I really really enjoyed this reading, particularly because it contextualized the work of many artists I already like across disciplines such as Nam June Paik and Sonic Youth! I love how liberating the idea of finding the “means of expression for a particular idea, to test concepts in another field, or simply to extend one’s own radius of effect” is. An artist does not have to be defined by a specific practice.
Another thing that really stood out to me in the reading was the usage of the expression “media transgressor” in:
“Another media transgressor is Tony Conrad, who in the 1960s implemented minimalist concepts both in musical and visual form and at the same time explored the materiality of each respective media from its fringe.”
I guess in the context of this reading, media transgressors are those who are not confined by a specific medium or concept, multidisciplinary practitioners who use whatever means they find suitable to actualize their ideas. Nowadays, when multidisciplinarity seems to be the default (this could be debated, probably), I wonder who a media transgressor would be? Could it be those who actually reject new media? those who go back to traditional mediums and stick to one? I’m not sure!
This week’s read was definitely an interesting one because it brought to light very relevant and important questions regarding the intersectionality in between the various forms of art. I never quite realized how tightly these different art forms are interwoven, and how they greatly affect one another, whether we consciously realize it or not. One particular case that stood out to me is that of synesthesia. From my understanding, synesthesia is one you are able to experience one sense through another. It resonated with me because it reminded me of an article I recently read talking about an artist who has visual responses to music, and who has turned this ability into a performance. Similar to how we live code, but she reacts to music with physical handmade drawings, which is something that I found to be quite interesting.
To me, this clarified just how powerful the relation between such art forms is in the sense that music can inspire art, and vice versa (and this also extends to other forms of art as well: film, fashion, etc…). You have the ability to use another art-form as a source of inspiration, allowing for double the amount of talent to shine through. This is something that is also extremely relevant to our class as we are merging these two art forms (music and visuals), and constantly working to figure out what images would fit what sounds. That in itself is an interesting topic because objectively, these are two separate entities, so how is it that one has the ability to inspire the other? This just goes to show that sometimes, the way that our brains are wired, allows us to make these interpretations, and differentiate what visuals fit with what sounds, and what exactly is “appropriate”, when in reality there is no correct answer. I never made these connections, and this reading allowed me to do so!
Here is a link to the article I mentioned above if you would like to read some more!
I had never consciously realized that the terms used for music and visual “composition” were actually the same. It is only now that I read into a bit of the history of how these terms came to be that I made the connection. But to be honest, it makes sense. Music is made of waves and so is color, one of the components of visuals. These two mediums use waves as a sub-medium. The focus of artists and musicians to deal with the material primarily would then make sense placed in this context. They do not have to worry about linking different types of arts with one another because their own nature is similar and links naturally due to the mediums they share (as is the example of both visuals and music using sound waves).
On the other hand, I really resonated with the fact that artists change their medium due to “purely pragmatic reasons”. I remember that in highschool, I wanted to be both on the school band and the art club, however, the professors that managed both groups forced students to give up on the other and commit only to one group regardless of whether or not the student had enough time to do both. I always felt quite discouraged about this because it forced me to choose one “box” rather than allowing me to explore both mediums. I believe that many schools have that narrow approach and I wonder whether we would see much more significant artworks and performances coming from students in normal schools (not art schools) if we did not push students to encapsulate themselves in one medium. Perhaps the art or performances won’t be the best, but I believe that it would certainly improve children’s overall artistic practice and creative process. This would then tie in with the concept that anyone can make noise and thus can create a sound composition. At the same time, anyone can create a visual and thus make a visual composition.
It seems that one of the main themes that the artists in this reading have is that they go back to the very basics of each medium and in a way question the established artistic or musical norm to make this artistic practices accessible to people. It would be interesting to see this applied not just in colleges or formal art institutions but in public schools.
When I started reading this article, what came to my mind was the concept of program music that I learned in “Introduction to the History of Western Music”. In this context, program music refers to music that carries some extramusical meaning, some “program” of literary idea, legend, and scenic Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” Violin Concerto, for example, describes the four seasons as indicated in its title. When you listen to “Winter”, you can literally sense the cold wind blowing around you. This is also due to the rapidity of the violin playing in the piece. Anyway, what I want to point out here is that there was this kind of sense of combining music with graphics (scenes) during the classical music period, even though at first the graphics were often abstract and even did not exist in physical form (in people’s imagination).
