evans, bill musical time in visual space.pdf

8/14/2019 EVANS, Bill Musical time in visual space.pdf

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Musical Time in Visual Space

Brian Evans

Department of Art, University of Alabama

[email protected]

The laws of harmony are the same for painting and music.

Maurice Ravel

Abstract

There is a renewed interest in composing visual music. A

time-based, visual art, using abstract material, can look to

fundamentals from traditional Western music practice as a

place to start. These fundamentals map into the visual art

foundations of design and color. Visual equivalents of the

musical ideas of consonance, dissonance, tension, and

release, can be easily understood and applied to the

composition of abstract animation. With the current state of

digital technology the medium of time-based sonic/visual art

is now available to any composer interested in expanding

their artistic expression into the visual domain.

1 IntroductionMusic composers create coherent temporal structures

using the materials of soundpitch, timbre, rhythm, etc.

They organize sonic events. The hope is that the unfolding

of these events has a quality that would be described asmusical. There is no broad agreement on what musical

means, but there is a wide array of sonic art that most call

music and so consider musical, from plainsong to

Mississippi blues, North Indian ragas to the extended drones

of the Aboriginal digeridoo.

Musical motion (at least in most Western music) is

created through tension and resolution of tension through

controlled dissonance resolving to consonance. This tension

and release is expressed through harmonic pitch

relationships and rhythmic patterns that together develop as

chords, motives, phrases and cadences. These are the basis

of a musical syntax and provide a framework upon which

expressive, musical ideas are articulated.Like music, the fundamental dimension of abstract

animation is time. Many animators of non-representational

images seek a visual unfolding of events that they describe

as musical. Examples are many, from the work of Viking

Eggling (1923) and his visual counterpoint to the digital

harmony of John Whitney (1980), to recent time-based

visual works by formally trained music composers. (Evans,

2003, Miller 2002) Hence many experimental animators call

what they do visual music. Can a truly musical expression

be made using non-narrative visual space? Are there visual

counterparts for the traditional building blocks of musical

time?

Focusing on motion and the materials of the traditional

art foundations, design, pictorial composition, and color

harmony, a time-based grammar of visual music can be

developed. The construction of this grammar starts by

defining visual consonance and dissonance. As in musical

harmony, controlling movement from dissonance toconsonance supplies a means of moving through time

musically. With a grammar established a visual music

theory can be developed. Visual music can be composed

and abstract animation, in truth any time-based visual

expression, can be seenas musical.

2 Music FoundationsStravinskys statement, Music means nothing outside

itself, illustrates a common mindset, held by music

composers for centuries. (Stravinsky, 1956) Music

composition was a formalist activity. This was also a

modernist view. Modernist ideas have been somewhat

tattered over the past few decades, but they can still present

a viable basis for discussing musical time.

We can start with a simple definition of music as the

structuring of time with the materials of sound patterns.

(Lets exclude literary forms such as song, opera and

theatre.) The development of musical instruments has a

history measured in millennia. These instruments were

designed as generators of abstract sounds, without a referent

in the real world beyond the instruments themselves. These

abstract sounds were used to create temporal structures such

as sonatas, fugues and symphoniesabsolute music.

In general Stravinsky is talking about art for arts

sake. From this we can define musical as an aesthetic

response to the perception of sonic pattern t h eappreciation of significant form, a primary focus of

modernism and its formalist leanings. (Bell 1914)

In music these patterns are built on foundations of

repetition, contrast and variation. There is no structure, no

pattern, without repetition. Repetition by itself can of course

become boring, so contrast is useful in keeping the listener

engaged. As any utterance is multi-dimensional, it is

possible to repeat in one dimension while contrasting

Proceedings ICMC 2004


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another. For example playing the same notes on a different

instrument repeats the pitches while contrasting the timbre.

This is variation, a more subtle but effective technique for

creating and developing musical pattern.

The fundamental dimension of music is time. To make

music is to move coherently through time. This is evident in

Western tonal music where the music moves the listener

through time by first establishing a tonal center (balance and

harmonic stability). From this stability the listener is moved

to a sonic dissonance that builds tension. Tension is

resolved through resolution back to tonal consonance and

stability. The music returns to the comfort of familiarity.

