Saturday, June 24, 2023


 

The following article was included in the inaugural issue of The Turnaround, published by Amy K. Bormet and Washington Women In Jazz, Spring 2023
 

Tonal Relativity Studies: Investigating Intersensory Instruments, Chromatic Catalysts 

 

One obvious yet fascinating feature of the human sensory system is that impressions morph constantly according to context; what may be perceived as a singular element only exists in concert with adjacent elements. Pitches shift, hues blend, tones are colored. That sounds can be described in terms of vision or feel is a hint that the senses themselves are not so well-defined. The very word “chromatic,” with roots in the Greek khrōma, can be used to indicate both visual and auditory phenomena.

In the introduction to The Interaction of Color, 20th century visual artist/color theorist Josef Albers noted, "Color deceives continually...in visual perception there is a discrepancy between physical fact and psychic effect. What counts here—first and last—is not so-called knowledge of so-called facts, but vision—seeing. Albers demonstrated how colors are mixed in the mind. A square of ochre-colored paper appears remarkably different when placed on an orange background as opposed to a sky blue one. Appreciation of such fundamental relationships can serve as an entry into the exploration of more intricate and complex interactions. This is the domain of artists of all kinds: sensations, atmospheres, moods, and ideas can be fluidly expressed by those versed in the arts of relationship and contrast. The options are limited only by the scope of one’s imagination.

For those interested in developing new pallets of possibility—sonic, visual, or otherwise—the Tonal Relativity Studies offer a way of contemplating sonic relationships in a 12-tone musical system through shape, pattern, and color.

 

One common shorthand to describe sets of intervallic patterns in music employs letters, with W to indicate a whole step and H to indicate a half step. Ionian, or the Major Scale, would therefore be written WWHWWWH. Using shapes instead—large circles for whole steps and small circles for half steps—the set of seven Modes of the Major scale, read left to right, top to bottom, could look like this: 

 

 

Figure 1: Modes of the Major Scale (large dots = whole steps, small dots = ½ steps).
Left to right, top to bottom: Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lyidian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, Locrian.


Or, using squares to denote whole steps and rectangles for half steps, arranged in vertical columns to indicate ascending/descending pitches, and adding a spectrum of 12 equally-spaced colors to indicate twelve equally-spaced tones, the Modes of the Major Scale could be visualized this way: 

 

 

Figure 2: Modes of the Major Scale (squares = whole steps and rectangles = ½ steps).
Bottom to top, left to right: Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lyidian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, Locrian.

 

This is the same information presented in the round, with the wide stripe = whole step, narrow stripe = half step. Two octaves are represented here, read clockwise with Ionian in the 12 o’clock position: 

 

 

Figure 3: Modes of the Major Scale (wide stripe = whole step and narrow stripe = ½ step).
Clockwise from top: Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lyidian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, Locrian.

 

While these examples are visualizations of scales containing 12 tones/colors, the same basic principles could be applied to chords, intervals, or scales in any tuning system, or containing any number of pitches (additional examples can be seen here). 

 

In a 1966 interview John Coltrane said, “I think music is an instrument. It can create the initial thought patterns that can change the thinking of the people.” Could all forms of art that allow us, even for a moment, to let go of perceived boundaries between the senses, between disciplines, and between one another, have the potential to help us think in new ways?





Thursday, March 02, 2023


 
 
For the past many weeks I have been working in earnest on Wayne Shorter’s classic tune Footprints. I have been listening to, watching, playing along with, and learning from every version I could find. After analyzing and sketching out the chords in a variety of ways, last night I went to bed feeling like at last I had a set worth putting color to (this approach to diagraming 12-bar blues uses a spectrum of 12 colors to represent the 12 notes in the western musical scale…the form begins at the 12 o’clock position). This morning I was shocked by the news that Mr. Shorter had passed away in the night. After extended immersion in this piece, it feels strange and somehow serendipitous to complete this sketch today. Sending it out now to Mr. Shorter and everyone who loved and was inspired by him. 
 
Thank you, Mr. Shorter. 
 
From Wayne Shorter’s website:
 
“I think that music opens portals and doorways to unknown sectors that it takes courage to leap into. I always think that there’s a potential that we all have, and we can emerge, rise up to this potential, when necessary. We have to be fearless, courageous, and draw upon wisdom we don’t think we have.”

