Painting sound : an investigation of the relationship between the motions of sound and abstract painting

Abstract

Throughout history but particularly in the last two centuries attempts have been made to associate music (sound) and visual arts (space) with respect to both figurative and abstract components. Such artists include Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Morgan Russell and Roy De Maistre. Composers who tried to relate this context are many but particularly Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky, Arnold Schonberg and John Cage. The project attempts to transpose the basic rules of music (notes, rhythm and so on) into paintings on a structural basis; notes are transposed into colours which are proportional to their frequencies thus providing a structure for abstract paintings that are interpreted as pieces of music. There is a belief that music like art is created from the depths of one‘s inner self and the purest way to express this is in an abstract image and as in music, colour can act directly upon emotions. The student is interested to demonstrate the relationship between the visual and the aural arts as these share tangible similarities that overlap and are transferable from one discipline to another. They can transmit the same emotional content to an audience. The main question on which the student ponders is whether a painted image can be played musically. There are a number of artists that experimented with code-colour-music and carried out investigations regarding converting an existing piece of music or a song into painting. Though the works of these artists are intriguing and aesthetically pleasing, few of these artists approached this matter in a structured manner. Furthermore, there is little evidence to demonstrate that any of these artists tried to play a song from an extant painting using their codes. From this research can one decipher the differences in genre: jazz, blues, pop, rock, heavy metal and give these same feelings to the paintings linked? And can such research be developed further by individuals following in this direction. This research investigates the direct relations between sound and mark making where the present student proposes to replace his paintbrush with symbols denoting musical/sound notes. This is explained in Chapter 3- The Project.