sound, image, text

1. sound, image, text lecture three Wed Aug 6, 2008 Sound transforms into Image Image transforms into Sound The senses confused and combined…

2. overview • Synaesthesia / sensory dislocations • Visual music / sound becomes image • Visual scores / image becomes sound • Synchronisation • Deep analysis

3. Synaesthesia • SYNAESTHESIA refers to an involuntary neurological phenomenon where sensory experiences are crossed or merged (eg seeing sound and hearing colour). • Artists often use the term metaphorically. Here the characteristics of an object or event perceived by one sense can be used as a metaphor for another, such as: • a painting describing music, eg Paul Klee’s Fugue in Red (above) • a sound described in colour terms, such as a blue note.

4. Visual Music 1 • Images that somehow aspire to the condition of music (ephemeral, abstract, rhythmic….) • painting, film, video, design, games, theatrical lighting, nature….. • Includes: • paintings based on musical elements or forms • instruments that play light or image eg colour organ • abstract films that model images on sound.. • processes or devices that translate sound into visual images • Examples: Oscar Fischinger / Jordan Belson

5. Visual Music 2 Kandinsky: Composition VIII (1923) “Kandinsky's compositions were the culmination of his efforts to create a "pure painting" that would provide the same emotional power as a musical composition.” http://www.glyphs.com/art/kandinsky/

6. Colour Sounds • http://homepage.eircom.net/~musima/visualmusic/visualmusic.htm • Each instrument or voice has its own characteristic tembre. The artist Kandinsky considered how these might relate to colors. • Yellow ... trumpet blast or fanfare elevated to a high pitch. • Orange ... a church bell of medium pitch ringing the angels, • Red ... fanfares with tuba--a persistent, intrusive, powerful tone... • Purple ... high, clear, singing tones of the violin. ...successive tones of little bells • Violet ... deep tones of the woodwind instruments (for example, bassoon) • Blue ... a flute, dark blue the cello, and going deeper, the wonderful sonority of the contrabass; • Green ... quiet, drawn-out, meditative tones of the violin

7. Visual Music – Colour Organs • colour organs • The tradition of mechanical (18th century) devices • built to represent sound or to accompany music in a • visual medium—by any number of means. In the • early 20th century, a silent color organ tradition • (Lumia) developed. In the 60s and 70s, the term • 'color organ' became popularly associated with • electronic devices that responded to their music • inputs with light shows. The term 'light organ' is • increasingly being used for these devices; allowing • 'colour organ' to reassume its original meaning.

8. Colour Organs 2 • In 1893, Bainbridge Bishop published regarding his scheme of correspondences for colored notes, which he deemed as being correct according to nature as displayed by rainbows: • By this time, Bishop had already constructed at least three color organs, capable of playing both sound and corresponding light together or separately. Perhaps surprisingly, the three color organs were each destroyed in separate fires.

9. Colour Organs 3 • Historical correspondences of sound to colour. Confirms the subjective nature of sound to colour correlations.

10. Visual Score / Graphical notation… http://www.spiralcage.com/improvMeeting/treatise.html • Graphical music notation is notation characterized by non-traditional musical symbols arranged in a visual design rather than conventional musical syntax. • This notation emerged in the early twentieth century because of a growing feeling among some composers that traditional Western notation was inadequate for their musical ideas.

11. Cornelius Cardew - treatise (1963-67)

12. Cornelius Cardew - treatise (1963-67)

13. Cornelius Cardew - treatise (1963-67)

14. Cornelius Cardew - treatise (1963-67)

15. Morton Feldman • Morton Feldman (January 12, 1926 – September 3, 1987) was an Americancomposer, born in New York City. • A major figure in 20th-century music, Feldman went through several compositional phases. He was a pioneer in aleatoric music and indeterminate music, and in music requiring improvisation. His works are characterized by quietness, slowness, and often by their extreme length, especially in his later music.

16. Morton Feldman He was inspired by the repeating but inconsistent patterns found in Turkish Rugs

17. Another Turkish Rug (imagine the sound it makes)

18. Mark Rothko - Orange Feldman’s other great obsession was with the painter Mark Rothko. What are the sonic correspondances you could imagine from this image. Think about the form, color, texture, composition, mood…

19. Music Concrete or ‘Cinema for the Ear’ • Musique concrète (French; literally, "concrete music"), is a style of avant-garde music that relies on recorded sounds, including natural environmental sounds and other non-inherently-musical noises to create music. • musique concrète has been subject to conflicting perceptions, with some questioning whether it should be considered music at all. The term is often understood as a practice of simply making music out of "real world" sounds, or sounds other than those made by musical instruments. Rather, it is a wider attempt to afford a new way of musical production and expression. Traditionally, classical music begins as an abstraction, as musical notation on paper or other medium, which is then produced into audible music. Musique concrète strives to begin with the "concrete" sounds, experiment with them, and abstract them into musical compositions. • EXAMPLE: Michel Chion – Requiem • Sound for the EYE – Jeff Perkins ‘Shout’ • http://www.ubu.com/film/fluxfilm.html

20. Synchronisation • A SYNCH POINT refers to the synchronous meeting of a sound event with a visual (sight) event. Eg a musical note coincides with an action, or a word of dialogue coincides with a mouth movement. • Synchresis is the forging between something one sees and something one hears - it is the mental fusion between a sound and a visual when these occur at exactly the same time. Synchresis is an acronym formed by telescoping together the two words synchronism and synthesis   • EXAMPLE:Legion of Rock Stars • http://www.dailymotion.com/popular/fibbox/video/x2npw6_people-are-strange_music

21. deepening the analysis • What do I hear of what I see? • What do I see of what I hear? • What are the fundamental qualities of the sound, image & text. • How do the sonic, visual & textual elements interact? • What are the points of synchronisation? • In what ways do the sounds, images or text elements complement or contradict each other? • Does the interaction of elements emulate the ‘real’ world or create an imaginary world? • What does it mean to you?

22. tasks & readings • There will be NO LECTURE NEXT WEEK for the EKKA public holiday. • TASK • Begin to think about a work you would like to analyse for your upcoming presentation. Come prepared to discuss your ideas at your next tute in week 5. • The sign-up lists for tutorial presentations will be available soon (I will send out an email when its up and running) • READING • Chion, Michel. Audio-Vision, Sound on Screen, New York: Columbia University Press, 1990 - Chapter 4. On CMD

23. Chion, Michel. Audio-Vision, Sound on Screen, New York: Columbia University Press, 1990 • Cook, Nicholas. Analysing Musical Multimedia, Oxford University Press 1998.