Thursday, April 28, 2022

"All Blues - Chromatic Analysis" as part of Fragmentary Blue at the Tremaine Gallery

All Blues, a Chromatic Analysis. Gouache on 30" round birch panel. 2022

Fragmentary Blue, an exhibition containing works by 17 artists, opens at the Hotchkiss School's Tremaine Gallery in western Connecticut on May 15, 2022. 

My offering, a chromatic analysis of the iconic Miles Davis tune "All Blues," is an extension of the ongoing Tonal Relativity project.

Works in the Tonal Relativity series relate a musical scale based on twelve equally-spaced tones to a color spectrum consisting of twelve equally-spaced hues. 

While I have been using this concept to explore intervallic relationships as part of my music practice for some time, the use of this concept to analyze tunes has been a more recent development.

Miles Davis' All Blues — like many classic blues tunes — consists of a repeated 12-bar progression of tonal relationships.

In my circular visualization, the form begins at the 12 o'clock position with a mode (set of tones) relative to G (in this case, represented by the blue-green shape at the center) for four bars. It shifts to C (red) for two bars, then back to G for two. D (orange) for one bar is followed by Eb (yellow-orange) for half a measure, then back to D for half a measure, then back to G for two measures.  

Taking in the visual while listening is highly recommended!




All Blues, with lyrics by Oscar Brown Jr.

The sea, the sky, the you and I
The sea, the sky, for you and I
I'll know we're all blues
All Shades, all hues, all blues
Some blues are sad
But some are glad,
Dark-sad or bright-glad
They're all blues
All shades, all hues, all blues
The color of colors
The blues are more than a color
They're a moan of pain
A Taste of strife
And a sad refrain
A game which life is playin'
Blues can be the livin' dues
We're all a-payin'
Yeah, Oh Lord
In a rainbow
A summer day that's fair
A prayer is prayed
A lament that's made

Some shade of blues is there;
Blue heaven's hue,
They're all blues!

Talkin' 'bout the sea and the sky
And I'm talkin' 'bout you and I
The sea, the sky
For you and I
And I know we're all blues
All shades,
All hues,
All blues
Sea, sky, you and I
See the sky, you and I


Martin Luther King Jr. on Humanity and the Importance of Jazz


God has brought many things out of oppression. He has endowed his creatures with the capacity to create – and from this capacity has flowed the sweet songs of sorrow and joy that have allowed man to cope with his environment and many different situations.

 

Jazz speaks for life. The Blues tell the story of life’s difficulties, and if you think for a moment, you will realize that they take the hardest realities of life and put them into music, only to come out with some new hope or sense of triumph. This is triumphant music.

 

Modern Jazz has continued in this tradition, singing the songs of a more complicated urban existence. When life itself offers no order and meaning, the musician creates an order and meaning from the sounds of the earth which flow through his instrument.

 

It is no wonder that so much of the search for identity among American Negroes was championed by Jazz musicians. Long before the modern essayists and scholars wrote of “racial identity” as a problem for a multi-racial world, musicians were returning to their roots to affirm that which was stirring within their souls.

 

Much of the power of our Freedom Movement in the United States has come from this music. It has strengthened us with its sweet rhythms when courage began to fail. It has calmed us with its rich harmonies when spirits were down. And now, Jazz is exported to the world. For in the particular struggle of the Negro in America there is something akin to the universal struggle of modern man. Everybody has the Blues. Everybody longs for meaning. Everybody needs to love and be loved. Everybody needs to clap hands and be happy. Everybody longs for faith. In music, especially this broad category called Jazz, there is a stepping-stone towards all of these.


 


 

Monday, June 21, 2021

Tonal Relativity: Studies at the Center for New Music

Tonal Relativity: Studies in the Window Gallery at the Center for New Music in San Francisco, CA       

For the month of April 2021, prints of the paintings created in early 2021 for the Tonal Relativity project were on display at the Center for New Music in San Francisco. It was a pleasure to speak with curator David Samas about the project...that interview is archived on YouTube.

Sunday, August 23, 2020

Radical Reimaginings

 

Ascending in All Directions 1 (Starfish) and 2 (Octopus), Vintage paper, gouache, ink on birch panel, 12"x12"x.8", 2020

Radical Reimaginings is a virtual exhibition curated by 516 ARTS and the Kolaj Institute. On view from August 22 through December 31, 2020.

 

 My exhibition statement: 

I want to reimagine the potential of the imaginary. To imagine is the first step toward realization—what once seemed impossible can begin to take form in the mind’s eye (or ear as the case may be). Collage can function as a lens through which the marvelous underpinnings of the commonplace are revealed. It can serve as a map or guide, a catalyst, prescription or elixir for maker and viewer alike.

