Whats up class?
Today I want to talk about the relationship between art and music.
With the new technology coming out these days, I have been alerted to the fact that I can create art that is not simply a piece of audio, even though I am not a trained artist. As a music synthesis student, I am able to learn programs like Max MSP that can build machines from the ground up. Fellow students of mine are currently working on pieces that use this technology to theire advantage. One of my friends is going to trigger samples via a painting, using color sensors in the computer to trigger different sounds that correlate to the mood of the color. While he paints, the visual of the painting is also being sent to two different projectors where he has designed a program to morph the visuals. This new level of interactivity definitely generates more stimulation in the viewer.
Recently I encountered a video on you tube which was mindblowing. Basic synthesis, the building blocks of any synthesizer, has now been put into a more 3d and artistic medium. This new interactivity with physical objects, art, and synthesis, will pave the way for quicker learning and more expressive music. Here is a link to "Reactable" from Barcelona which makes the software synthesizers I use look boring.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0h-RhyopUmc
For years, artists have inspired musicians and the other way around. M.C. Escher has inspired artists such as Steve Reich and Phillip Glass in the way they compose by the way he formulates his art.
http://www.allposters.com/-sp/Metamorphosis-I-Posters_i96934_.htm
Heres a link to a work by M.C. Escher called Metamorphosis. The concept of the work is to morph one image into a tessellated pattern, then to gradually alter the outlines of that pattern to become an altogether different image. What is interesting to me is that Escher hints to the viewer of his woodcut print(in the booklet that comes with the painting) about how a musician could portray the piece of art with music. He goes as far as describing certain sections as being "3/4 sections" and so forth. "Music for 18 Musicians" is a good example of a song that tries to emulate this fluid change from section to section.
I feel the future holds a great amount of creativity as inspiration grows exponentially. Technology allows me to tap in to the brilliant ideas of the past with a click of the mouse, and dice them up into something new. With the advantage of interactivity, new forms of media, surround sound, digital video and audio, the possibilities of art will grow to new heights in the twenty first century and I plan to be part of that.
Thanks-sam
1 comment:
I think technology isn't a conceptual art by itself. We've always had improvements in technology, and it had led to improvements in expression, but usually because technology creates better tools for expression. There has always been a performance and cohesion of artistic genres. During the Renaissance, musicians were poets, and scribes, and probably also visual artists.
Okay, here is a tried and true cliche: "Art begets art."
It's true. If Don McLean never wrote "American Pie," if Roberta Flack never heard it performed on the radio, and if the Fugees never found her song, "Killing Me Softly," and covered it, then where would we be?
There is a wealth of inspiration to draw from, so why start from scratch? Music is an artistic expression that for some reason penetrates emotions especially well. I think because it has--at the very least--two traits worth noting:
First, it is an interactive art, it makes you dance, cry, and sometimes puke. A sculpture can't really do that. Second, it like visual arts, has cognitive and conceptual depth, especially if it is programmatic.
The second trait is probably why Visual art begets Audio art, and visa versa.
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