Creating Affective Visual Music

This paper delineates the on-going development of a methodology for creating affective visual music. Visual music is a creative practice that does not split the eye and ear; it problematizes this long-standing duality and seeks to make a singularity. Visual music encompasses many types of output: abstract paintings, time-based performance art such as colour organs, abstract film, projected light shows, art installations of film and expanded cinema (digital media). The impulse to find correspondences between music and visuals and use these to create a new genre has a long history. This practice-based research is historicised and highlights both the key seminal influences underpinning the work and the innovations embodied within it. This paper will discuss experimental, visual music pieces from my own practice (Watkins 2016, 2017, 2018) that employ Ron Kuivila’s strategy ‘over’ technology and seminal works from the visual music canon. Visual music is often approached from the viewpoint of a musical composer, this practice-based research is visually led; visual structures, rather than musical structures, are explored. Visual music can be perceived as overly repetitive, cold and alienating if it has a purely mechanical alignment of music to image, or if it seems disengaged from both human emotions and natural imagery. A key objective is to create work that is non-figurative, non-narrative, pre-language, extra-language, and yet suffused with human presence, to create visual music that is affective.

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Author and article information

Contributors

Watkins Julie

Conference

Publication date: July 2018

Publication date (Print): July 2018

Pages: 374-381

Affiliations

[0001]University of Greenwich

Stockwell Street, Park Row

London SE10 9LS, UK

Article

DOI: 10.14236/ewic/EVA2018.70

SO-VID: ba3da6bb-5ae5-4492-a266-3cdb464df2dd

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Conference name: Electronic Visualisation and the Arts

Conference acronym: EVA

Conference number:

Conference location: London, UK

Conference date: 9 - 13 July 2018

Conference sponsor: Electronic Workshops in Computing (eWiC)

Conference theme: Electronic Visualisation and the Arts

History

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1477-9358 BCS Learning & Development

Self URI (article page): https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.14236/ewic/EVA2018.70

Self URI (journal page): https://ewic.bcs.org/

REFERENCES

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F. Collopy 2006 Playing (with) Color Glimpse: The Art and Science of Seeing 2 3, 62 67
A. Cox 2001 The Mimetic Hypothesis and Embodied Musical Meaning Musicae Scientiae 5 2, 195 212 http://doi.org/10.1177/102986490100500204
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G. DeleuzeF. Guattari 1987 A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia University of Minnesota Press Minneapolis
T EerolaA. FribergR. Bresin 2013 Emotional expression in music: contribution, linearity, and additivity of primary musical cues Frontiers in Psychology 4
Tuomas EerolaJ. K. VuoskoskiH–R. PeltolaV. PutkinenK. Schäfer 2017 An Integrative Review of the Enjoyment of Sadness Associated with Music Physics of Life Reviews http://doi.org/10.1016/j.plrev.2017.11.016
R. B. Elder 2010 Harmony and Dissent: Film and avant-garde art movements in the early twentieth century Wilfrid Laurier University Press
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J. FauvelR. FloodR. J. Wilson 2006 Music and Mathematics: From Pythagoras to Fractals OUP
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R. KuivilaD. Behrman 1998 Composing with Shifting Sand: A Conversation between Ron Kuivila and David Behrman on electronic music and the ephemerality of technology Leonardo Music Journal 8 13. http://doi.org/10.2307/1513392
P. LaukkaT. EerolaN. S. ThingujamT. YamasakiG. Beller 2013 Universal and Culture–specific Factors in the Recognition and Performance of Musical Affect Expressions Emotion 13 3, 434 449 http://doi.org/10.1037/a0031388
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T. Wilfred 1947 Light and The Artist Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 5 4, 247 255
G. Youngblood 1970 Expanded cinema (1st ed.). New York Dutton

Comments

Comment on this article

[1] H. AksnesR. GodøyT. KvifteE. Ruud 2007 The Musical Gestures Project 2004–2007 http://doi.org/10.1.1.590.8793

[2] K. BrougherO. Mattis 2005 Visual music: synaesthesia in art and music since 1900 Thames and Hudson London

[3] F. Collopy 2006 Playing (with) Color Glimpse: The Art and Science of Seeing 2 3, 62 67

[4] A. Cox 2001 The Mimetic Hypothesis and Embodied Musical Meaning Musicae Scientiae 5 2, 195 212 http://doi.org/10.1177/102986490100500204

[5] G. DeleuzeA. Boyman 2002 Pure immanence: essays on a life (2. print). Zone Books New York

[6] G. DeleuzeF. Guattari 1987 A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia University of Minnesota Press Minneapolis

[7] T EerolaA. FribergR. Bresin 2013 Emotional expression in music: contribution, linearity, and additivity of primary musical cues Frontiers in Psychology 4

