VISUAL MUSIC etc.

[bozidar svetek]

 

VISUAL MUSIC

http://www.si21.com/interakt

aplic.

col.sp.

ref. (MIDEM 08)

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galery... 4,5,.. 21,22,23,24

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Abstract Visual Music - The New York Digital Salon - Artists Index

Music is motion, it is a unit limited in time,

in the continuity that also expresses its change with

light – as the back side of sound. Doing this, it

uncovers us, our environment, our present in a

specific way. As we close our eyes, it brings up our

conscious and subconscious. When placed in

endless darkness of the universe, it uncover

itself – yet this is only the beginning.

Author

Sound and its radiation in the form of light are hidden to our eyes. Although sound transmits its contents around its source, we are not able to sense it – to see it. Thus, it stays in »the dark« and is accessible to a single sense – hearing. Only when it touches our, unfortunately undeveloped and atrophied interactivity, the integrity of the sensual – extended consciousness, as the sun light touches the matter, it can be, buck naked, sensed, realised, understood as well as recorded.

Anyhow, the forms of expression, creation, technology and desire have always been and remain the reflexion of the time of their creation. Today sound/music with its immanence is no exception. However, at the turning point of the millennium it can be seen as a big challenge and opportunity for numerous new or missed, natural or social and sensible connections and re-evaluations that can only enrich us.

In the era of computer technology, Internet, DVD formats and various systems as well as numerous acoustic and other novelties are the reflexion of our time. No doubt, they are also the groundwork for new creations. In the same way it is also true that despite »keepers« of conservatism they also bring changes in the existing tradition. This has always been and always will be!

The challenge, broached by many before me, when their hunch lead them to put a »beam of light« into the »glass music cage« (Oliver Messiaen), thus upgrading it, is worth taking up, according to the achievements and our natural interactive reality. This will allow the broad interaction between tradition and new insights. Or, in other words, the existing paradigm of sensory perception shall be completed, upgraded and adapted to the new reality.

In this way the proposed form, visualisation of music, enables successful integration between the performers or its source as well as the environment where it is placed. One should be aware, however, that such "visual ennoblement“ is a slow process, especially since knowledge is hard to obtain, and due to unknown future – which is completely normal and legitimate. Nevertheless, regardless of these facts I insist and believe in the democracy of music, in its openness and wealthier existence. I believe that its historic tendency for visualisation will be realised with the help of wider assimilated abstract film, abstract painting, new technologies and new insights about ourselves, which gives us the possibility of a »triumph« over its inherent materialism.

With lack of tradition for interactive – optic image of music, today, when facing it in the DVD format, one can notice how the listener in his or her stiffness at the same time »transforms« also to a viewer. This somehow »shakes« one's adopted, often unambiguous image and experience in music. In the confrontation and comparison there appear dubious selection and uncertainty. Unfortunately they are often »a priori« directed towards false computer-generated contents and at the same time desire for understanding, especially for what happens at the sensual level.

Owing to the poor level of development and experience – simultaneous attention to different audio as well as visual contents in simultaneously open movement that can in music not be understood as a whole, as one, but as the above mentioned autonomous, unambiguous and unstable perception, there appears increased engagement of sensual perception, expressed in increased attention and concentration of the conscious self for understanding. If the desire and will for change and understanding audio/visual perception habits are strong enough, the simultaneous mastery and understanding of the two different aspects – in the movement of information – are assured.

Thus, the dialectic integration of individual contents, visual and audio, into one unit, integral sensual experience, is a simultaneous process of practical adaptation – sense of new reproduction instrument in the given reality that is still without criticism and criteria.

We are not only faced with the form of superficial-optical revelation, optical touch of two types of contents in juxtaposition, but also with the exposure of – not yet sufficiently accessible composer's core of creative process – human being.

What is revealed is the mystery, hidden in the darkness, of visually inaccessible interweaving tone structures, fascinating contents and messages – at present accepted only by hearing, linearly. In this way music heard before many times reveals a new aesthetic level as well as some new sensations. It means a new, realistic insight into its human »private« world and at the same time its immeasurable potential.

In all the above stated and realised aspects there lies the awareness of time as the only priceless value, where music preserves its real, actual image. Free and separate of all natural, materialised and symbolic visual »loads« imposed on it.

Music enlightened in this way allows the communication with the actual core of its message. One can approach it, understand it outside the linear time and established unambiguous convictions. It offers a new understanding in its liberated light and motive message. Message that the composer – human has been expressing for thousands of years in yet incomprehensive, but alluring way. We allow it to come to life in its revelation and inconclusiveness. To establish with us, with its actual spatial dimension, the non-material dialogue.

And, last but not least, I hope that we will not keep ourselves blocked and will not remain in its »darkness«, rejecting in it the responsibility, but that we shall keep researching it in all of its natural, human dimension still to be understood and attained.

Ljubljana, March 2007 Božidar Svetek