Isn't this a good thing? In some respects, certainly. But I would suggest that there are definite drawbacks as well. For example, if you're staring at screens, how are you going to be able to visualise the music you're composing? Perhaps old age is getting to me, but I used to be sufficiently synaesthesic to able to visualise the timbres of a PPG Wave without too much effort. These days, all this staring at editor pages and thinking numerically about the modulation routings in my Waldorf Micro-Wave has somehow dulled my imagination. And since imagination is immediate and detail is slow, as soon as any idea gets anywhere near a computer it's almost a given that the creativity will dry up.

Unfortunately, this march towards the visual and literal seems to be widespread in our culture. MTV delivers us hour after hour of video footage, invariably showing the artists lip-synching to their lyrics, and none of it requiring effort and imagination to comprehend. Gone are the days of the apocryphal story about a young child preferring radio to television because "the pictures are better." I am coming to the conclusion that we are living in a culture obsessed with images but unable to appreciate imagery.

It has recently dawned on me why I dislike multimedia. In the days of my youth, multimedia meant performance art, eclectic "installation pieces" of dance and sound combining different media in unusual ways and appealing to the different senses. Today it seems to mean regimented video footage and generic music delivering sanitised "knowledge-bites," literal and precise. While a multimedia encyclopaedia or Web site might be able to tell me everything I ever wanted to know about meteorology, it is never going to help me see the shapes of imaginary animals in the clouds.

Since I appear to have such a low opinion of the visual, you might be wondering why I work in contemporary dance. Actually, I have nothing against the visual per se, just the overly-literal. I'm all for piles of bricks in the Tate Gallery and concrete houses for the Turner Prize (though I do draw the line at animal carcasses), and I find architecture fascinating. What is so wonderful about dance is that, when it is done well, the imagery can be incredibly powerful. A contemporary dance piece seldom tells a story or acts out a drama, and yet it can still have a striking message. (Anyone in need of convincing should investigate Rosemary Butcher's work in the South East, or check out the excellent New Moves dance festival in Glasgow starting in March.)

But sadly, this drive towards the literal is impacting on all of the Arts, including music. It seems as if everything these days must be categorised and labelled. Wanna be in an American rock'n'roll band? Grow your hair and wear Spandex. Wanna play techno? Woolly hat and Roland TB-303 obligatory. Gone are the days when the popular music scene could be turned upside-down by a shy teenager with a room full of guitars recording an album like Tubular Bells. Multinational media corporations hold the purse-strings and yardsticks, and wield the Dymo label-makers in our record stores. The musical instrument scene seems similarly afflicted: we judge a synthesiser by the quantity and selection of onboard sample ROM and presets, rather than by what the instrument might be able to do with some imagination and maybe a little misuse. The Usenet synthesiser newsgroups are flooded by articles asking "Which is better?" from punters wanting quick and easy answers. (The question which really floored me this week was "Which is better? Alesis QuadraSynth or Korg Prophecy?")

Not that the publically-funded arts scenes always fare much better. Much as I love the contemporary dance scene as an arena for experimentation and innovation, if you want a real challenge, try getting project funding as a musician directing a dance company. Pegs don't come much squarer. And the Physical Theatre performers and companies I know get repeatedly punted between the Arts Council's Dance Department and Drama Department, not being easily categorised as either.

However, despite the doom and gloom implied by this article, I am cautiously optimistic. The crucial step is to realise the limits of the literal, in all its guises. We have to learn to see things, not for what they are, but for what they resemble or suggest. We have to be open to new experiences, experiments, projects and performances. And we have to break down barriers. Although the techno scene is a soft target for ridicule, some of the best music there is rich in imagery and these guys have their graphic art well sorted. (I am currently listening to "Spanners", a superb album by The Black Dog that I was put onto by, all all people, a choreographer/performer acquaintance of mine in Glasgow.) There *is* innovative music out there. ("Now, is the Cauld Blast Orchestra filed under jazz or folk this week?") Installation multimedia still gets done: the project by Robert Wilson and Hans Peter Kuhn in London's Clink Prison Vaults last October was excellent. The big mixed-media performance companies battle on (and if you can get to see Brith Gof or NVA performing live, I strongly recommend them). In the meantime, you could start by digging out a copy of the Oblique Strategies by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt (a Web search should turn up a copy) and have a go at doing something musically unconventional. And above all, don't take things too literally.