As I was creating these pieces I was literally thinking of them as lenses through which one could glimpse a more egalitarian, cooperative, compassionate world. In reading the exhibition catalog I noticed similar sentiments reiterated by many of the artists included in the exhibition.

 

In earlier times and under different horrific circumstances artists, writers, musicians, and others have used art and music as part of efforts to endure absurd conditions. During and after World War 1, Dadaists and Surrealists used collage, automatic writing, nonsense poetry, and collaborative games such as Exquisite Corpse in response to the illogic of war, colonization, and industrialization. 

 

In music, the frameworks for improvisation that came to be known as blues and jazz emerged in response to slavery, oppression, discrimination, and exploitation.

 

These art forms went much further than serving as documents of shared suffering…they created community, provided a forum for communication, encouraged collective creativity…they offered a sense of shared purpose and meaning…in the midst of despair, these practices generated the very conditions required to transform the circumstances at hand. 

 

“The possible” is a carefully calculated convention. But when the prevailing possible so clearly serves the few at the expense of the many, it is up to those undaunted by perceived limitations to intervene in its radical reimagining. 

 

To cultivate and maintain the ability to envision parallel or alternate possible presents is a subversive act. The scale of current environmental, political, and social challenges would indicate that the possible is no longer insufficient, if it ever was…the impossible is the only viable path forward.

 

Equipped with whatever materials one may find at hand, an openness to chance, and a spirit of experimentation, collage is one route to its realization.

Sunday, August 09, 2020

Avant-Garde as Dynamic Participatory Occasion

The following text is Chapter 6 of "An Intricate Ensemble: The Art-Science of an Ecological Imaginary" published in January 2020, in partial fulfillment of Rhode Island School of Design's Master of Arts program in Nature-Culture-Sustainability Studies. The paper is available in its entirety at RISD Digital Commons. The abstract is listed in the Leonardo Abstract Service (LABS) Database.

 

 

6. CONCLUSION

 

At 5:30am on July 16, 1945, at the Alamogordo Bombing Range (a place that had been known by Spanish conquistadores as Jornada del Muerto, the route of the dead man[1]) in the New Mexican desert, the Manhattan Project completed its Trinity Test, the detonation of an 18.6 kiloton plutonium bomb.[2] As he watched the explosion, Dr. Robert J. Oppenheimer, director of the project, famously recalled a line from Hindu holy book the Bhagavad-Gita: “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”[3] If it had not been widely apparent prior to this moment, it certainly became known immediately afterwards: Homo sapiens—“wise man”—had acquired the power, previously ascribed only to gods and other supreme forces, to annihilate itself.

 

In addition to the nuclear threat, most of Earth’s human inhabitants now well understand that many other reckless activities engaged in by some threaten the existence of all. The entire biosphere is being catastrophically altered by a few hundred years’ worth of exploitative practices controlled by the wealthiest and most powerful, the majority of whom are now loathe to abandon the profit motive in favor of more egalitarian, less oppressive systems of social and economic organization. People around the world in all sectors of society are currently engaged in resistance to inhumane and ecocidal forces.[4] The angst inherent in the Dadaist reaction to the senselessness of the post-World War I era seems all the more sensible in light of atrocities currently unfolding.

 

In fact, the point made by the Romantic Naturalists and Surrealists—that an awareness of the “marvelous” aspects of existence serves a vital social function—remains highly relevant to the times at hand: there is still much to be learned from those who never forgot existence is intra-active, and from those who refused, and continue to refuse, to submit to reductive thinking.

 

For the oppressed, to cultivate and maintain an ability to imagine parallel or alternate possible presents remains a subversive act. René Ménil wrote:

 

The land of the marvelous is the most stunning revenge we have…Man sees the intolerable limits of everyday life fall from him like so much tawdry finery. Everything really becomes possible for him. He can transgress his spatial boundaries: he transforms himself into a tree, an animal, a peaceful lake, so discovering precious secrets as in a game. He overcomes space by instantly crossing infinite distances. He holds past and future, space and time, life and death in his hands…(Ménil 1941 in Fijalkowski and Richardson 1996,91).

 

In light of the current state of the world, Ménil’s words may seem almost excruciatingly optimistic. But giving all power to the imagination (l’imagination au pouvoir) may remain among the most potent and accessible tactics available. As philosopher Herbert Marcuse stated (somewhat paradoxically), “Art cannot change the world, but it can contribute to changing the consciousness and drives of the men and women who could change the world” (Marcuse 1977 [1979],32).

