eye-hand

I've been going through a bit of writers block recently. Like creative writing or art, one cannot merely sit down and make IT happen. I have been sitting down and waiting and waiting.

So I'm writing this orchestra piece for the Atlantic Music Festival and I am scaling this one down. B'rit was HUGE so I'm gearing this thing towards chamber orchestra. When writing something, I try to listen to as much music as possible that has been written for (insert ensemble). The pieces I really looked at intensely were Sean Shepherd's These Particular Circumstances, John Adams' Chamber Symphony, and some fantastically insane Elliot Carter things. For some reason this did not do the trick (even though I love listening to all of these chamber orchestra works). I thought about an up tempo concert opener, re-orchestrating an earlier piece, Ives-like hymns, a work based on spinning gestures.

So here is what I finally saw on YouTube! By some weird scheme of events, I came across this BBC 4 series from '72 entitled Ways of Seeing. This four part mini series documentary was hosted by John Berger and looks at art in a crazy, inception, mind blowing way. Berger makes a point in the first part that technology has changed our perception of art. Reproductions or the fact that I'm looking at art on YouTube is not the way art should be experienced. I am not in front of this painting, in real time, so I have not yet truly seen it. Berger makes other points of flipping through channels and ending up on this program during a particular section gives the viewer a different reaction than if I were in the gallery seeing the same painting in real time. CRAZY stuff! For example, I've never actually seen the Mona Lisa. I have just seen reproductions and pictures of the original, but I have not yet experienced the Mona Lisa. This concept also falls in sync with music as well, I think. Does a person have to attend a live concert to truly hear a piece of music or can we just download it and get the same effect?In this piece, which I'm also calling Ways of Seeing, I going to try (keyword) to create a motive or theme that will be looked at different angles, like a painting. There will then be more dramatic alterations made to express live performance or looking at art in real time. It's not going to be long (probably 5 - 6 mins.) but hopefully I can get this point across