Performance Visual Mental Model — Wiki

A New Language for Music-Driven Visuals

What Is This?

This wiki defines a mental model for expressing live techno music as visual experiences. It is not a technical specification — it is a language. A shared way of thinking that engineers, visual artists, and collaborators can use to communicate the same ideas.

The core premise: traditional audio analysis exposes data. This model exposes meaning.

Traditional approach:
  kick_detected = true
  bass_energy = 0.73
  bpm = 128.0

This model:
  story.foundation.weight = heavy
  story.variance = rising
  story = "tension_building"

The difference is not technical. It is expressive.

Single Source of Truth

This model is built on one assumption: the kick is the only reliably detectable element in a live techno signal in real time. Everything in this model derives from what can be measured about the kick — its presence, its energy, its character, and what changes around it. There is no attempt to decompose the full mix into independent sources. The kick is the anchor. Everything else is relative to it.

Concepts

The model is built from a small hierarchy of concepts. Each has its own page with full definitions, examples, diagrams, and edge cases.

Core Hierarchy

STORY ← the highest level: what is this moment of the performance?
  │
  ├── FOUNDATION ← what stays the same (the kick)
  │     ├── Weight ← how heavy the kick feels (continuous)
  │     ├── Presence ← how clearly the kick cuts through (continuous + gate)
  │     └── Sustain ← how the kick decays (categorical)
  │
  └── VARIANCE ← what differentiates one moment from another
        ├── Direction ← rising / stable / falling
        ├── Magnitude ← how fast things are shifting
        └── Timescale ← micro / meso / macro

Concept Pages

Page	What It Covers
Story	The highest-level concept. Named moments in a performance, how they are determined, and how they transition.
Foundation	The stable anchor of the performance — the kick. Why it is the single source of truth and what properties it exposes.
Weight	The primary expressive value. How heavy the kick feels, what makes a kick "heavy" vs "light," and how Weight drives visuals.
Presence	How clearly the kick is perceived. The continuous value for smooth visuals and the binary gate for story transitions.
Sustain	How the kick decays. Categorical states (dry/mid/wet) and how shifts in sustain signal story changes.
Variance	What makes two moments with the same kick feel different. Direction, magnitude, timescale, and indicators.
Temporal Thresholds	How the model filters noise from real state changes. Beat-based debouncing, immediate vs. confirmed values.
Variance Indicators	The audio signals that feed Variance. Engineering guidance on what to analyze relative to the kick.
Story Matrix	How Foundation and Variance combine to produce named stories. The base matrix, Sustain modifiers, and custom story definitions.
Transition Map	How stories connect to each other. Which transitions are valid, what triggers them, and example arcs for techno.

Reference

Page	What It Covers
For Visual Artists	What artists receive from this system, how to use it, example code, and what they do not need to know.
Principles	The core design principles of the model, condensed.
Glossary	Quick-reference definitions of every term in the model.

Boundaries

This model does not describe: how to detect beats technically, audio analysis algorithms, frame rates or buffer sizes, specific frequency bins, or how to build the visual engine.

This model describes: what the music means at this moment, how that meaning changes over time, what triggers a change in meaning, and how to name and communicate those changes.

The technical layer — Pro DJ Link, audio analysis, FFT processing — feeds into this model. But this model exists above that layer. Engineers implement it. Artists consume it.

This wiki is a living document. As the model evolves through real performance testing, definitions will sharpen and new pages will be added.

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