As I read further, I found this interesting quote that says “the point was not to link different arts with one another but to find an appropriate means of expression for a particular idea, to test concepts in another field, or simply to extend one’s own radius of effect”. As we can see from the examples given in the article, the artists are not making cross-disciplinary art for the sake of making cross-disciplinary art. Instead, they conceptualized in their minds what ideas they wanted to realize before making cross-disciplinary art, and then tried to express their ideas in the form of cross-disciplinary art creation. This kind of creation is obviously experimental and highly groundbreaking.
At the end of the article, we can see that “the dual profession of artist-musician/musician-artist is no longer anything of note”, rather, “PR strategies demonstrate how an artist or musician’s own cultural product can benefit from the adaptation of the respective other systems”. I’m curious if this being tied up with commercial capital is an indication that the trend of cross-disciplinary art-making has become so popular that people have become accustomed to it, or if it is an indication that it is difficult to make commercial value that people are transitioning to art content that can make money for them.
This reading discusses how boundaries between different art forms being broken down in the 1960s allowed artists to create art that had a wider reach. Musicians were also picking up the paintbrush and vice versa. However, it did not stop at people becoming interdisciplinary. Artist-musicians were combining sounds and visuals in one performance, much like we do in our Live Coding class. The reading uses the word ‘synesthesia’ to describe this phenomenon. Synesthesia refers to when you experience one sense through another, for example, hearing shapes or tasting sound. It really is a beautiful way to create art. Rather than just painting a picture, why not combine visuals with sounds and paint what you see? In a way, I believe that human beings have been a little bit Synesthetic (is that a word?) since the beginning of time. What I mean by this is, when we hear music, we have certain colours we associate with the type of sounds we are listening to. For instance, when I listen to an upbeat pop song, I might envision bright colours alongside it such as pink, yellow, orange etc. If I go to a heavy metal concert, I will expect to see darker visuals.
Synesthesia is an important thing to consider when I create my Live Coding projects, such as what visuals best complement the sounds I am creating. The music and the visuals should not be treated as separate things, but as one new art form.
This reading contextualizes the way we see “musical art” today and how it was developed. It provides the theories and history behind its evolution as a concept and examples of works and artists in the field. There are several main ideas that I found to be relatable on a personal level, not in a way that they apply to me personally but rather based on my observations. Since we started this class, whenever we have a performance or look at documented works or experiences, I always think of house music or shows and concerts like Martin Garrix and similar artists. This, I feel, relates to section 5 which looks at the computer being a universal machine that combines clubs with galleries under a “one-person enterprise”(5). The author discusses how the artist-musician/musician-artist label has been influenced by the spread of electronic music such as techno and house. This led to clubs being a place that combines forms of expression like music and visuals, as well as other factors. I would say that such factors apply to concerts as well, alongside clubs. Not only does the performers’ music allow people to vibe, move with the beat, and dance together, but performing it live makes it 1000 times more interesting and captivating, engaging multiple senses at the same time. It creates some kind of immersive or 2D experience where you can see the visuals reacting with the audio/sounds and incorporating fire or smoke, in some cases, that also go with the beat.
I have been to many concerts in my life but I had the most fun at a Martin Garrix concert where I was close to the stage and could see all of the colors and visuals changing up close with the music. He also incorporated aspects that we have learned how to use in class such as images or videos within the visuals, which personalizes the performance even further and maybe incorporates the “filmic” form discussed in the reading. Another topic that I found to be very interesting when reading was how some terminology used for visuals has been taken from music to apply to paintings, for example, which we still use to this day. Referring to a visual work or producing it as a “composition, symphony, improvisation, or rhythm”(2) is a recent change, that emphasizes abstraction in art. However, I believe that there is a wider room for interpretation when it comes to understanding what each word means when applying it to visuals than it does for music.
This assignment was quite a challenge! Composition is tough, especially in code format as it felt less intuitive for me. The way I tried to tackle this task is by consuming as much music and visuals that inspire me and trying to duplicate and play around with the resulting outcomes. For music, I realized that I’m not a big fan of typical EDM-ish build-ups, and find myself gravitating towards more experimental ambient music, so two of the main songs that were inspiring me for this project were: ATM by Billy Lemos, and An Encounter by The 1975. As for visuals, I wanted to steer away from coding shapes from scratch, rather I wanted to experiment with either layering the same video or source image.
