LIGHT

With the soltice and xmas approaching this week, we decided to discuss the topic 'Light' in our final session of 2012. We had mulled wine and mince pies and a lively sharing of works and ideas insued


Judith: A colour organ by a French Jesuit monk from 1742

The earliest instrument to attempt a creative synthesis of color and music was created in the early eighteenth century by the French Jesuit scientist, Louis-Bertrand Castel. In 1725, Castel conceived of a clavecin oculaire, or ocular harpsichord, which he hoped would illuminate the hidden harmonic order thought to exist in the universe. Castel thought of color-music as akin to the lost language of paradise, where all men spoke alike, and he claimed that thanks to his instrument’s capacity to paint sounds, even a deaf listener could enjoy music. 


Music( Listen) : Prometheus: The Poem of Fire, Op. 60 (1910), is a symphonic work by the Russian composer Alexander Scriabin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometheus:_The_Poem_of_Fire

'The part for color organ is notated on a staff of its own, in treble clef at the top of the score, and consists of two parts: one changes with the harmony, and always goes to the root note of the prevailing harmony, and thus produces the color Scriabin associated with each key; the other consists of much longer notes sustained through many bars, and does not appear to be related to the harmony (or therefore to the first part), but for the most part slowly rises up the scale a whole-tone at a time, the changes being several pages of score apart, or a minute or two apart. It is not clear what relationship this part has to the first part, or to the music as a whole. '

Maura McDonnell's Website: http://visualmusic.blogspot.ie/p/about-this-blog.html


Dylan: The Crystal Baschet, played in Solaris by CLiff Martinez

Guitar Oscillations captured with i phone 4: 

Seoidín: Stan Brackhage Silent experimental film maker Moth Light and Dog Star, Man

Theater's by Hiroshi Sugimoto: Photographer
 "As soon as the movie started, I fixed the shutter at a wide-open aperture, and two hours later when  the movie finished, I clicked the shutter closed. That evening, I developed the film, and the vision exploded behind my eyes."


Kian: Plays us part of his own Requiem dedicated to his father 
He sees colour in two of the notes used in this piece (earth colours)
 F major: Green
B flat: Brown

Inspired directly by The Wanderer which forms the main text in the opera