Warming The Neon
Love can come from cold places.
Warming The Neon was featured on my Before The Ball 7”
The artwork A Man And Woman Under Mountain by Chinese artist Kong Lingnan was used as inspiration for the creation of the audio piece, Warming The Neon. The main focus in creating the work was to aurally represent the themes and the individual visual elements. Through analysis of this process and discovering why specific sounds were chosen for specific visual elements, a greater understanding of the relationship between sound and image between the works will be found. The sounds were chosen from a mixture of past experiences, inspiration from other works and the emotions felt by myself. Analysing the themes intended by the original artist, along with my own, formed the overall tone of the song.
Lingnan utilises a neon look in the body of her work, contrasting bright painted simple shapes against a mostly black background with some areas of painted colour. Her use of the neon she describes in a video from the Creators Project (2011) is to project, “a unique beauty and loneliness, just like the world we live in... It is an everlasting moment, and not the sort of ephemeral beauty that suddenly disappears.” The temporal space of the track will attempt to capture this. The process of visually representing a song (the inverse of this project) is seen with a Futurist artist Kandinsky and his work, Jocular Sounds (1929). A similar style to this is used, as aurally, each individual element of the painting shall be represented. This is a deeply
personal experience, and is different for everyone, as was discovered from looking at Three Centuries Of Color Scales graph (Collopy, Fred 2004) so I will not let others’ work on colour music representation influence the work.
A loud and intense synthesised bass represents the black background. This is seen to come from a sense of fear and loneliness that is felt when viewing the painting, along with the artist’s intention. Through an upbringing of Science-Fiction films, the concept of space has been portrayed as vast, lonely and infinitely deadly. An example of this is the opening of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (Lucas 1977), where the rumbling engine of a Star Destroyer looming overhead. The contrast of the neon in the piece provokes a memory of a 1980s synthesiser sound. This is linked to the idea of hyper colour in films by Wong Kar-Wai such as In The Mood For Love (2000). His hedonism of the striking neon against Hong Kong’s skylines and back streets, along with his character’s chance romantic affairs seem to project beauty in man’s evolution (Payne 2001). This is seen in the opening of the track with a obviously midi cello sound that has been warped through a deep pulsing filter gate plug-in. Vintage air filters and copious amounts of reverb have been used to give it an airier, never-ending quality. The sound was inspired by the backing synthesiser loop on Invisible by Wild Beasts (2011). The mountain range is seen to be a backdrop to the painting and the track.
The blue in the mountain range is audibly represented through a cold deliberate use of a midi piano timbre. This is to show the nature that is being painted although it is false as it is done in neon blue. The connotative link between blue and cold is a universal signifier in everyday society, as it links to ice and water. There is a large contrast in the work as neon has been used to paint nature, so there is an implication of man’s representation of his power over it. This falseness of the rock formations is heard at 13 and 59 seconds through the obvious fade in and out of the waveform and the deliberately delayed note. It is included heavily in the track as it is the main feature of the painting. The piano sound was chosen to represent the cleansing association of blue and water, and the slight reverb on the piano is used to show the neon glow. This has been repeated in other instruments that represent a neon element of the picture. There is a contrast between the visuals in the mountains and the red haze.
The falling red over the mountains is a key feature of A Man And Woman Under Mountain. It gives the otherwise lonely, and cold work: a natural warmness, in the same way that the blue is linked to coldness. It was intentional to portray a sense of falling warmth in the song. The introduction of the guitar at one minute 13 seconds in the track is used to give the piece this tone. It is unedited from it’s raw recording with only slight reverb added to it’s initial recording stage to give it a more enhanced feeling. The guitar was chosen to represent the natural warmth, as it was the first instrument that I learnt. The movement of falling is achieved through the finger picking of arpeggios in triplet rhythms. This sense of movement is similarly seen in Wilfred’s Multidimensional musical artwork (1932). The red and blue contrast brings a unique impact on the overall artwork.
There is a juxtaposition of this warmness against the cold majority of Mountain. There is an intense confliction of emotions within the viewer as the two different tones of the artwork clash with one another. This has lead to the concept of the theme of the natural (warm red) fighting against the manmade (cold neon). The dark ominous tones and the discord between the bass and piano are used in the beginning to portray this battle. With the two main instruments playing smooth contoured melodies, the polyphonic texture becomes evident. From 1 minute 43 seconds to two minutes, these two melodies are in direct opposition with each other, as they are almost out of time, yet strangely fit together. This contradiction is highly important to the overall feel of the piece. The union of the warm and cold is visually seen in the pink on the mountaintops that is made when the red and blue combine. To personify the instrumentation; the dynamically loud discord that is heard in the piano at two minutes nine seconds (during the middle section) feels as though the piano is having its final fight against the warm guitar before it plays a sweeter phrase to concede and allow the guitar to play once more. After this there is true harmony between the two melodies. This creates a narrative for the structure and tone of the song.
