This paper examines how text can operate as an intermedial compositional agent in electroacoustic audiovisual performance. Through a focused practice-based case study of a single performance – F2 – in which electroacoustic sound, procedural visuals and projected and spoken text unfold without synchronisation or audio-reactive coupling between the sonic and visual layers, the study considers text not as a thematic focus but as a structuring element that shapes perceptual meaning-making within this configuration. Using Michel Chion’s concept of added value, the article argues that textual narration can amplify and reframe the perception of sonic and visual materials without relying on synchronisation or audio-reactive correspondence. Qualitative audience responses indicate that text functions as an interpretive anchor, guiding attention, emotional orientation and coherence within an otherwise unsynchronised audiovisual environment. On this basis, the paper proposes a triangular added-value model in which text functions as the primary directional mediator; text semantically anchors sonic intensity, metaphorically reframes visual abstraction and enables sound and image to be perceived as jointly significant despite their structural independence. The study contributes a practice-based perspective on how text can be integrated into electroacoustic audiovisual composition to expand approaches to form, perception and artistic communication in contemporary new media performance.

This article examines how intermedial electroacoustic audiovisual practice can treat perception as artistic material. It proposes Perceptual Translation as an artistic and analytical strategy that extends intermedial concepts beyond formal media relations by reorganising perceptual relations between sound, vision, body, space and technological mediation. The framework is described through four pragmatic strategies: Perspective Shifters, Perceptual Extenders, Perceptual Mimesis and Perceptual Rearrangers. These strategies are developed through Your Localisation Exposed, a wearable sound installation that inverts auditory spatial cues in real time, placing sound and vision into sustained perceptual contradiction. This is complemented by Your Hearing Them, which extends Perceptual Translation into an interpersonal auditory context through the sharing of an embodied listening perspective. Together, these works demonstrate how Perceptual Translation can operate as both an analytical and generative framework for electroacoustic audiovisual practice. By reframing intermediality at the perceptual level, this article argues for expanded approaches to audiovisual composition that engage perception itself as a compositional and conceptual resource.

This article advances the proposition that intermediality in electroacoustic and audiovisual composition is more productively understood as the composition of thresholds rather than as continuous media simultaneity. This proposition is approached through A Dama e o Unicórnio, a project developed with poet Maria Teresa Horta within the La Dame à la licorne tapestry cycle. The project unfolds across three articulated instantiations – a book with audio, a staged performance and a sound/audiovisual installation – with their coexistence inviting a reconsideration of the relationships between poetry, electroacoustic composition, image and space. Rather than seeking coherence through a permanent overlay of media, the project constructs this through composed conditions: music as a ‘second text’, managing intelligibility and friction; staging as a device distributing agencies and visibilities; and installation as a situated context in which listening becomes intermittent, lo-fi and threshold-activated. This outlines the electroacoustic writing processes – granulation, correlated feedback delays with comb filtering and analysis–resynthesis cross-synthesis – alongside the Max/MSP performance instrument and six-channel diffusion architecture. Thus, the ‘light tent’ becomes a shared operator between installation and performance, articulating states of ‘rumour’ and ‘emergence’. In turn, intermediality is approached as a passage between regimes of presence, attention and intelligibility.

This essay investigates intermedial interference – a perceptual phenomenon arising from the interaction of media features within the intermedial space – in the context of electroacoustic audiovisual composition. Grounded in visual music and intermedial arts traditions, this research explores strategies for combining, integrating and fusing sound and moving images to create artefacts that transcend conventional multimedia juxtaposition. This essay refers to the author’s doctoral practice-based research, in which a portfolio of six works is examined through the study, discussing the nature of interference, the interaction of media features in the intermedial space, the role of balance in managing perceptual equilibrium and novel compositional methods, including associative mapping and synchrony typologies. A case study of one of the portfolio works illustrates the application of these concepts, emphasising remediation, meta-narrative and audience interpretation. The findings contribute new insights into intermedial audiovisual practice, offering methodologies for composers to harness media interactions and foster open, subjective engagements with intermedial artefacts.