From “colour music” to digital art

Posté par admin
jeudi 08 juin 2006 [n° 1272]

“Colour music” theory

If we had ability to watch air during the concert, while it oscillates, simultaneously influenced by different voices and instruments, we would see with great surprise very alive and nicely organized colors in it.

A. Kircher

“An old dream to find an algorithm of transformation of audible music into sort of ‘music of colors’ relates to the same category. The first attempts in that direction had been made as early as in XVI-XVII century by the Italian artist D. Archimboldo and the German philosopher A. Kircher. Let’s note that the analogies between colors and musical tones were drawn long before that, in Ancient East cultures. But ancient people never thought of creating news sort of art (‘music for eyes,’ ‘music of colors’) on the basis if that analogy. This idea is a product of later European rationalistic thinking. One of its most active protagonists was scientist-monk L.B. Castel (1688-1757), who was fascinated by A. Kircher’s dream ‘that the air should sparkle in various under the influence of music.’ To realize this dream, Castel turned to the analogy ‘spectrum-octave’ proposed by his contemporary, the great physicist Isaac Newton. Following the ancient Greeks, Newton attached mystic sense to the digit ’7′ (and Greeks borrowed such sense from the structure of octave). For this reason, he divided a spectrum into 7 parts, though in many European countries not 7, but 5 main colors are discerned up to now. Later on, Newton admitted that he had fallen a prey to the analogy that was false even from merely physical point of view. As for Castel, he was admired for that simplest analogy-’seven tones’ / ‘seven colors’-and put forward an idea of ‘color harpsichord,’ enabling even the tone death to perceive music.” 1

Read more on history of “colour music” theory : 2

Alexandre Scriabin : le poème du feu

Alexander Scriabin 3‘s “Symphony No 5 – Prométhée, le poème du feu, Op. 60″

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Aleksandr Scriabin intended Prometheus: The Poem of Fire (1910) to be accompanied by a light show. Alexander Wallace Rimington performed live color music in London at about this time. Claude Bragdon and Thomas Wilfred in New York created keyboard instruments for the live performance of color music in the 1920′s. In the same period, color music compositions in the form of animated films were laboriously made by Arnaldo Ginna and Bruno Corra in Italy, and Oskar Fischinger in Germany.4

Musique de la couleur

Le clavecin pour les yeux du père Castel par Jean-Marc Warszawski (www.musicologie.org)

Castel Louis-Bertrand (1688-1757) France

The Dream of Color Music, And Machines That Made it Possible Animation World Magazine, Issue 2.1, April 1997 by William Moritz

Sons & Lumieres
A History of Sound in the Art of the 20th Century
22 September 2004 – 3 January 2005
Gallery 1, Level 6 at the Centre Pompidou is the largest event devoted to the relationship between music / sound and 20th century

Son et Lumières : une histoire du son dans l’art du XX siècle (pdf) Centre Pompidou septembre 2004

Introduction à l’histoire et à l’esthétique des musiques électroacoustiques Bruno Bossis (Unesco) pdf

Les pionniers du son synthétique au cinéma, LANGLOIS, Philippe 1999, Les Cahiers de l’OMF, No. 4. Paris: Observatoire Musical Français: 23-33.

Le son du cinéma avant 1948

EARS Electro Acoustic Resource Site (UK)

The Painting of Sounds, Noises and Smells by Carlo Carrà

Colour and Sound Visual Music by Maura McDonnell (2002)

“Integral cinema”

“Integral Cinema, as Germaine Dulac (1882-1942) 5 called it — and none of the other terms for this genre (“Avant-Garde Film”, “Experimental Film”, “Art Film”, “Visionary Film”, “Underground Film”, “Film as Film”) seems better — falls into two general categories: those using conventional cinematography to record and represent live people and situations (often imaginatively edited in an anti-realistic way), and those “abstract” films which use animation, direct handling of the film-strip, distorting lenses, superimposition, focus and other devices to create imagery that does not represent external realities but rather posits a new, special world of its own experience”.

Color Music: Integral Cinema Dr. William Moritz 6

Oskar Fischinger (1900-1967)


“Oskar Fischinger is one of the greatest artists of the 20th century, embracing the abstraction that became the major art movement of that century, and exploring the new technology of the cinema to open abstract painting into a new Visual Music that performs in liquid time.”

Greg Ford

Decades before computer graphics, before music videos, even before “Fantasia” (the 1940 version), there were the abstract animated films of Oskar Fischinger (1900-1967), master of “absolute” or nonobjective filmmaking. He was cinema’s Kandinsky, an animator who, beginning in the 1920′s in Germany, created exquisite “visual music” using geometric patterns and shapes choreographed tightly to classical music and jazz. (John Canemaker)

The first known simultaneous performance of abstract film, color organ light projections, and music was that of Hungarian composer Alexander László and Oskar Fischinger, in March 1926. 7

By painting the optical soundtrack for «Tönende Ornamente» by hand, in 1932 Fischinger attempted to prove that there is an aesthetic correspondence between visual and acoustic forms.

Ben Laposky, a pioneer in electronic art

Ben F. Laposky (1914-2000) was a mathematician and artist from Cherokee, Iowa, best known as one of the earliest computer art innovators. In 1950, he created the first graphic images generated by an electronic (analog) machine.

