Connectivity II

Expression takes countless forms.  Each interacts with all.

In the arts, for example, dance inspired by music may influence poetry, painting, and other forms.

These, in turn, breathe life into artistic perspectives in continuous flux.

The art of sound can move in any direction. One may compose in ways that reflect abstract expressionism and impressionist landscape painting, and with equal vigor and beauty.

What moves the artist is what the artist brings into being.

Shadows and Virtues

Music's existence is intimately connected to the evolution of culture.

It will not remain static; it conveys meaning according to the way it is perceived.  It cannot remain bound to ideas and expressions that lose cultural vitality.

Even so, individual imagination and vision are essential to the directions and outcomes toward which the arts of sound are impelled.

Sensibility, Purpose, Integrity

The finely delineated and intricately wrought are revolutionary in aspect.

Nuance and subtlety in sound, like considerate manners and moderate language in relationships, reflect radical indifference to a predominate coarseness in cultural affairs exemplified by reflexive crudity in discourse and melodramatic bombast in music.

Technology, while increasingly sophisticated in refinement and potential, yet conveys much that is backward and pointless, benighted, predictable, and intolerably boring.  Though intrinsic to the cultural landscape, these expressions are not the sole measurements of what is possible.

The creative artist need not be bound by such limits.

Sound and Time

Environmental sounds, whether in urban areas or in wilderness settings, appear random-- but this is not so.

The observer will note clear patterns in terms of cause and effect over extended periods of time.

Numerous developments occur as night takes the place of day and seasons come and go.  Most of these sounds will take cyclical forms, as in the cases of traffic movements and the ebb and flow of tides.  Some are easily predictable while others exist only briefly and are apparently disconnected from the general course of events.

To represent such sounds and their movements in musical form it is necessary to set aside temporal considerations to the greatest extent possible.  All things rise and fall as part of a greater reality in which beginnings and endings are of little consequence, and minutes, hours, days and years are simply measurements for the sake of human convenience.

Reflecting the Real

Music and sound design create stylized sonic impressions of emotions, ideas, narratives, and settings.

While many aesthetically pleasing works may be overly idealized or romanticized in concept, thus offering escapist fare, the discriminating listener easily loses interest in the superficial singularity of focus such works often demonstrate.  Creative activity as well as that of a more contemplative nature is better served by more than pleasant diversion in listening.

The way of the artist is to engage, to evoke, to illuminate and to inspire perception in terms of authentic experience, by connecting with the real life of the listener.

Observation and Approach

The symphonic tone poem and the transformational ambient design for electronics share certain similarities conceptually, particularly as representations of ideas, events, and settings.

Each form calls upon the imagination of the listener, encouraging impressions of times, places, and concepts conveyed by combinations of sounds and musical patterns.

Additionally, transformational ambient work in the extended arrangement, or as a "sketch" or shorter piece, may be organized with the intent of appealing to the imaginative faculties of the listener by enhancing mood and atmosphere generally, without reference to more than the listener's environment and receptive awareness.  Rather than establish a particular perspective, the sound design lends its influence to the environs of the listener more directly, to be experienced at more personal levels.

Transmission V

Shared ideas and individual perspectives bring to light things as yet unknown.

While it is entirely possible to rely upon the given, accede to expectations, and work according to conventions or oppose them, the way of the artist is constantly moving beyond these considerations.

It is the unseen and unheard, and those things unexpected and uncanny, that impel vision and action.