Introduction to Sound Arts

Sound VS. Fine art

Under the impact of studying fine art in high school which was definitely my comfortable zone, I looked at soundart in an artistic view and was also interested in how artists under the influence of sound in paintings.

I found out three different modern artists which had a relationship with sound: Kandinsky ( an abstract artist ); Paul Klee ( an individual style artist who was influenced by expressionism, cubism and surrealism ); Joan Miro ( an anti rationalism artist ) and they all shared the opinion that they all had a great influence on sound. 

Paul Klee focused on separating music and his works of art. Though he was able to develop his music skills through his parental home. He wanted to change his life and decided on the visual arts as he grew up. Paul Klee stated, ‘ I didn’t find the idea of going in for music creatively particularly attractive in view of the decline in the history of musical achievement.’ As a musician, he played and felt emotionally bound to traditional works of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, but as an artist he craved the freedom to explore radical ideas and styles.

Kandinsky believed that he could show his inner power from enjoying classical music in his abstract paintings with overlapping high saturated colourful elements. Kandinsky up to the very end had not doubted his ‘inner world’, the world of images where the abstraction was not an end in itself, and the language of forms was not deadborn because they arose from will to pithiness and vitality.

Joan Miro thought that both enjoying painting and listening to music were intoxicating and could be associative to things around him. Music provided Miro with spiritual sustenance under the background of the war, which undoubtedly played a great role in his artistic style and creation especially in 1940s.

Above all, Wassily Kandinsky was my taste, who was the ancestor of putting rhythms and melodies while painting and I investigated him deeply.

Sound Walk

Photograph by Jose Macabra

Exactly I had a same experiment last summer holiday but it was at a different sense of feeling. I was blind and I recorded and noticed the ‘feeling’ in the forest (with fingers and feet )in painting. That was a bit rush of time and I just painted abstractly under the influence by Shelley’s poems and Kandinsky’s painting, but it was more calm and cozy this time. From the starting point, I drew a map like a painter and tried to remember all the stuffs around like bees singing, sheep murmuring or metals tintintin, leaves waving.

I had focus on the sound of breath and hearts beats and the sounds were deep and tranquil and theirs color crystal. In fact, I was clapping my hands just to make sure they were at the same direction. The voices of them were mixing when I was taking a breathe in the smooth fluffy air. I felt my heart was abandoned from a different dimension and it was sticking on the cold ice. My heartbeats were like a comparative study when I was late and rushing to the forest to chase my classmates because I was running like an athlete. Sometimes my heartbeats go with my footsteps, they beat quickly on rough pebbles but slower when I got stuck in mud. It was a way of hearing frictions in a 4-dimensional way in distinct textures. At the moment I thought I was going to fall down on the ground, I could feel how anxious and worried I were physically, but my heartbeats were in the opposite direction. They were not beating too fast owing to my peers care.

The experience let me release and I was feeling like isolating from the busy city. Even though the sound interaction with dogs barking and kids shouting were like disruptions of my mind, it did not affect a lot.

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   I like Jessica Ellis’ statement. The idea that Sound Arts ‘reaches out to the art world in a new and…

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