Creativity Quote by Alva Noto

Alva Noto is mapping a creative ethics of restraint: the idea that adding more senses does not automatically add more meaning. When he says images can be "disturbing", he is not moralizing about disturbing content; he's naming a common failure mode in audiovisual art, where visuals over-determine the listener's imagination. Sound can be perfectly complete, a closed circuit that lets you supply your own internal cinema. Put an image on top and you pin the experience down, sometimes cheaply, sometimes violently, turning ambiguity into instruction.

The quote also reveals a composer's pragmatism about power. Noto treats sound and image as different kinds of force: sound can be "possible", but visuals can hit with a directness that feels "closer" to the intended emotional geometry. That's not a demotion of audio; it's an admission that perception has hierarchies. A flashing grid, a stark field of white, a controlled glitch: visuals can deliver impact at a glance, while sound often asks for time, attention, and bodily immersion.

The most interesting part is the non-romantic ending: "they sometimes overlap perfectly". Sometimes, but not always. In the context of Noto's work - minimal electronics, precise errors, collaborations with visual artists, a design-minded austerity - perfection is alignment, not excess. The subtext is a critique of multimedia as spectacle: the goal isn't to overwhelm, it's to calibrate. The artist becomes less a maximalist entertainer than a systems engineer of sensation, deciding when subtraction is the most honest form of expression.