Transcript KMB107 Lecture week 3 3211KB Oct 13 2009 01:27:56 AM

sound, image, text
lecture three
Wed Aug 6, 2008
Sound transforms into Image
Image transforms into Sound
The senses confused and combined…
overview
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Synaesthesia / sensory dislocations
Visual music / sound becomes image
Visual scores / image becomes sound
Synchronisation
Deep analysis
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.
Visual Music 1
• Images that somehow aspire to the condition of
music (ephemeral, abstract, rhythmic….)
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painting, film, video, design, games, theatrical
lighting, nature…..
• Includes:
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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
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/
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
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.
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.
Colour Organs 3
• Historical correspondences of sound to colour.
Confirms the subjective nature of sound to colour
correlations.
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.
Cornelius Cardew - treatise (1963-67)
Cornelius Cardew - treatise (1963-67)
Cornelius Cardew - treatise (1963-67)
Cornelius Cardew - treatise (1963-67)
Morton Feldman
• Morton Feldman (January 12, 1926 –
September 3, 1987) was an American
composer, 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.
Morton Feldman
He was inspired by the repeating but inconsistent
patterns found in Turkish Rugs
Another Turkish Rug (imagine the sound it makes)
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…
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
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
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EXAMPLE: Legion of Rock Stars
•
http://www.dailymotion.com/popular/fibbox/video/x2npw6_people-are-strange_music
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?
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
Chion, Michel. Audio-Vision, Sound on Screen, New
York: Columbia University Press, 1990
Cook, Nicholas. Analysing Musical Multimedia,
Oxford University Press 1998.