[8] Tuomas EerolaJ. K. VuoskoskiH–R. PeltolaV. PutkinenK. Schäfer 2017 An Integrative Review of the Enjoyment of Sadness Associated with Music Physics of Life Reviews http://doi.org/10.1016/j.plrev.2017.11.016

[9] R. B. Elder 2010 Harmony and Dissent: Film and avant-garde art movements in the early twentieth century Wilfrid Laurier University Press

[10] P. Fara 2015 Newton Shows the Light: a commentary on Newton 1672 “A letter... containing his new theory about light and colours...” Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A 373 2039, 20140213 http://doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2014.0213

[11] J. FauvelR. FloodR. J. Wilson 2006 Music and Mathematics: From Pythagoras to Fractals OUP

[12] D. FreedbergV. Gallese 2007 Motion, Emotion and Empathy in Esthetic Experience Trends in Cognitive Sciences 11 5, 197 203 http://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2007.02.003

[13] V. GalleseA. Goldman 1998 Mirror Neurons and the Simulation Theory of Mind–reading Trends in Cognitive Sciences 2 12, 493 501

[14] D. Garro 2005 A Glow on Pythagoras' Curtain: A composer's perspective on electroacoustic music with video http://www.ems-network.org/spip.php?article169 (retrieved 26 March 2018

[15] F. HeiderM. Simmel 1944 An Experimental Study of Apparent Behavior The American Journal of Psychology 57 2, 243 http://doi.org/10.2307/1416950

[16] P. N. JuslinP. Laukka 2003 Communication of emotions in vocal expression and music performance: Different channels, same code? Psychological Bulletin 129 5, 770 814 http://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.129.5.770

[17] Y. Kaduri (ed.). 2016 The Oxford Handbook of Sound and Image in Western Art OUP New York

[18] W. Kandinsky 1977 Concerning the Spiritual in Art Dover Publications New York

[19] R. KuivilaD. Behrman 1998 Composing with Shifting Sand: A Conversation between Ron Kuivila and David Behrman on electronic music and the ephemerality of technology Leonardo Music Journal 8 13. http://doi.org/10.2307/1513392

[20] P. LaukkaT. EerolaN. S. ThingujamT. YamasakiG. Beller 2013 Universal and Culture–specific Factors in the Recognition and Performance of Musical Affect Expressions Emotion 13 3, 434 449 http://doi.org/10.1037/a0031388

[21] M Le Grice. 2009 Experimental Cinema in the Digital Age (1. publ., reprinted) BFI London

[22] C. LundH. Lund (eds.). 2009 Audio Visual: On visual music and related media Arnoldsche Art Stuttgart

[23] L. Lye 1937 Trade Tattoo [DVD]. BFI

[24] N. McLaren 1970 Synchromy [DVD]. The National Film Board of Canada

[25] J. MoritaY. NagaiT. Moritsu 2013 Relations between Body Motion and Emotion: Analysis based on Laban Movement Analysis In Proceedings of the 35th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 1026 1031). http://csjarchive.cogsci.rpi.edu/Proceedings/2013/papers/0202/paper0202.pdf (retrieved 26 March 2018

[26] W. Mortiz 1998 CVM Moritz Some Observations http://www.centerforvisualmusic.org/library/ObservNonObj.htm (retrieved 26 March 2018

[27] K. OrgemanJ. TurrellM. Borgen 2017 Lumia: Thomas Wilfred and the art of light Yale University Art Gallery New Haven, CT

[28] K. Peacock 1988 Instruments to Perform Color–Music: Two Centruries of Technological Experiementation Leonardo 21 397 406

[29] O. Sacks 2006 The Power of Music Brain 129 10, 2528 2532 http://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awl234

[30] E. Shouse 2005 Feeling, Emotion, Affect M/C Journal 8 6. http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0512/03-shouse.php (retrieved 26 March 2018

[31] J. ThayerR. Levinson 1983 Effects of Music on Psychophysiological Responses to a Stressful Film Psychomusicology: A Journal of Research in Music Cognition 3 1, 44 52

[32] S. S. TomkinsE. V. Demos 1995 Exploring Affect: the selected writings of Silvan S. Tomkins Editions de la Maison des sciences de l'homme Cambridge

[33] B. Truax 1996 Soundscape, Acoustic Communication and Environmental Sound Composition Contemporary Music Review 15 1-2, 49 65

[34] J. Watkins 2018 Composing Visual Music: Visual music practice at the intersection of technology, audio–visual rhythms and human traces Body, Space and Technology Journal

[35] J. Whitney 1980 Digital Harmony: On the complementarity of music and visual art Byte Books Peterborough, NH

[36] J. Whitney 1990 John Whitney Visionary [Online]. http://www.davidem.com/2017/03/10/john-whitney-visionary/ (retrieved 26 March 2018

[37] T. Wilfred 1947 Light and The Artist Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 5 4, 247 255

[38] G. Youngblood 1970 Expanded cinema (1st ed.). New York Dutton

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