Representing music visually.

This week I feel as though I have really pushed myself and explored lots of different ways to represent Piano Phase visually.

As the different layers of music in the piece are being manipulated, I decided to start off this week by replicating this quality with some of my summer photos. For example, slowly twisting the layers or gradually making the photo bigger (like the piece gets faster). I love the results of these, especially the twisting that I created with the photo of Seals.

After listening to the music so many times, I realised that my ears were getting tired, and lazy: they couldn't be bothered to pay attention to all the notes for 18 minutes solid. My ears naturally picked out certain notes, sequences and beats so I tried to replicate what I could hear by listening to the piece and mark making whatever my ears heard. I like the result especially the light and shade created by different  sounds, and the spontaneous mark making.

I decided to take my research in another direction by learning how to play the 12 note sequence of notes on the piano. It is this sequence that is repeated over and over so I decided to do the same. I played the sequence with my fingers dipped in black paint on different pieces of tracing paper and turned them around and layered them up. I also represented the shapes in my results by painting different shades of grey in gouache.

I was really interested by the results, as I have never used a technique like this before. I decided to pick a colour palette, inspired by my summer work, to use for this sample, in an attempt to take my findings one step further. I represented the pattern created by my fingers, and then listened to the music and made marks on top of the pattern created. I really like the result, and I think I like it because of the processes that I used to get to it. I liked mixing different ideas that I had gathered throughout my research and adding in some colour as well.

I took all of the work that I had done so far to my first group tutorial and it was a really productive session that I gained lots of ideas from. Most of the feedback was more ideas about how to develop my work further. Below are some of the points mentioned, which I intend to investigate further during this coming week:

• Combine some digital/photographic ideas with my mark making. One example that came to mind was scanning in some of my work and manipulating it in the same way that I did with my photos.
• Mixing ideas together (even if they may not work... just try it out). For example, combining the linear qualities of my pen drawings with the spontaneous paintings that I did last week.
• Play with the idea of repetition more. I could draw the same thing more than once in different conditions, and possibly layer these on top of each other?
• Use sentences and words to do with Phases to create art, to give myself some more inspiration. I can then mix these with the above tasks.
• Look into transferring the track on to an App that can turn the sound into waves that might give me some interesting visual results
• Investigate minimalist artists

Hopefully these targets will help me to develop my work and give me some more food for thought for the rest of my project.