For one person this post will make the postcard they received make much more sense; for the rest well here is a little background story of a portion of my life from the past year.
Music is an audible art; you don't see it but you know it is there. You can even feel it sometime, for example: you are sitting in an amphitheater and the orchestra reaches the climax of the symphony and the notes match the rhythm of your heartbeat or there is the time you think you will get a concussion or brain trauma by just being in the proximity of the car next to you blasting their mega speakers to announce to the world that their car is important to them....no?
Nevertheless, they say music can inspire us (who are "they" I don't know, but "they" are on to something). I'll have to agree that music can be inspiring. Now, what is its relationship to the visual arts? A song, like a painting, is communicating some idea, emotion, dream, event, etc. It takes a sense of timing, rhythm and even composition of varying notes to create an evoking song. There are rules and some rules meant to be broken. There are many other similarities I have noticed that I could list.
Music is an inspiration for visual art just as looking at a painting can inspire a sculpture or another painting. I have experienced this myself. My artwork reflects the music I listen to or really the music I listen to has an impression on me. Sometimes I know it; sometimes I don't figure it out until I'm drawing red hot chili peppers...just kidding. But to continue, the buzz of the studio music, even though I am not "listening" to the lyrics some how those lyrics infiltrate the artwork. One band, in particular, has influenced my work: Dark Dark Dark.
Dark Dark Dark worked its way into my studio playlist by showing up on my Facebook recent updates. A California friend had posted that they liked the band. Then I find out that another friend from NY liked the band and knew a few of the band members from school. This got my interest along with the interesting melodies the sextet was creating. A couple weeks passed and I got into an internship that I applied for in San Jose, through the advice of the NY friend. DDD wasn't on my mind until I looked at the intern itinerary. Guess who was on the list of performing artists? And since when was a music band a performing art piece? So I had to check out the band website at this point. The stars were in alignment (you could say); the band was touring CA and was going to be in Chico, CA at the end of July. I was there.
I saw the band in Chico; an amazing intimate atmosphere of ghostly harmony. It wasn't until San Jose did I start to understand the performance aspect of the bands work. DDD performed a live soundtrack to the remixed film Floodtide (I posted information about the film below). But that "performance" was just the beginning. I have been listening to Dark Dark Dark for over a year now. I noticed my work has reflected the escapist/ dream-like ideas that they communicate in their music.
"Think of a place I would go,
I’m daydreamin’,
Where the sycamore grow,
I’m daydreamin’,
And oh if you knew what it meant to me,
Where the air was so clear,
Oh if you knew what it meant to me,
Anywhere but here."~ Daydreaming by Dark Dark Dark
My mind started to wrap around the purpose of the music while I contemplated the purpose of my own art making. I recalled the Chico concert noticed something about the songs beyond the words. Each instrument was an individual voice/tone. The performance came when each voice: cello, accordion, clarinet, stand-up bass, trumpet, piano, guitar; created a dialogue: the song. One instrument would be lifted up by another while each kept its own voice. The musicians were in a melodic community.
"Celebrate" by Dark Dark Dark
Dark Dark Dark acted as the cast for the this film. I saw a remix version (a bond between visual and performance arts) of the film in San Jose at 01SJ 2010.
FLOODTIDE:
"It was the summer the gas stations closed. The summer they played music in the old mill. The summer they built a boat. The summer they left.
Flood Tide is a road movie on a river. It tells the story of four musicians who create extraordinary boats out of ordinary junk and set out for open water, fueled by dreams, desperation and a sense of adventure.
The film’s quiet narrative unfolds through fragments of memories, songs, letters and diary entries. Characters played by non-actors from the bands Dark Dark Dark and Fall Harbor chase jobs, dig through the past, and eventually, float out of town in an attempt to escape a life that doesn’t make sense. They drift past empty new condo developments, anchor to explore crumbling castles and swim in iridescent green quarries. They get stopped by torrents of rain and groaning, broken down motors.
Flood Tide follows an unpredictable voyage down a strange and meandering river, a search for a new life along a polluted estuary that flows both ways.
Flood Tide is a collaboration with the Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea, a project started by the artist Swoon and built by an eclectic group of artists and performers. In the summer of 2008, the crew built and floated seven large, boat-sculptures down the Hudson River, putting on performances in towns along the way. While documenting the real life journey, Flood Tide is a work of fiction that uses the voyage as its centerpiece."
FLOOD TIDE (TEASER) from flood tide on Vimeo.
Adding to the influence DDD's music on my art, I happened to pick up a book that the band had been published in. It was an art book called Swoon by Swoon. Who is Swoon? It turns out Swoon is a prominent printmaker, installation, and performance artist in New York. As you read the above statement about Floodtide, Swoon was the main figure in the collaborative project, Swimming Cities of Switchback Seas. So what does this all mean. Well at the time I was in a major crunch period to figure out what I was going to do for my Junior exhibition at the same time I was taking Printmaking I. The book and the images in it came at the perfect time, all while I was listening to Dark Dark Dark. To keep the story a little shorter, my work became influence formally through the printmaking of Swoon, who I heard about through a music group called Dark Dark Dark, who I heard about through a friend, which that friend advised me to check out the internship that DDD was at, which the performance included the collaborative project Swoon was part-taking in. (take a breath) Fate or just an awesome adventure that seems to be ongoing.
So, what does this all mean? I guess that the more I've looked at artwork, film, tv, music, plants, math, history.....um...everything, my work is influenced by what I look at/hear and sometimes I don't even realize it. Another part about this whole story is the idea of collaboration. The collaboration of people/ artists is rare to come by. But like the band, each person can be lifted up by another while maintaining his or her unique voice/story. So whether it was destined for me to learn a life lesson through music or just get a taste for the possibility of community with similarly minded people, it is an adventure nonetheless.
Here is another team that has a collaborative project of visual performance art.
Zoe Keating (cellist) and Robert Hodgin (animator) performing together. The animation adapts to the cello in a live collaborative performance.
Robert Hodgin from Teo on Vimeo.
Jessica
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