Abstract: Audiovisual performance is a fertile area for creative expression, an intersection of experimental cinema and computer music that has seen a groundswell of interest in recent years. To create works in this emerging medium, a complex network of relationships between sounds, images and sensor input must be organized. This complexity poses major technical and aesthetic challenges which a systematic approach can help address. This paper presents an analysis of audiovisual performance as two parts: a real time simulation which produces dynamic form, and a visualization by which that form is aestheticized. This approach to a systematic study, or poetics, of the medium is drawn from the study of successful works as well as from film theory and cognitive psychology. Recent audiovisual work by the author is discussed, and technical details are presented. Approaching audiovisual performance as real time simulation provides a practical framework for collaboration between artists and researchers in aesthetic visualization.