CadenceViz™ for the press

Perry Kivolowitz has written imaging software since 1985, beginning on the Commodore Amiga. His company, ASDG, Incorporated (later Elastic Reality, Inc.), was a leader in desktop publishing, multimedia, desktop video and desktop film.

He is a co-recipient of an Academy Award® for Scientific and Technical Achievement for the modern method of warping and morphing, and was awarded an Engineering Emmy® Award in 2019 as co-inventor of SilhouetteFX, an entrenched tool in the VFX business, now owned by BorisFX.

Version 3 of CadenceViz went on sale on the Mac App Store on October 29, 2026 and includes 70 visualizations that each maintain 60 FPS at most screen resolutions. It is compatible with Mac computers with Apple silicon chips. Three of the 70 require the Apple silicon M3 chip or later due to hardware ray tracing.

Perry created CadenceViz as an alternative to frenetic visualizers that are more at home at dance clubs than the workplace. "As I've gotten older, I've found that the visualizers I might have liked in my youth just give me a headache now," he said. "I wanted to show how music can be visually represented on the desktop in a gentler way while still conveying its technical nature."

CadenceViz is designed to be left on at work or at home when you are listening to music and need to focus, calm down or take a breather.

• Most CadenceViz visualizations are situational (especially in later volumes). They convey a setting or scene rather than geometric abstraction. Examples:
• Aqua sculpture patterned after the water feature in LaGuardia Airport's Terminal B
• An early morning at a diner on a rain-soaked stretch of desolate highway
• A lace-maker's pillow next to an open window whose curtain is driven by music
• Sailing into New York Harbor in 1906
• Late at night in a grand Art Deco central train station
• Several viz (visualizations) incorporate the user's own photographs and some even inset the user's own video. Pulsing abstraction does not lend itself to the inclusion of photography or videos.
• The most recent volume, Vol. 6, introduces an entirely new concept in music visualization: Musical Paintings. These are 11 animated paintings after the style of masters like Monet, Vermeer and Hiroshige.
• There is essentially no user interface making it trivial to use compared with trigonometric or geometric-based visualization which often requires the user to extensively season-to-taste. CadenceViz lets the variety and complexity come from the music, not from its UI.
• CadenceViz is a one-time purchase with Family Sharing enabled rather than a monthly or yearly subscription. Additionally, there is nothing to sign up for and no data is collected. CadenceViz sends no information about you to anyone other than Apple (to make the sale and retrieve assets).

CadenceViz, implemented largely in C++ and the Metal framework, was written using AI coding assistance. By now, using AI assistance is a non-story. A unique angle to the CadenceViz development is how a craftsman of 52 years' experience built a QA infrastructure that would be at home at a large company.

"Use of AI is not the enemy. To believe otherwise isn't being honest with oneself. Rather, the enemy is low-effort, lazy use of AI," Perry said.

Around the tool, Perry built an adversarial audit and test system named "The Hound". This system was loosed just under 700 times in the making of CadenceViz thus far.

"If a one-man shop can do it, larger organizations have no excuse not to, and even more of a social obligation to make the investment."

• "You use AI. I use AI. We are not the same." How a 52-year veteran wields AI coding assistance differently from a beginner.
• One developer running a quality operation of the kind usually found at large companies, and why, if one person can do it, it is a social imperative for larger companies.

You need no code to try CadenceViz. Download CadenceViz from the Mac App Store, open it, and choose a volume in its Catalog: every visualizer in that volume opens free for 14 days. Each volume's trial is independent of the others.

To keep it, write to the address above and we will send you a code that opens all six volumes.

Your initial user experience:

• You will see a dialog explaining why the macOS operating system is about to ask for permission to record the computer's audio. The dialog also refers to screen recording. CadenceViz does no such thing. This is poor phrasing on behalf of Apple. Choose Continue, and allow it.
• The first time a visualizer opens, your Mac computer prepares its drawing for your graphics chip (shader compilation). The window shows the Colosseum going up brick by brick. It happens once for each visualizer per version.
• Most of volume six and some scenes download their pictures from Apple the first time each is opened.