Any activity that moves us through time, including dance,

poetry, theatre, etc., uses the idea of tension/release. Boy

gets girl Boy loses girl. Boy gets girl.

From here we can construct a syntax, a consensus on the

componentspatterns that repeat, vary and contrast, and the

combining and ordering of these patterns to create tension

and resolution. Combinations of sound materials become

musical statements. The motif, the minimal material needed

to expresses a musical idea, becomes the building block ofthe phrase, a musical line. Phrases are combined and

articulated in time by cadences or punctuation points.

3 A Visual MusicGauguin in describing his paintingManao Tupapausaid,

The musical part: undulating horizontal lines; harmonies of

orange and blue, united by yellows and purples (their

derivatives) lit by greenish sparks. The literary part; the

spirit of a living person linked to the spirit of the dead.

Night and Day. (Chipp, 1968)

Here we get an insight into a visual artists separation of

form and content. Gauguin used the word musical todescribe the formal aspects of the work. When visual artists

talk about composition they are focused on the design, the

organization of materials in 2D or 3D space. Composition is

traditionally only one aspect of a visual artwork. The

formalist explorations of the 20thcentury illustrate the desire

by visual artists to achieve a purely musical expression, to

create a visual music by bringing form and content together.

Kandinsky, considered by many to be the father of

modernist abstraction, wrote, A painter, who finds no

satisfaction in mere representation, however artistic, in his

longing to express his inner life, cannot but envy the ease

with which music, the most non-material of arts today

achieves this end. He naturally seeks to apply the methods

of music to his own art. And from this results that modern

desire for rhythm in painting, for mathematical, abstract

construction, for repeated notes of color, for setting color in

motion. (Kandinsky, 1914)

This became truly possible with film. To follow the path

established by traditional music practice, visual music was

formal, abstract and temporal . In the early years of film,

abstract animation was developed by visual artists who

desired to compose visual music. (Russet and Starr, 1976)

The impulse was quickly lost (but never abandoned) in the

Hollywood deluge of character animation and big screen

storytelling. With developments in technology over the past

decade there is a renewed and growing interest in visual

music composition.

Art theorist Rudolph Arnheim says, One of the basic

visual experiences is that of right and wrong. This idea is

the basis of design foundations as taught in most art schools.

(Arnheim, 1966)

Visual rightness is visual consonance. Any

introductory design book talks about how to achieve visual

balance and harmony and good visual composition. (from

Dow, 1899, see Figure 1, to Lauer and Pentak, 1999) From

this premise composing visual music is a simple process. If

rightness is codified and understood, wrongness is easily

created by not being right. Movement from visually wrong

to visually right is a construction of tension/release.

Film and video artists have developed their own

grammars over the past century, and movement from

tension to release is a part of those grammars. The practice

of storyboarding is an example. (Begleiter, 2001) A director

plans a scene as a series of moments, composed as a series

of drawings that guide the eventual motion, framing, and

composition of the picture plane as it changes in time. A

scene is built on phrases that are delineated and cadenced

with moments of visual rightness.

The documentary films of Ken Burns are good examplesof this. (Burns 1990) The camera, under strict motion

control and compositional planning, pans over still

photographs. Motion and picture composition, structured in

phrases, punctuate time with cadences of visual rightness.

The viewer moves through time musically.

Color is another visual dimension available to the visual

music composer. Ideas of color harmony have developed

over the past centuries based on the premise that there is an

Figure 1. Illustration of visual rightness from the book

Compositionby Arthur Wesley Dow, 1899. Dow defines

the image on the left as a motif, and the other four as

variations.



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experience of balance when color combinations reduce to an

experience of neutral. (Cheuvral, 1854 and Albers, 1963)

For example combining a primary and its opposing

secondary color is considered harmonious. When visually

mixed these colors reduce to grey. Grey is the most neutral,

balanced color experience. Moving from weighted to

balanced color spaces can also be effective in moving us

through time in visual space. (Evans 1990)

Consider the 1939 film of The Wizard of Oz. When

Dorothy is safe in the stability of home the film is in black

and white. When she is off on her adventures in Oz the film

is in color. The film returns to neutral black and white at the

end, when Dorothy returns to the comfort and safety of

home. (Baum, 1939)

Codified art foundations in design and color theory are

useful as entry points for those interested in composing

visual music. These foundations were developed empirically

over centuries by practicing visual artists. Over the past

decade there has been significant research in the

neurobiology of vision. This research validates and expands

on these art fundamentals. Our knowledge of how the eyesand the brain process and understand visual information is

growing rapidly. This research offers a fertile field upon

which to continue exploring time-based visual art, and

indicates promising directions for future work. (Zeki, 2000,

and Livingstone, 2002)

4 After FormalismJohn Cage had a different view of musical time. In the

book Silencehe wrote, Music means nothing as a thing.

