Engraving on perspexes
59.4 x 84 cm / 23.4 x 33.1 inches
Starting point
I have always been interested in music. I studied music for 8 years in my childhood. I haven’t been motivated enough to be a musician, (I am motivated in drawing) but my friends have been, and I experienced very soon that I have the same attitude as them. I think artists are similar, whatever they do. As a starting point, I was thinking about sharing the idea, that the connection between the many fields of art is the artist itself. Artists tend to analyse facts and happenings and then, they react to them. Every artist has different tools to make their ideas interesting, but the motivation is the same.
The other reason I am interested in music is that I am gradually losing my hearing. I imagined many times how people can live without hearing and what things would I miss the most, if I’m deaf. Music is definitely one of these things.
Research
I made research about sound, and how it works. It was very interesting. There is no sound without a material that transfers it. Only in a vacuum, there are no sounds. It makes me remember that just a few planets has an atmosphere, and the universe is mostly silent. Giant stars explode without any noise. The sound definitely is a very special and rare thing in the universe.
Another fundamental feature of sounds is that they are waves. We articulate that we listen to the sounds, but more correctly, we experience the movement of the transferring material.
I looked for an idea of how to explore movement in my work. I found the solution in a great piece of artwork of Rauschenberg. The title of the work is ‘Shades’, it explores movement by layers of plexiglasses with prints on them. When I walked by the work in Modern Tate, I had the feeling that the layers are sliding on each other. This work gave me the idea of using transparent perspex.
Experimenting in music
I still had no clear idea how to explore the theme, but I was sure, that I will need a song. I collected and listened to a lot of old and new songs. I analysed them from many points of view. I tried to imagine how the songs would visually look. I looked for big contrasts in instruments, in the volume of the tunes, and interesting meanings in the lyrics.
I found the ‘Bring me to life’ of Evanescence and Linkin Park is perfect. In the song, there are 4 voices, a female voice, a male voice, and 2 vocals. It’s played by 7 different instruments: electric guitar, bass guitar, drum, piano, violin, cello, and double bass.
I looked for existing music sheets. I thought, that I will collect different ones and make a complete one from them. Unfortunately, I found, that there aren’t music sheets that explore the whole song. Even the official music sheet contains only the female voice, the male voice, the piano, and the guitars.
Based on my own studies in music, I decided to write my own music sheets by hearing.
I started with the piano and the singing voices because these were the easiest to hear. I struggled with the violin, the cello, and the double bass because these instruments are so quiet compared with the electric instruments. It gave me the idea of looking for soundtracks of only these instruments in the song. I was very enthusiastic about them because it makes it possible to show many more sounds are in the song.
I have had the biggest challenge with the drums. I played on cello, flute, and guitar. Drums are very different from these instruments. I have ordinary written music sheets in my previous studies of music, but never of rhythm. I had to investigate how to do it. I studied the parts of the drum set and I listened to videos of drum players to be able to recognise the sound of the different drums.
Traditional music sheets are designed to present the sounds, it’s complicated to write the rhythm on them. To make the task easier, I created my own music sheet for making notes only about rhythm. On my final work, I rewrote the notes on official music sheets.
At the end, I found and documented 4614 sounds of the song on 33 pages. Compared with the official sheets of 3-5 pages, my work explores the song much deeper than any available music sheets.
Experimenting in performance art
Meanwhile, I wrote the music sheets I tried to keep understanding better music, as a field of art. I have experience mostly in visual arts, but I have always had problems with performance art. Being a musician has an aspect of it. This is the reason that I started trials. I forced myself to perform things. I organised a flashmob and I made records about myself singing.
I was sure that any result can give me essential skills, but finally, the trials gave me far more new ideas than I’ve waited for. I experienced how much is it difficult to make a record of a voice. Although I knew it, I understood it only when I made my own ones.
It led me to think over the nature of sounds again. It’s impossible to make a perfect record of a song. It isn’t the same as live music. It means that every sound is a unique and unrepeatable thing. When a song finished, the band can play it again, but it will never be exactly the same. Music is free. You can’t get it, or keep it.
Final piece
On my final work, I explored music by shadows made by the music sheets. This image seems to be the same, but we know, that the changing lights around the work will change the shadow too. Exactly like the sounds of a song, shadows of an object are similar, but never the same.
I explored the song in 3 layers. I shared the sounds in 3 groups. The voices are on the same sheet. I placed this sheet on the top to explore the tendency, that we listen to the speech first. The loud instruments are on the second layer. It contains the music sheets of the guitars and the drum. These modern instruments are loud and clearly recognisable by everyone. The third perspex explores the classic instruments, the piano, the violin, the cello, and the double bass. This is almost hidden behind other layers like the instruments are hidden in the song.
The images of the layers are different. Even I was surprised how much the images explore the style of the sounds. The layer of the voices shows efficiently the rhythm of a speech. The notes of the loud guitars have covered most of the perspex, this is the most dominant layer. The arcs of the third layer explore the beauty and elegance of classic instruments.
Additional meaning
This piece is a very special one for me. It makes me remember, that people determine to hear as an ability to catch sounds. For me, hearing is much more. It is about recognising and analysing the sounds. I think I can value more and enjoy more the lesser scale of sounds I still hear.