Music
As mentioned above, I wanted to experiment with creating ambient and almost nostalgic sounds, but before all that I referred to music theory and the piano, and picked a scale that I thought would compliment the feel I’m going for, which is the C minor scale. I went through a lot of different samples and approaches to building the composition, and almost nothing felt like it made sense or like it’s cohesive. The final structure I went with is pretty experimental, a piece in two parts with the sound of children playing in the background. It’s meant to be both ominous and nostalgic both feelings that I attempted to achieve mostly by using room, sz, and orbit.
Visuals
Before starting, I knew I wanted to experiment with red-blue layered visuals with an anaglyph 3D effect. I played around with gifs and different figures, and then felt like a picture of an eye could be both visually appealing and match the vibe of the music. Throughout the whole piece, the eye is consistent as the source.
Difficulties
The biggest difficulties I faced are with compositional structure and audiovisual interaction. For compositional structure, as I mentioned, I struggled with finding an alternative to the build-up structure, as I felt like it did not resonate with the feel that I was trying to achieve. As for audiovisual interaction, I think I just need to practice it and experiment with it more until it becomes more precise and understandable for me.
---- start
d14 $ s "children" #gain 0.5
d13 $ qtrigger 13 $ seqPLoop[
(0, 4, note "[[ef5'maj] [g5'min] [bf5'maj] ~ ~]" # sound "superfork" # room 0.1 # gain 0.7 # legato 1.5),
(4, 8, note "[[ef5'maj] [g5'min] [c6'min] ~ ~]" # sound "superfork" # room 0.1 # gain 0.7 # legato 1.5)
]
d7 $ ccv "0 50 64 0 0" # ccn "0" # s "midi"
d7 silence
d1 $ s "coins" # gain 0.8
d5 $ slow 2 $ sound "superfork" >| note "[c2'min]? [bf3'min]?" # room 0.1 # gain 0.9 -- bg chord
-- introducing more rhythm + ambient element
hush
d3 $ qtrigger 3 $ seqPLoop[
(0, 12, fast 2 $ sound "808bd(1,4)" # gain 1.2),
(4, 12,slow 2 $ sound " ~ [future:4(3,5)] ~ ~" # gain 1.5 # room 0.4)
]
d11 $ ccv (segment 128 (range 127 0 saw)) # ccn "1" # s "midi"
d9 $ struct "<~ t(3,5) t>" $ ccv ((segment 128 (range 127 0 saw))) # ccn "2" # s "midi"
d4 $ fast 2 $ s "ade:3" |> note "<f5_>" # cut 1 # vowel "o" # gain "<1? 0.9 0.2 0.7>" #room 0.4
-- chaos & tension here w/ distort & adding beats
bassDrum = d14 $ fast 2 $ sound "808bd" # gain 1.2
bassDrum
d3 $ slow 2 $ sound "[future:4*3] ~ ~ ~" # gain 1.5 # room 0.4 # distort 0.2
d5 $ struct "<t(3,5) t>" $ ccv ((segment 128 (range 127 0 saw))) # ccn "3" # s "midi"
d4 $ fast 2 $ s "ade:3*6" |> note "<f5_>" # cut 1 # vowel "o" # gain "<1? 0.9 0.2 0.7>" #room 0.4
--- hush, instead of a drop for ominous vibe
hush
------ second bit, normal then degrade
d4 $ degradeBy 0.8 $ slow 2 $ s "armora:5" # room 0.4 # sz 0.6 # orbit 1 # gain 0.8
d1 $ s "<coins(1,4)>" # gain 0.95
d5 $ ccv " 127 0 0 0 0" # ccn "3" # s "midi"
d4 silence
d10 $ qtrigger 10 $ seqP[
(0, 8, s "ade:3" |> note "c2" # cut 1 # vowel "a" # orbit 1 # room 0.7 ),
(8, 14, s "ade:3" |> note "c3" # cut 1 # vowel "a" # orbit 1 # room 0.7),
(14, 20, s "ade:3" |> note "c4" # cut 1 # vowel "a" # orbit 1 # room 0.7)
]
d1 silence
hush