Variation and Unpredictability

Shifting currents in a stream, variations in the geometric shapes of flocks of birds in flight, changing weather conditions, cloud formations undergoing metamorphosis: these are patterns that are perceptible and expected but cannot be foreseen. 

Similarly, auditory phenomena encountered while in transit through various environments and settings may be conspicuous as having these qualities, if one but takes the opportunity to listen.

Such inconstant elements are among the distinguishing features of musical arrangements in the transformation ambient mode.  Along with the predominance of tones and textures, elusive turns and displacements in variable combinations of patterns contribute to the peculiar and perceptually striking nature of these works.

Fire, Warmth, Light

Music may impose itself upon the listener, draw the listener in, or exist as a part of the listening environment, with the potential to be engaged in varying degrees by the listener.

Times, settings, and temperaments of artist and audience form the listening experience as well as the sounds themselves, each aspect contributing to the total effect of a performance or recording. 

The responsibility of the artist to the listener, however, is the obligation of the artist to the art.

Gesture, Word, Tone

Meaning is conveyed through signs, signals and symbols.   Combined, they may communicate with continually increasing subtlety and complexity.

Archetypal meanings deeply rooted in the human psyche are associated with sounds. Perceptions prehistoric cultures associated with sounds-- bright and sharp, deep, ethereal, portentous or ominous, clashing, roaring, divinely or mystically strange-- resonate in modern consciousness.

As poetry communicates on many levels of meaning at once, so the symphonic tone poem suggests myriad levels of musical and emotional meaning, and that is the simple intent of my work with transformation ambient and sketch compositions in an electronic setting as well.

Vibration and Illumination

A sense of equilibrium in an artistic expression reflects a balance between opposing forces.

It is a condition uniting diverse and unexpected connections.  Spontaneity and restraint, for example, produce outcomes in combination unlike those they produce alone.  Light and shadow, density and sparseness, and contrasting tones and textures act in juxtaposition to create a unity of effect, whether serene or surreal, sensual or cerebral, vague, clear, or otherwise discernible.

Impressions of this nature represent a different order of seeing and listening, one that is simple yet not predictable, nor dulled by the frenetic and the mundane, but free of limits and barriers to a wider range of aesthetic experience.

Vision and Force, Being and Expression

Artists think for themselves. 

To the work alone, in idea and act, is the will surrendered.

Meaning Among Motifs

Assemblages of sensations.

Fragments of agreeable conversation. Icicles dripping, salt air, crackling firelight, clouds rushing past a full moon.  Fragrance of turned earth, echo of subway tunnel, oily textured lemon wedge, flight and calls of geese, beads of rain on iron rails. 

Sounds to call these to mind, in patterns that let them dance.

Tone Language

Expression manifests and communicates through various mediums, the processes of each informing and shaping the expression in unique ways.

Personal and subjective expressions, that is to say, those gestures reserved for close and informal relationships, contrast sharply with expressions of public opinion of a political or cultural nature, and neither bears any resemblance to impersonal expressions of art as representations of reality.

Mediums of expression include the visual and plastic arts, dance and performance arts, speech, poetry, the written word, and musical forms, established and unorthodox.

Tone in sound and tone of human voice communicate in the same ways, and the language of tone itself embodies meaning beyond the limits of spoken language.  This is expression of force and its application in sound art, as initiated through tone and its combinations in texture, regardless of manner, technique, or the means by which it is produced.