His electronic oscilloscope imagery was produced by manipulated electronic beams displayed across the fluorescent face of an oscilloscope’s cathode-ray tube and then recorded onto high-speed film. He called his oscillographic artworks ‘oscillons‘ and ‘electronic abstractions‘. The mathematical curves that were created by this method were similar to the lissajous wave form. 8

“New forms and techniques of art for the space age may involve physical forces and ideas, as well as materials and procedures from technology. Such a new approach to abstract design is that shown here in the electronic abstractions or oscillons. 9

Moholy-Nagy, one the leaders of the Bauhaus movement in Germany , has stated in Vision in Motion that “most of the visual work in the future lies with the ‘light-painter’.”

Moholy-Nagy continues: “He will have the scientific knowledge of the physicist and the technological skill of the engineer, coupled with his own imagination, creative intuition and emotional intensity.” Electronic abstractions are a form of painting in light, traced on the fluorescent face of the cathode-ray tube of an oscilloscope by the moving electron beam.” 10

Digital Art

VJ Bertranol (aka Bertrand Gondouin) creates club visuals and video installations using custom real-time 3D graphic software. A unique visual experience ! He is influenced by the work of pioneers such as Ben F. Laposky, Larry Cuba, Oskar Fischinger 11, László Moholy-Nagy and Norman McLaren. [read more]

__________________________________________

The Museum of World Culture, Göteborg, Sweden : intro
by VJ Bertranol

Media Art visual design Media Art Net


  1. Light-sound Musical Harmony: An Elementary Theory of Audio-Visual Stimuli by V.V. Afanasjev Muzyka Publishers, Moscow, 2002
    72 pp., ISBN 5-7140-1225-9. Reviewed by Bulat M. Galeyev
    Kazan State Technical University Academy of Sciences of Tatarstan [back]
  2. COLOR SPACE PERIOD (from 450 BC to 1860)

    ON THE NATURAL PHILOSOPHY CONCEPTIONS OF “MUSIC VISION”. B.Galeyev

    The History of Animation

    Visual music : sometimes called “color music”, refers to methods or devices which can translate sounds into a related visual presentation. It also refers to the use of musical structures in visual imagery, which can include silent films or silent Lumia work.

    COLORED MUSIC Historic background and perspectives Tatiana Tchouvileva and Giuseppe Caglioti

    Visual Music Hirshhorn Museum [back]

  3. Alexandre Scriabine compositeur russe né le 6 janvier 1872 à Moscou, mort le 27 avril 1915 à Moscou IRCAM [back]
  4. MIMI and the Illuminati: Notesback]
  5. Jusqu’à présent, la connaissance de son oeuvre a été limitée à deux ou trois films, notamment la Fête espagnole (1919) d’après un livret de Louis Delluc, la Souriante Madame Beudet (1923) d’après une pièce d’André Obey, et la Coquille et le Clergyman (1927) d’après une scénario d’Antonin Artaud, respectivement considérés comme le premier film impressionniste, le premier film féministe et le premier film surréaliste.
    The Importance of Being a Film Author:Germaine Dulac
    and Female Authorship     by Rosanna Maule
    Siclier, Jacques. “Cinématique française: Le cinéma français des années 20 — La première nouvelle vague.” Le Monde, Section: Monde des arts et des spectacles (5 juillet 1990) [back]
  6. Moritz, William. “Musique de la Couleur – Cinéma Intégral (Color Music – Integral Cinema).” Poétique de la Couleur. Paris: Musée du Louvre, 1995, 9-13. [back]
  7. “Space Light Art” – Early Abstract Cinema and Multimedia, 1900-1959 (EXCERPT) by Cindy Keefer [back]
  8. see : an essay by Laposky on his work is published in Ruth Leavitt’s Artist and Computer, Harmony Press, 1976 [back]
  9. BEN F. LAPOSKY OSCILLONS: ELECTRONIC ABSTRACTIONS atariarchives.org [back]
  10. This is from Electronic Abstracts – Art for the Space Age , from the Proceedings of The Iowa Academy of Science, 1958 – Ben F. Laposky the 1953 electronic abstractions exhibition: restaged and remixed Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago Kemper Room Art Gallery, Paul V. Galvin Library April 13 through September 16, 2006 [back]
  11. En 1925, Fischinger travaille également avec Laszlo Moholy-Nagy -qui vient de publier son ouvrage Farblichtmusik (musique-lumière-couleur). Ensemble, ils cherchent à élaborer un orgue qui associerait couleur et musique. Cette collaboration aboutira à la présentation du Sonochromatoscop au Künstlerfest de Kiel (festival des artistes), une sorte de projecteur qui utilisait à la fois le son et la lumière. Il collabora également avec Fritz Lang pour la réalisation des effets spéciaux sur son célèbre film Frau Im Mond (1929). Oskar Fischinger Gelnhausen, Allemagne, 1900 – Los Angeles Californie, Etats-Unis 1967 par Philippe Langlois [back]
Art, Cinema

Si vous avez apprécié cet article, s'il vous plait, prenez le temps de laisser un commentaire ou de souscrire au flux afin de recevoir les futurs articles directement dans votre lecteur de flux.

Commentaires

Pas encore de commentaire.

Laisser un commentaire

(requis)

(requis)




Navigation : Home » Art, Cinema » Blog article: From “colour music” to digital art