Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Research - sacred geometry

First of all, let me quickly reiterate where I am at. I am basically trying to use a series of images of nature to inspire different elements of a song. Each image or set of images will be represented through a musical interpretation played by one instrument. The separate images and melodies will be displayed and played together as a single song. This work is taking me in kind of an interesting direction, I've been thinking about my interests in natural patterns, interconnectivity, and music. It seems to be a fundamental human need to try to understand existance, I think that studying these phenomena can give insights into the 'truth' of the universe. I think my work may be becoming more spiritual, dealing with my understanding of everything as infinitely complex music. I've been reading about sacred geometry and the divine ratio.

I've become interested in Pythagoras' mathematical discovery that octaves in music are created by halving the string and that all the notes of a scale are composed of rational divisions of those octaves. I see these ratios as directly related to ratios found in the rest of existance, this is why music can evoke a sense of a place or a situation. Perhaps a certain combinations of notes that give us the feeling of a sunny day at the beach are comprised of patterns and connections that are present in the actual experience of a sunny day at the beach.
The musician Sting has an interesting quote in his book,
"I seem to be perceiving the world on a molecular level, where the normal barriers that separate "me" from everything else have been removed, as if every leaf, every blade of grass, every nodding flower is reaching out, every insect calling to me, every star in the clear sky sending a direct beam of light to the top of my head. This sensation of connectedness is overwhelming. It's like floating in a buoyant limitless ocean of feeling that I can't really begin to describe unless I evoke the word love. Before this experience I would have used the word to separate what I love from everything I don't love - us not them, heroes from villains, friend from foe, everything in life separated and distinct like walled cities or hilltop fortresses jealously guarding their hoard of separateness. Now all is swamped in this tidal wave of energy which grounds the skies to the earth so that every particle of matter in and around me is vibrant with significance. Everything around me seems in a state of grace and eternal. And strangest of all is that such grandiose philosophizing seems perfectly appropriate in this context, as if the spectacular visions have opened a doorway to another world of frankly cosmic possibilities."
Broken Music - Pages 46-47.
I think that the ways that these patterns work together create the unity that Sting is talking about. I think by using something auditory like music compared with something seemingly opposite like the visual realm, I can create a sense of unity. Here is a mathematical fractal based on Fibonacci numbers that describes naturally occurring phenomena such as galaxies, hurricanes, and seashells, things that are all very different in their properties, but manifest themselves in a remarkably similar way.

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