Research Blog - Sound vs light and some ideas

To more fully define my methods of creating, I am working on understanding the aspects of music and light. On a quick tangent, I found something interesting that John Cage says; that there is no difference between noise and music, it is all just sound. To apply this to the visual realm, I would say that there is no difference between, say, paint buckets spilled on a canvas and a purposely ordered painting. In both cases the aesthetic value is determined by the viewer or listener, like how one cultures music may sound like noise to another and vice versa. This idea opens my mind to broadness of possibilities for creating my music and visual work. It doesn't have to be music, and it doesn't have to be totally structured. It has got me thinking about painting a picture as I play a song on the guitar, where I would hold a brush in my picking hand the movement of my arm strumming would create strokes on the canvas. I could record the song, and then add more layers over top of it in the same way. I know this is another totally different avenue for my work, but I am very excited to try this.
So anyway, here I will attempt to relate as many visual elements to audio elements as I can

Musical element = visual element:
Key=Color
Pitch=Brightness
Timbre=Shape
Dynamics=Size (of shape/timbre or of entire piece)
Texture=Texture
Rhythm=Composition

I am having trouble defining melody and harmony. Melody and harmony are functions of pitch, which I have defined as brightness. This kind of ruins my ideas because right now a melody or harmony would be created by a combination of different colors rather than by changes in pitch/brightness. Perhaps instead of defining key as color, I should allow the color to define the melody and harmony.

Artist Lecture - Amy Hauft

Amy Hauft, Counter Re-formation, 2009
Plywood, canvas, sugar, ABS plastic, polystyrene foam, plaster, epoxy, paint;
32 ft x 27 ft x 35 in

I went to Amy Hauft's talk about her new installation at the Anderson Gallery, Counter Re-formation. The work was based on a Louis XIV banquet table and included sugar sculptures which were supposed to reference times before porcelain when artists would create sugar figurines and sculptures for dessert tables. It also had a tablecloth that seemed perfectly fabricated for the piece. I was disappointed when I found out that it was about . I thought it was an interesting, well crafted sculpture, but I was interested in it for its formal elements and I found the real meaning to be very uninteresting. I had trouble taking anything away from it other than the interesting way that this table was able to seat so many people. The installation also included a stair case for viewers to be able to get a higher perspective to see the whole piece which I thought was cool because it allowed a better view of the strange form of the table. This work is pretty unrelated to mine, but after doing my Sustainability sculpture, I was really noticing the craft and workmanship of this piece.

CONTEST ENTRIES

Here are 3 jurried contest entries I did.

1. Emerging Artists http://www.slowart.com/prospectus/ea2010.htm




2. Project 30 http://www.projekt30.com/






3. Utrecht http://www.utrechtart.com/contest/

Artist blog - Stephen Vitiello

“Untitled” with Julie Mehretu, dimensions unknown



Four Color Sound, dimensions unknown
w/ Lighting Design by Jeremy Choate

The first song on the sounds page of Stephen Vitiello's website reminds me very much of Mogwai or Godspeed You! Black Emperor. It had a strange structure and rhythm to it. He said it was made for someone as a supplement to their song, I would like to know what the final song sounds like. If someone were to give me this to build a song over, I believe I would have a tough time understanding the rhythm and playing something that didn't feel almost random. However, the randomness of it is interesting in how the asyncopation still seems to work.
Tom mentioned in our meeting that the root of sound art was in electronic music and asked if I listened to any of it. I said that I don't really like electronic music. I guess I had the wrong idea of what he was talking about because I was thinking of something like dance or techno music, which I don't enjoy for it's excessively repetitive thumpclapthumpclapthumpclapthumpclap. However, Vitiello's work is not this, his is much more interesting and complex. It's funny that in the endless possibilities of electronic music, the standard that pop-culture has landed on is techno music, or at least that is what I associate electronic music with.
Vitiello's sounds can be heard here:
http://www.stephenvitiello.com/index.php?id=C0_4_2

I know one of his songs is composed of some of his nature recordings, but I would like to know how he makes some of his other music. I understand the method of slicing up a recording and putting pieces of it to a rhythm, but he also does some strange stuff which seems to be made from a synthesizer but seems too organic to be composed of a computer generated beat or note pattern.

