2nd Reflective Post

Evaluation – Experience and Expression

I have once again realised the importance of process in my practice. It is the experimentation and energy that are the interesting aspects of my work rather than solid final outcomes and something I should embrace.

With this project I think it is the journey and combination of works which is powerful rather than final products. It is the personal musical experience which matters to me and it is the experience of making different outcomes which begin to capture the aura of music, visually.

My initial visual creations were collage. They were created in my personal bubble and are a method of image making I am very comfortable with. I often use collage as an alternative to creating sketchbook roughs. They acts as a mood board for colour. They are rough, tactile and a balance between considered and intuitive. They proved their purpose here and broke down the barrier between words and visuals, getting me to listen and consider the different elements of songs. I started to visualize how I can communicate the patterns of sound through different materials, sizes and shapes, however there was a large number of mixed media used which is way too complicated.

Inspired by research in performance responses to music, I began responded to music through tap dancing. It is a natural way that I express myself and a way of exerting my rhythmic responses to songs. I chose songs from my top 10 list and improvised, spontaneously letting my feet guide the responses. I videoed these, allowing the viewer to see into my intimate and personal musical experience. I also noted that this footage could become useful for applying to other media.

I then took the tap dancing further and combined image making with movement and danced in paint. This created a “map” of my musical experience as a painted/completed product. Filming captured the movement of the experience. My feet had created their own visual language through the duration of the piece. They are visually interesting paintings however the use of colour wasn’t well considered due to limited resources and the speed of choosing the colour in the moment. I think they could have been bigger and this would have made the images less dense and the footprints could have more purpose.

I then explored how I could capture the rhythm of the songs through creating my own musical visual language, experimental music notation. I wanted to take the colour out of the imagery and solely focus on capturing the different sound elements of the songs. This was through drumming with paint brushes and expressing the shapes which were appropriate to each instrument. These were deep, raw and honest expressions of music. They were not considered, purely felt and created in that musical moment. 

These paintings are essentially the ammunition for the rest of my project, they have got the ball rolling!

Ideas for outcomes

- Take my rhythm visualisations and add duration to them, put them in time. Create a long progression which can be turned into something like a publication but captures the travel and change over the song, rather than a static snapshot which has its own importance but doesn't portray the embodied journey effectively.

- Colour is important to musical experiences. How can I add colour? Through print? Screen print with multiple colours? Riso is an immediate form of print...?

- Add substance to my exploration by reading around the subject of visualising music, Not necessarily music art books but the theories of musical psychology and visualising the senses

- Find merchandise and ways that I could apply my visualisations to within the music industry. Who is my audience? Music enthusiasts, music industry, bands, fans.

- Slow shutter speed (motion camera shots). Could take these at gigs and live musical performances of the bands. Could take them of me tap dancing in response to my bands, capturing the whole movement. Could then develop these and overlay them with artwork. Could drum and rhythm paint directly onto them, capturing a multi-dimensional expression.