video, and a digital gallery disguises itself as a CD-ROM cookbook. Contemporary digital forms, though marginalized by "classical" composers, are the "rational extensions of ballet and opera" and satis...

"History is the story of an angel being blown backwards into the future." - Laurie Anderson Intermedia - the copulation of the art forms. Movement accompanies sound and the visual in an overstimulation of the senses. Once orchestrated with analogue tape, static images, and inexplicable actions, current intermedia art encompasses logorhythmic music, digital video, and virtual reality. As Dick Higgins described in his landmark, "Statement of Intermedia," in 1966, intermedia exists "between the media" (1) . Though often considered a visual art medium, the role of music and sound proves to be essential components of many artworks. Technology has accelerated creative expression as ideas, once existing only the in the mind, can exist in a tangible form. Music has embraced the digital world. Out of circuitry and imaginiation the next musical age evolves. No survey of contemporary culture can begin without a comprehensive look at the history that gave birth ...