Research blog - some music theory

For this blog I want to read up on some music theory because now that I am dealing with color relationships, I should better understand musical relationships. The first thing I came across looks like an excellent piece of the puzzle, the circle of fifths. To relate this to color, using my graph I've charted out how the colors are related according to the way the notes are related in the circle of fifths. However, I am unsure of how to deal with the inner circle of relative minors, here I have just colored them the same as their major counterparts. Perhaps when dealing with chords of minor, major, or other orientation, each note that is in the chord should be included somehow in its color representation. This chart is begining to show me some very complex relationships that seem to work mutually in color and musical theory. I will have to study this a lot to figure out what all these colors and notes mean for each other, however I may limit it to F-B which are the keys I tend to use most often when making music. The first thing I noticed and something that was confusing me in my other color chart was when I attempted to find the complimentary colors for G and its fifth, D, I got green and purple, rather than green and red. It seems in music complimentary notes do not work back and forth as in color theory, however it makes sense when I read that when the colors are made by light the visual complimentary of green is purple, or violet. Basically, when colors are made subtractively then red and green compliment, but when made additively green and purple compliment. This is very interesting because it seems the same things that makes a melody sound good or give a certain feeling, is the same thing that makes a color field painting look good or give a certain feeling.

Artist Blog - Piet Mondrian

Broadway Boogie Woogie, Piet Mondrian, 1942-1943 oil on canvas


Piet Mondrian, Tableau 2, 1922, 0il on canvas, 22x21



Mondrian, Piet
Composition A: Composition with Black, Red, Gray, Yellow, and Blue
1920
Oil on canvas
91.5 x 92 cm (36 x 36 1/4 in)

Today I want to talk about Piet Mondrian. He was brought up during my critique as being similar to what I am doing. Like my work, his work is influenced by music, jazz in particular. Also like myself his work was also an exploration of his spiritual beliefs. However, other than his musical influences and spiritual interest, I don't really see how these are really visually like my work, other than the use of structure and blocks of color. I feel like it is more about order and spiritual ideas rather than musical ideas. I don't think my work could be classified as De Stijl either, I think of it more as color fields. I enjoy Mondrians work, but I find it strange that he was mentioned because I don't really see it as musical and it wasn't an influence in the creation of my work.

Francis Cape Lecture 11-18-09

I attended Francis Cape's lecture on Wednesday and found it to be thoroughly boring and dissappointing. I found the a lot of the work to be unattainable, and without the help of a long discription, I would not have had any idea of what he was referencing. Even in the lecture at times I was having trouble understanding the correlation between his work and what he was talking about. For example he stated that he was interested in how long buildings and cities are meant to last but I couldn't find that in his work.

Wait, 2002
wood, paint
108 x 142 x 48 inches

London Avenue, 2008 poplar, sandbags, text
96 x 156 x 36 inches


258 Main Street, 2002
wood, paint
89 x 89 x 20 inches

The Angle of a Landscape, 2007
wood, paint, C print
81 x 108 x 29 inches


Ama, 2003 wood, paint. 96 x 79 x 38 inches rear view

A lot of his work references some British catalog of utility furniture which I still don't really understand and deals with the recurring theme of a wall with attached chair or desk. Maybe it's connected to the utility furniture, but I'm not sure what the significance of this is. He seems to be doing the same project over and over assigning different meanings to it. It seems strange to me.

Waterline, 2006
17 framed C-prints
image size 11 1/4 x 16 1/2 inches; frame size 17 x 25 inches each
wood, paint
dimensions variable

He also did some photographic work entitled Water Line based on hurricane Katrina. The photographs were the same old photos we've all seen before destroyed houses, however these were much more interesting than his other work; he painted the walls of the space up as high as the water level in the photographs. It really brings you into that space and feeling of having water up to your waist. Incorporating the space in this way is something I could consider in my onw work. The only other thing I got out of Cape's work was to make sure my work is about what I am talking about, I know this came up in my critique and I don't want it to happen with my work.