Keys worth knowing:

• p plays or stops the two songs that come with the app, if you have no music at hand.
• n moves to the next visualizer.
• Command-Shift-F is Ambient Mode: the picture alone, full screen.
• Right-click the picture for everything else.

From the app, with no words on them. A painting's caption names its painter and, where we have one to name, the painting it follows.

Thirty seconds each, from the app, with its music. Each may be embedded or downloaded.

The app's icon, on a transparent ground. Please show it as it is.

CadenceViz 3.0 adds Musical Paintings

MOBILE, Alabama, October 29, 2026. CadenceViz 3.0, released today on the Mac App Store, adds Volume 6, Musical Paintings: eleven living paintings after the masters, moving to your music. These are a calm backdrop while you work.

"Music visualizers are frequently a hot mess of frenetic geometric motion," said Perry Kivolowitz, author of CadenceViz. "We go in a different direction by creating small worlds that are set to music for when you need a calm, relaxing environment while your music plays."

The full CadenceViz suite, numbering 70 visualizers, is available for $29.99 or about 43 cents per visualization. Each maintains 60 frames-per-second on Apple silicon Mac computers. Family Sharing is enabled and a 14 day free trial is offered.

Perry Kivolowitz has worked in digital imaging since 1985. His company, ASDG, Incorporated, made The Art Department, Art Department Professional and Elastic Reality, and was renamed Elastic Reality, Inc. He is a co-recipient of an Academy Award® for Scientific and Technical Achievement for the modern method of shape driven warping and morphing, and was awarded an Engineering Emmy® Award in 2019 as co-inventor of SilhouetteFX.

He has taught computer graphics and operating systems at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, and was Professor and Chair of the Computer Science Department at Carthage College. PSK Intellect, LLC, his company, is in Mobile, Alabama.

Perry's presentation, Discourses and Dialogs on Debugging, can be downloaded at the preceding link (PowerPoint, 45 MB).

PSK Intellect, LLC is a teeny tiny holding company for the work of Perry Kivolowitz.

Perry's involvement in media dates from the dawn of digital imaging... way back on the Commodore Amiga in 1985. His company, ASDG, Incorporated was a major player in early desktop publishing (e.g. Scanlab), then multimedia (e.g. The Art Department), then desktop video (e.g. Art Department Professional - ADPro) and finally desktop film (e.g. Elastic Reality).

Elastic Reality became so entrenched, the company was renamed Elastic Reality, Inc. Perry is a co-recipient of an Academy Award® for Scientific and Technical Achievement for the invention of the modern method of shape driven warping and morphing. Perry also received an Emmy® Certificate for his work on the pilot episode of Babylon 5 along with Foundation Imaging (who won the Emmy® for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Special Visual Effects).

Later, Perry co-invented SilhouetteFX, now owned by BorisFX. That work earned Perry an Engineering Emmy® Award in 2019.

Perry was also a Faculty Associate (non-tenurable Professor) at University of Wisconsin - Madison where he taught computer graphics and operating systems. Then Perry joined Carthage College as Professor and Chair of the Computer Science Department.

Last but not least, Perry writes Zombie novels for fun!

Get Off My L@wn tells the story of a retired tech entrepreneur using sftp and GPUs to fight zombie hordes in the millions. Note: Perry is a retired tech entrepreneur. Be on the lookout for zombies!

Watch for Islands in the Sea of Dead coming someday. Perry's been writing it for more than 10 years so chances are, it won't be out soon.

The words, pictures, films and icon on this page may be used in articles, reviews and videos about CadenceViz, with no need to ask. Please credit PSK Intellect, LLC.

The music in the films was generated by Perry Kivolowitz, and may be used with the films, downloaded or embedded. The words are his own.

Everything on this page in one ZIP file: the pictures, the films, the icon and the words.