Of Mozart and Light

Ok.  New work.  Let’s talk.

This is the branched off version of my Edge of Vision series that I started sometime last year (I think!).  Still making these, and I’m awful at titles, even when I’ve finished a project, so for right now, I’m referring to the new work as Mozartova Light, because it is literally about this light in my flat on Mozartova (a street that once had the honor of having Mozart reside there!).  Anyway, here is one of my new favorites, in terms of the images:

I like that they are confused, in that the overlap of light and shade make understanding the exact space not straight forward.  They don’t let you sink into them.  Yet I’m drawn to these glowing things.  Who knows.

Now, let’s talk big picture, because this has been one of the things I really wanted to work on while here in Prague.  Photography is like breathing to me.  I’ve been doing it for 15 years seriously now, and I just “get it” as a medium – translating light into a two-dimensional images, how that transformation relates to space and time and sense of being.  Moving on – sound and any other medium, not so second-nature.  I love working with sound, listening to things and I think that eventually, working with sound will come more easily.  But right now, I have these sounds, these ideas of how sound will occupy and interact with a person, and sometimes it gets stuck.  I don’t quite have the language down to get things out the way that I want.  Frustrating.

But it’s coming.  The past week, I’ve really been working on my sound piece for my open studios.  I’m going to do a post on it once it’s finished.  And it really is coming out close to where I want it to be.  This translation of the light of the space, but layered in a different way than the images.  It literally is a translation of one of the photographs – this is the foundation of this idea of installation that I’m working on – digital is malleable, and information can slide from one medium to another, providing an alternate interpretation of something.

Let me simplify: I make a photograph.  I translate it into numbers.  I use those numbers to create MIDI notes in sound software.  I compose a sound piece using those notes as my foundation, plus some direct recordings of sound from the space where the photographs are taken.  E Viola!

And to add just another challenge this go round, I’m adding in video.  I’m about to go process this beast in a minute here, so let me wrap up.  This thing with light and sound has legs.  It could go somewhere.  Visually, it’s almost the other end of the spectrum from my silver skiagrams – the bright shiny white to the dark mysterious shadows.  But the bones underneath, those are the same.  Translation, interpretation of a space and how it resonates for me.  Because this is really what it’s all about.  What do I think, how do I feel in a space.  That’s at the heart of this.

Off to play with videos and sound!