Research blog - sound perception

I've been looking at some of the ways people perceive sound and something I've come across that I found interesting was ideas about absolute and relative pitch. Absolute, or perfect pitch, is someones ability to make a note on command, like if you were to ask them to sing a G note, they would be able to do it without hearing the note first. Basically the ability to recognize a note and name it. It is a rare ability and many say that it cannot be learned, or must be learned at a very young age. On the other hand there is relative pitch which is more common and can be intrinsic or learned through training. This is the ability to recognize relative differences between notes. I think I have relative pitch because when playing music, I play by ear but I could not name a tone that was given to me. I've been recording a lot of music lately and something else I found interesting was the impact the room has on a recording as far as acoustics and reverberation is concerned. I also found that there are digital ways of correcting some of the problems caused by not recording in a perfectly balanced sound booth. This will be something to look into for improving the quality of my recordings except when it comes to these sort of things there are a lot of extremely technical things that I know nothing about but am slowly trying to teach myself. It is a complex science/art. Here is a graph of an uncorrected wave vs. a digitally corrected one. Since my apartment is not a perfect recording studio this could prove useful in cleaning up my recordings if I can figure out the program for it.

Artist blog - John Cage

11 Stones, 1989, dimensions and medium unknown

Where There Is Where There Urban Landscape No. 19, 1987-89, dimensions and medium unknown

Variations III no. 14, 1992, dimensions and medium unknown

Today I want to talk about John Cage. He was an artist, poet, philosopher, composer, and music theorist, best known for his experimental music compositions. His most famous piece is 4:33, which consists of 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence, where the sounds of the atmosphere and reactions of the audience become the piece. I chose to talk about him because I always thought 4:33 was really interesting and when I found out that he also works in the visual arts i was intrigued. I really enjoy the textures in his paintings, they feel soft and weightless but with dark undertones, it really seems to compliment his music. It's almost like what I've been doing, but instead of him connecting the music to the images, I am seeing relationships in his work on my own. Some of his music compositions are a bit strange for me but I definitely a lot of it like the link I have below. Many of his compositions are based on the I Ching book of changing events, which I think is very interesting. He refers to music as "an affirmation of life – not an attempt to bring order out of chaos nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply a way of waking up to the very life we're living" I thought this was an outstanding explanation and is something I think can apply to visual art as well. I was also interested to find that one of his teachers was Arnold Schoenberg, I have some of his compositions and I really enjoy his style as well.

Here is a link to some of his musical work. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cage-cheap-imitation-exceprt.ogg

VMFA application

Nature Machine, oil pastels over photocopy, 2009, 36"x48"

Circles, Watercolor on canvas, 2009, 18"x24"

Sustainability, wood, steel, coal, Plexiglas, spray paint, 2008, 6'x6'x6'

Disorientation 1, silver-halide photographic print, 2007, 18"x24"


Disorientation 3, silver-halide photographic print, 2007, 18"x24"


Disorientation 4, silver-halide photographic print, 2007, 18"x24"

Flowerpot, steel, dirt, canvas on canvas, 2006, 24"x30"

Texture Field, wood, steel, dirt, canvas, on canvas, 2005, 18"x24"

RESUME:

Justin Lewis
XXX X St. apt XXX
Richmond, Va
23224
804.306.XXXX
lewisje@vcu.edu

Education
Diploma from Atlee High School
Member of Art Guild and National Art Honor Society
Senior Photography Student at Virginia Commonwealth University

Awards
2004 Honorable Mention “Visions 2004” Photo Contest
2005 Silver Key and Honorable Mention in Scholastic Art Awards
2005 Finalist in Photographers Forum Magazine Annual College and High School Photo Contest
2005 1st Place in Architecture Category of “Capture Maymont on Film” Photo Contest

Solo Exhibitions
K. Baucom Salon
6113 Lakeside Ave. Richmond, Va
3.09 - 8.09

Current Employment
Pizza Hut - Delivery Driver
1164 Wilkinson Rd. Richmond, Va

Research Blog - A brief history of sound recording

Since my project is now incorporating sound recording I thought I would check out the history of sound recording. The first way people could record music was with the invention of machines like the music box. These were basically mechanized instruments that played interchangeable dimpled cylinders. In 1860 the phonautograph recorded the first human voice. The quality was terrible but in 1877 Thomas Edison invented the phonograph which was the first effective way to record sounds. The phonograph also was capable of playing back recordings whereas the phonautograph could only record. In the early 20's breakthroughs in electronics brought on new discoveries of electrical ways of recording and hearing sound. New microphones, speakers, mixers, and recorders were developed that worked by electric means. With the development of the magnetic tape, recordings could now be precisely edited, and recorded over and over on the same tape. From there quality was improved through things like Dolby noise reduction, hi-fi stereo sound, and surround sound. Now that we are in the digital age, this is the primary means of recording, using computers or digital recorders to edit and record sounds.