I only considered writing about the relationship between photography and music once I read about the Russian artist, Wassily Kandinsky. A dear friend told me about him as I never heard of him. What I found fascinated me. I hope you will find it intriguing as well. For Kandinsky, music 🎼 and color 🌈 were inextricably linked. The abstract painter, cellist, and synesthete created an iconic collection of abstract paintings that expressed how he associated each musical note 🎵 with an exact hue.
Best described as a union of the senses, synesthesia is when one sensory experience involuntarily and consistently prompts another. There are over 70 different types, such as the ability to see sounds, hear time ⌚ and taste shapes. 🚫🚸; however, the most common involve color.
As a photographer and musician, I do think there are similarities. What two art forms don't relate? Music is intensely visual. A subject in a picture serves much the same role as a melody in a piece of music. Both anchor the piece, leading us along a story's lines through a literal or figurative landscape.
Musical rhythm is similar to visual rhythm. A progression of notes over a period of time is akin to the layering of shapes, light and dark, that form a photographic image. The most successful photographs almost always have a rhythm, giving the viewer a coherent path. Music is a play between positive and negative objects--notes and the silence between. Music is the space between the notes; negative space is equally vital in photograph composition.
My husband only appreciates melodies that have lyrics. Some find listening to music without words challenging because hearing may provide less stimulation than visual imagery.
Some people spent a great deal of money on costly instruments they did not even play, such as a piano or harp.
They were used as decor and perhaps to display one's wealth.
Some scientists believe that synesthesia results from "crossed-wiring" in the brain. This means that neurons and synapses usually contained within one sensory system cross to another for people with synesthesia. It is not known exactly why this might happen, but some researchers believe that these crossed connections are present in everyone at birth--it's not until later that the connections are refined.
About 4% of the people in the world experience this condition. They hear a sound and automatically see a color or read a certain word, and a specific hue enters their mind's eye. Among that population are some well-known persons like Vincent VanGough and Billy Joel. Persons in other fields also experience this condition: Vladimir Nabokov, the Russian-American novelist; Geoffery Bush, an Australian actor; and Robert Cailliau, information engineer, computer scientist, and author. There are many others, too numerous to list here.
People have combined sound or allusion to sound in poetry, scripture, and stories for centuries. "All the trees of the field shall clap their hands..." Can we hear the trees clapping?
"The hills are alive with the sound of music...
Can you hear music in these photos?? or see color in the sounds these "make"?? Do any of them speak to you?
There were discrepancies among the websites I used for my research; I was curious about what movie was the first to be accompanied by sound. Some suggested the first music video was created in 1894 by Joseph Stern and Edward Mark, who set a recording of their son "The Little Lost Child" to a moving slide who marketed it as an "illustrated song." Another reference reported that a group called The Buggles released their music video, Video Killed the Radio Star, released in 1979 and launched on MTV in 1981. If you check, you will find at least 5 different artists who are noted to be the "first" combining video and music.
I have memories of "home movies" taken by my father. 📹
The technology to record the sound was unavailable at that time, but I remember some of the words and encounters that took place as he filmed them for posterity (and a lot of laughs).
When we watch movies and TV shows 📺, it is not enough to include dialogue and sound effects, but musical scores were written just to enhance the production. Some of the music became classics, perhaps better known than the films they accompanied! The music contributed to the mood of the show. 😳😁😪
Most modern concerts are incomplete without many special effects, including choreographed lights and flashes of pictures that fill the entire background behind the performers. Pyrotechnics are the latest thing to be added to performances, and the use of lighted drones forms elaborate patterns to augment the experience.
Music is ubiquitous in our culture. It can be challenging to find quiet places! Note that elevator music is not just for elevators but accompanies us while we are shopping or is piped into hotel lobbies.
I do not have the ability to see colors in sound, but I have had many experiences where photography was vital to the creative pieces I was producing. I have an entire slide show incorporating Christian hymns, which I paired with pictures to emphasize the words.
From Kat Stevens: Morning Has Broken:
Blackbird has spoken like the first bird.
Praise for the Singing
Praise for the morning Praise for the Springing fresh from the word
Why are so many musicians also photographers? Do Photographers "hear" light? Do musicians "see" notes? Are we all just trying to record wonderful moments that we don't want to lose? I don't have a good answer. But I'm pleased because it seems to enrich both fields. Not just the waveforms but the notes and sounds themselves. So have countless other musicians since the beginning of recorded music. The strong links between our senses of sight and hearing have inspired musicians for centuries.
How our senses blend together when we experience music will never be fully explained. That mystery is part of what draws people to new ways of visualizing music and creating new photographs.
Approaching sound like this is one way to expand your sense of what's possible with music...and your camera!