(Cage, 1958) With his music composition 4' 33" he removes

himself from the modernist viewpoint and loosens up the

idea of musical. He simply frames time by specifyingduration, claiming that all sounds heard in the specified

duration. whatever they may be, are the musical materials of

the piece.

Again, the fundamental dimension of music (sonic or

visual) is time. In truth, the most fundamental dimension of

experience is time. (It is odd that some art schools are

introducing time into their foundation courses, calling it 4D,

as an afterthought to two and three dimensional work. Of

course for human experience, time is the first dimension as

none of the other dimensions exist for us without it.)

We understand the world through signals received

through the senses. We are able to make sense of the world

because the signals are structured. Perceptions of sound and

light are built from the reception of waves (patterns) of

changing air pressure and electro-magnetic energy. Hence

pattern is axiomatic for experience, for life. For us, time

passes as the experience of patterns. Experienced time is by

definition musical. The set of possibilities is infinitely large

for time-based art.

Formalist ideas of music composition give us a basis for

entering visual space with musical intent. We can learn

much from the traditions of all art forms, as in the end they

are all time-based. Western music tradition is a well-

codified and understood practice and can provide guidance

in the creation of visual music work. Whether formalism

can succeed as an end in itself continues to be debated. It

does continue to be of value as a technique, a device of

construction, and a basis for exploring visual music

composition.

Technology has opened visual space to composers

interested in expanding their musical ideas into new media.

Fundamentals of music composition can be easily mapped

into time-based visual design and new avenues of musical

expression are possible. As Morton Feldman once

commented to Cage, on realizing the new possibilities that

had opened up for composers in the early post WWII years,

Now that things are so simple, theres so much to do.

ReferencesArnheim, R. (1966). A review of proportion,Module,

Albers, J. (1963)Interaction of Color. New Haven, CT: YaleBaum, L. F. (1939). The Wizard of Oz. Warner Studios. (Motion

Picture)

Begleiter, M. (2001). From Word to Image, Storyboarding and the

Filmmaking Process. Studio City, California: Michael Wiese

Productions.

Bell, C. (1914).Art. London.

Burns, K. (1990).A Civil WarA Film by Ken Burns. PBS Home

Video.

Cage, J. (1980) Silence. Wesleyan, CT: Wesleyan University

Press.

Cheuvral, M. E. (1854). The Principles of Harmony and Contrast

of Colors and their Applications to the Artst. West Chester,

Pennsylvania: Schiffer Publishing Ltd.

Chipp Herschel B. (1968). Theories of Modern Art. Berkely and

Los Angeles, California: University of California Press.Dow, A. W. (1899) Composition. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.

Eggling, V. (1923)Diagonal Symphony: Rhythm 21. Germany.

(Motion Picture).

Evans, B. (1990). Temporal Coherence with Digital Color.

Digital ImageDigital Cinema, SIGGRAPH 90, Art Show

Catalog, LEONARDO, Supplemental Issue. London: Pergamon

Press

Evans, B. (2002). limosa. Tuscaloosa, AL. (Music Animation).

Kandinsky, W. (1914). The Art of Spiritual Harmony. London:

Constable and Company, Ltd.

Livingstone, M. (2002). Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing.

New York: Henry N. Abrams.

Lauer, D. and Pentak S. (1999).Design Basics. Orlando: Harcourt

Brace and Company.

Miller, D. (2002). Vis a Vis. Boston, MA. (Music Animation).Russett, R. and Starr C. (1976).Experimental Animation. New

York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company.

Stravinsky, I. (1956). The Poetics of Music in the Form of Six

Lessons. New York: Vintage Books.

Whitney, J. (1980)Digital Harmony. Peterborough, NH: McGraw-

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Zeki, S. (2000)Inner Vision, An Exploration of Art and the Brain,

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