 

To reiterate: this thesis is intended neither to assert that art can solve all problems, nor to claim modern science is inherently flawed. From a position of constructive critique, it has been my purpose, rather:

 

1. To establish creative practices as essential forms of knowledge production in and of themselves. I am suggesting artistic techniques—ones that arouse the imagination, senses, and emotions—can be effectively applied in concert with science’s rigorous and dispassionate methods. Situations that tend to treat art as an embellishment capable only of serving in an illustrative or support capacity, or that otherwise use art to uncritically reinforce the authority of a science which fails to take humanitarian and ecological concerns foremost into account, are, I maintain, less constructive.[5]

 

2. To invite science to critically examine a paradox inherent within itself. Science’s revered objective stance—undeniably useful as a mindset for the purposes of research—is neither a scientifically demonstrable condition of reality, nor is it necessarily constructive when applied in a non-scientific (social) context. I believe science, in its privileged position as humanity’s preeminent form of knowledge production, reinforces a “detached” attitude that runs the perilous risk of preventing the most destructive segment of humanity from understanding itself (ourselves) as interconnected with one another and the biosphere.

 

3. To suggest practices which expand the imagination are valuable not only to those in the arts, but to those in the sciences, and to assert that a sound understanding of science can be of great practical use to those in creative fields.

 

Umberto Eco describes how “contemporary art can be seen as an epistemological metaphor”:

 

What we find in art is less the expression of new scientific concepts than the negation of old assumptions. While science, today, limits itself to suggesting a probable structure of things, art tries to give us a possible image of this new world, an image that our sensibility has not yet been able to formulate, since it always lags a few steps behind intelligence— indeed, so much so that we still say that the sun ‘rises’ when for three centuries we have known that it does not budge (Eco 1989,90).

 

 

Ultimately, I am calling for authentic, critical engagement of the methods of science in tandem with those of the arts. By bringing Goethe’s delicate empiricism, Schelling’s Naturephilosophie, Dadaist and Surrealist natural history, and the efforts of musical improvisors into dialog with the contemporary environmental humanities, I am pointing toward a mode of thought and action that engages the seemingly paradoxical yet complementary mindsets of art and science. I believe vacillating between—or the simultaneous holding of—states of objectivity and subjectivity, individuality and collectivity, prescription and improvisation can be of use to the collaborative formation of a constructive image of oikos, our shared home, regardless of one’s primary discipline.

 

Alexander von Humboldt expressed similar sentiments when he stated reason and imagination must be considered equally:

 

It would be a denial of the dignity of human nature and the relative importance of the faculties with which we are endowed, were we to condemn at one time austere reason engaged in investigating causes and their mutual connections, and at another that exercise of the imagination which prompts and excites discoveries by its creative powers (Alexander von Humboldt 1858,78).

 

As the Surrealists understood, such dialectical practices are only useful in relation to the revolutionary project:  

 

It is not enough…for man to become the instrument of his unconscious, for he should occupy himself with finding a concrete solution to the problems of existence. Surreality is not to be sought solely on ‘the other side,’ but should become integrated with the attributes of consciousness in order to recognize this harmony of being that will finally reconcile man to himself (Duplessis 1950 [1962],109).

 

And the revolutionary project at hand is monumental—for life on Earth to continue to thrive, the Anthropocentric model of the universe must rapidly go the way of the geocentric one. What practices have the potential to aid humanity in coming to see itself as part of an intricate ensemble with one another and the biosphere? What might be the most effective and efficient methods of restoring a sense of the marvelous, and how can they be implemented?

 

Can an avant-garde effort succeed now where similar past movements failed to take hold? I argue “success,” as a constantly-moving target, is an unfounded concern; there is never a fixed point at which victory is declared and all struggles cease. Movements inspire and reinforce one another, reconfigure, reorganize, and re-emerge in new forms, as we have seen in the twenty-first century with the Arab Spring, Occupy, the Indignados, #BlackLivesMatter, Standing Rock, #MeToo, and many other social, environmental, and political uprisings around the world. According to a 1907 definition, avant-garde started out as a military term referring to the “advance guard” or the “vanguard”:

 