The narrative theme is vital to the overall sound of Warming The Neon. It is seen though that an audience would not directly need to have been told this theme, in order to appreciate the track. It was used merely as a basis on how to structure and write the track. The audience’s opinion was in mind in writing the track, as it was made atmospheric, as if made for a film, whilst considering the idea that as the painting is a separate tangible object, the track should be able to be appreciated as a stand-alone song. It can be seen that in this case the sound to image relationship is to mimic the visuals. (Brougher, Kerry et al 2005, 5). Although this is the obvious aim of aural artwork, an intention could have been to only portray the visual elements, but by doing this, a deeper story and theme has been turned into sound in Warming The Neon. Therefore it is seen that that the process of a Synaesthetic relationship was created. As I do not have Synaesthesia, it is not about one sense triggering another, as it is about sensory synchronisation as the linking of sound and image was not involuntary, as for example in a visual music video artwork (Howes, David 2004, 19). For myself as the writer, when played together, the two works complete each other. The other smaller visual elements are no less important to the thickening of the polyphonic texture.
Kong’s interested in exploring what’s in the human heart, and the human existence (The Creators Project 2011). The two characters lovers in Kong’s artwork are represented through more of an emotion rather than a specific sound. It was considered that a simple, almost primal vocal be included, but it was removed, as it never suited the overall natural coldness to the artwork. The emotion of the song was vitally important. Inspiration on how to achieve this came from the Sigur Ros track, Staralfur (1999), who’s use of non semantic vocals in their music was an excellent example on how powerful emotion can be delivered without narrative through the vocals. Other inspiration has come aural artists such as Mussorgsky’s Pictures At An Exhibition (1874). His work with instrumental music clearly defines individual inspiration of the objects or as well as the overall theme of it. The only exception difference to this inspiration is the length, as it would deter the audience from separate viewings. The occasional hyper green grass sprouts in the painting are aurally embodied through the airy second guitar parts. This is heard in the song as the guitar is natural and yet the thick reverb creates a non-natural sound, similar to the mountain. They are added in throughout the piece, just like they are in the artwork, to boost the texture. The sound space is filled with various interlinking synthesiser tones. Inspiration for this sort of sound is heard in the introduction of Long Flight by Future Islands (2010).
It is seen that by aurally representing each of the components in Lingnan’s A Man And Woman Under Mountain, the song Warming The Neon has created a deeper link to the image through a thematic narrative. Audience consideration and research into other artists processes helped form my own process. The relationship between sound and image in these two artworks is a forced representation of the Synaesthetic process, and a reinterpretation of the original artist’s intention, and my own. This creates a synchronisation effect when viewed together.
REFERENCES
Brougher, Kerry, Jeremy Strick, Ari Wiseman and Judith Zilczer. 2005. Visual Music: Synthesia In Art and Music Since 1900, 13. London: Thames and Hudson
Collopy, Fred. 2004. “Three Centuries Of Color Music.” Accessed September 18, 2012. Data generated by Collopy. http://rhythmiclight.com/archives/ideas/colorscales.html
Future Islands. 2010. “Long Flight.” On In Evening Air, produced by Chester Endersby Gwazda, track 2. Thrill Jockey. Compact Disc.
Howes, David. 2004. The Handbook of Multisensory Processes. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
Kandinsky, Wassily. 1929. “Jocular Sounds.” Reproduced in Brougher, Kerry, Jeremy Strick, Ari Wiseman and Judith Zilczer.
2005. Visual Music: Synaesthesia In Art and Music Since 1900, 13. London: Thames and Hudson.
Kar-Wai, Wong. 2000. In The Mood For Love. Directed by Wong Kar-Wai. Produced by Wong Kar-Wai. Hong Kong: USA Films. DVD
Lingnan, Kong. 2012. “Man and Woman Under Mountain.” Image. Accessed August 22, 2012. http://robdelaney.tumblr.com/post/23504242479/vicemag-kong-lingnan
Lucas, George. 1977. Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. Directed by George Lucas. Produced by Gary Kurtz. USA: Lucasfilm. DVD.
Mussmorsky. 1874. “Pictures At an Exhibition”. Youtube video, posted March 23, 2011. Accessed September 2, 2012. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xh2v-aIFPdk
Payne, R. 2001. "Ways of Seeing Wild: The Cinema of Wong Kar-Wai". Jump cut (1): 1-5. Accessed April 11, 2012. http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/jc44.2001/payne%20for%20site/paynetextonly.html
Sigur Ros. 1999. “Staralfur.” On Agaetis Byrun, produced by Ken Thomas, track 3. Fat Cat. Compact Disc.
The Creators Project. 2011. “The Creators Project: Meet Kong Lingnan.” Streamed video. Posted May 2012. Accessed August
25, 2012. http://www.thecreatorsproject.com/creators/kong-lingnan
Wild Beasts. 2011. “Invisible.” On Smother, produced by Richard Formby, track 6. Domino. Compact Disc.
Wilfred, Thomas. 1932. “Multidimensional.” Reproduced in Brougher, Kerry, Jeremy Strick, Ari Wiseman and Judith Zilczer. 2005. Visual Music: Synthesia In Art and Music Since 1900, 13. London: Thames and Hudson.