The avant-garde générale, avant-garde stratégique, or avant-garde d'armée is a strong force (one, two, or three army corps) pushed out a day's march to the front, immediately behind the cavalry screen. Its mission is, vigorously to engage the enemy wherever he is found, and, by binding him, to ensure liberty of action in time and space for the main army.[6]

 

Terms like “avant-garde,” “queer,” “utopian,” or “surreal,” by definition, refer to things that are out of the ordinary, ahead of their time, or are unexpected, rare, or uncommon in occurrence. “Queer” is defined as “strange, peculiar, eccentric”[7] and “utopia” literally means “no place”.[8] But for those who select these terms, the subtext is that what’s considered normal is in need of adjustment.  When it is widely taken for granted that quantum particles can leap from one place to another without having been anywhere in between,[9] those particles will cease to be “queer,” and some other phenomenon may take their place in the pantheon of queerness.

 

Barad poetically describes “queer” as:

 

…itself a lively, mutating organism, a desiring radical openness, an edgy protean differentiating multiplicity, an agential dis/continuity, an enfolded reiteratively materializing promiscuously inventive spatiotemporality (Barad in Kleinman 2012,81).

 

 

Ishmael proclaims in the mid-nineteenth century novel Moby Dick, “Damn me, but all things are queer, come to think of ’em,” (Melville 1902,109). When everything is queer, nothing is. And then something is again. And so the cycle goes; avant-gardeness, queerness, and utopianism are never-ending becomings.

 

It is my strong impression that the cultivation of an intricate ensemble—in any and every form this may take—is an appropriate and necessary avant-garde with which to confront the roaring (boiling, wailing, failing, flailing?) 2020s. Practices and frameworks that emphasize and enhance collaboration, spontaneity, and care—mad love—in defying convention, contain the potential to subvert it. Not acting (in-activism) is not an option. 

 

If [aesthetic vision] arouses us in any practical way, it is because it finds us ready, one way or another, to act. Not the works of art, therefore, but the [person themselves] who carries in [their] being the potential of rebellion and revolution (Fallico 1962,131).

 

 

The impossible is realized every time a “perfect coalescence of feeling with image and image with feeling” occurs in an act of creativity; we can “know what the possible feels like because we know ourselves to be its creators” (Fallico 1962,73).

 

This is a dynamic participatory occasion.[10]



[1]According to page 28 of Marc Simmons’ 1986 book Taos to Tome: True Tales of the Hispanic New Mexico.

[2]According to the US Department of Energy:

 https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-history/Events/1945/trinity.htm. Accessed November 18, 2019.

[3] Video of Oppenheimer recounting the moment of the Trinity Test: https://youtu.be/lb13ynu3Iac.

Accessed November 18, 2019.

[4] As of this writing, uprisings are underway in Hong Kong, Lebanon, and Chile, to name but a few hotspots.

[5] At the same time, the artist should not feel obliged to force their works into a scientific idiom (i.e.: works need not have a tangible, quantifiable, or repeatable component) in order to be accepted as valid by either practitioners or audiences. Science is science; art does not need to be science also.

 

[6] From Sadowa, an account of the 1866 war between Prussia and Austria written by General Henri Bonnal and Charles Francis Atkinson referenced at Online Etymology Dictionary: https://www.etymonline.com/word/avant-garde. November 19, 2019.

[7] Definition of “queer” from Online Etymology Dictionary: https://www.etymonline.com/word/queer. Accessed November 18, 2019.

[8] Definition of “utopia” from Online Etymology Dictionary: Utopia https://www.etymonline.com/word/utopia. Accessed November 18, 2019

[9] Karen Barad on quantum leaps:

Quantum leaps aren’t jumps (large or small) through space and time. An electron that “leaps” from one orbital to another does not travel along some continuous trajectory from here-now to there-then. Indeed, at no time does the electron occupy any spatial point in between the two orbitals. But this is not what makes this event really queer. What makes a quantum leap unlike any other is that there is no determinate answer to the question of where and when they happen. The point is that it is the intra-play of continuity and discontinuity, determinacy and indeterminacy, possibility and impossibility that constitutes the differential spacetimematterings of the world. Or to put it another way, if the indeterminate nature of existence by its nature teeters on the cusp of stability, of determinacy and indeterminacy, of possibility and impossibility, then the dynamic relationality between continuity and discontinuity is crucial to the open-ended becoming of the world which resists acausality as much as determinism (Barad 2007,182).

[10] This is the last line of my 2013 “Manifesto for the Obvious International”:

http://alycesantoro.com/obvious_international.html. Accessed November 18, 2019.