Tree of Life
Detail of Hypnos (2005/2006)
Uccello Project
Uccello Project Album
Ouroboros of Life and Death
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Every
Object Makes a Sound Music
and art form an ouroboros – ink as its eyes, music as its scales. In
the light of this symbolic image, I am tempted to look at the condition
of synesthesia as native to the human mind; it is simply accelerated in
some, latent in others. It is what our minds and bodies strive for: a
unity of the senses. Down the ages, this incalculable urge has been
extruded through the medium of culture. Our visual and sonic arts are
constantly revolting, turning themselves inside out, in order to inhabit
one another’s apparently separate sphere. The
first time I imagined that I heard a work of art, I was looking at a
picture in a book of a woodblock print by the Japanese artist Utamaro.
The infallible black lines of the figure, the coiled floral pattern of
the kimono, appeared to not only be kinetically scaling the page itself,
but to be producing a vast booming sound in the process! This felt
perfectly natural; the tectonic collision of the crossing diagonals and
the suggested force emanating beyond the page imprinted the air in an
invisible song. From that time, I felt I could experience works of art
through the idea, or mediation, of hearing them – through the sonic
tracks they left as the eye encountered the air around them. Though
music had been a crucial element in my own creation of art up to that
point, I had yet to think of it in such concrete terms. Previously, in
response to certain music, I had “seen” tendrils and shapes tracking
through my inner eye, a display neither purely visual nor purely
abstract, but occupying an inner mental world. I remember specifically
that J.S. Bach’s music tended to have a very strong “shape” to it,
unfolding in impossibly elegant scrollwork and nautili, and Mozart
presented breathing polyhedrons and giant figures composed of geometric
shapes bounding across the insides of my eyelids. But
it wasn’t until the event with the Utamaro print that I realized this
phenomenon could work the other way, with visual signals giving the cue
to sonic experiences. It
was through the music of Alio Die that I first discovered perhaps the
greatest sonic tool for concentration and creation: the drone. I never
knew music could be like this. It is difficult to remember how really
strange and exciting it was to hear music completely based on the drone
– an element very much present subconsciously in most music – but
brought to the fore, as the centerpiece of an entire musical domain. It
was like decoding the cryptic “texts” set in stone by the creators
of the Gothic cathedrals of The
sonic domain that Stefano Musso is constantly exploring and expanding
under the name Alio Die, is one of the most complex I have experienced,
and wonderfully fruitful in the creation of visual art. The way that he
incorporates environmental sounds into his works is completely unique. I
am often baffled by the utter strangeness and otherworldliness of the
sounds he finds out in the wilds, of the creatures and the elements,
even of the essence of ancient ruins – and how he is able to weave
these sounds into a sonic tapestry, where it appears he is both creating
them from his own mind and reacting to them as external stimuli, through
the responses he formulates through various instruments. It is as if he
were “playing” the landscape, or like hearing a the song of a bird,
and being unable to tell whether the bird is singing along to the chaos
of the environment, or singing order into it, establishing terrain
through its own patterns. He is not just recording; he is showing us how
he hears the world, and then taking that experience to turn it into
logically discernable and expansive music for the listener. I
can’t count the nights I have sat there, at the table, under a lone
bulb, the rapidograph pen etching its thin metal point into a sheet of
Bristol paper, surface like polished bone, and watched the ink take
shape in accreting patterns, music filling the room, both as a guide and
companion, on the sojourn down into the paper. The experience becomes so
vast, as the sonic and the visual unite, that I am unable to tell where
one stops and the other begins. Sometimes I feel I only draw in order to
be able to experience music in this way. But
that is half the reason. This would not be possible without the amniotic
fluid of the music, flowing within the spaces between artist and
materials. I have become increasingly aware of just how many artists and
writers use music in their creative process. I don’t know of any
artist who doesn’t use music as a medium of creation, and if I did
meet someone who painted or wrote in silence, I would find it hard to
believe how it could be done. As
I listen deeper into the music of Alio Die, I feel that he expresses a
deep undercurrent of European heritage. I can hear parallels to the
early medieval music of which I am so fond – but he calls forth an
esoteric essence from this tradition not normally found in modern
reconstructions (however beautiful) of ancient musical texts. His is an
atavistic link to the past, via an instinctual meditation on ancestral
soil, married with an exquisite native talent for shaping diverse sounds. Stefano’s
domain of sound is one of the surest ways to enter into this world where
the barriers break down. It can be both epically emotional, that is to
say completely connected to the human heart, and gloriously hermetic –
guiding us through time to the alchemical workshops of the ancients. The
music is crucial in helping me pinpoint, literally, where I am on the
page, and in opening the way forward into the freedom to imagine the
making of the next mark. I
imagine that I translate this sound, transmit its message, back into a
solid form through the medium of black ink on paper. It is like a
ceremony at first: grinding the ink stick into the stone well, letting
the music wash over it and fill the room, and as the studio’s walls
breath, and it begins to seem the door and windows could be looking out
just as easily from a turret deep in the forest as from an apartment
onto a modern city. It is in this destruction of linear time that I find
true inspiration. Memories from throughout my life come to me vividly,
and I relive them, all the while the brush, loaded with ink, moves
across the paper. The visual focus becomes extreme: my eyes make micro
adjustments as the hours progress, and soon I am looking so deep into
the paper, into the minute section on which I am working, that the rest
of the visual field condenses, and I am down in it, living there, moving
through as a trace of the brush; but not just that – I am
simultaneously in the paper watching the ink drops from below, and above,
watching the ink fall. The paper has become a labyrinth though which I
travel. And in many of my works, the labyrinth not only implied, but
apparent in its traditional symbolic form.
When I saw the image of the labyrinth appear on the cover of an
Alio Die album, I was intrigued by the apparent acknowledgement being
made of the connection between visual symbolism and music. In this case,
Stefano’s music can be seen as a sonic manifestation of the idea, and
even the actual shape of the labyrinth. The labyrinth is one of the
oldest symbols, found throughout human cultures, far back into
prehistory. It has been associated with the idea of initiation into
deeper reality, and as a symbol of human life itself. It could represent
dire confusion and spiritual trial, and was carved into thresholds as a
sign of protection. In essence it can symbolize the absolute complexity
of the world around us, as seen from a remote vantage point, and as the
utter involvement in the fray of life, as one takes on the shape of a
human being. This duality was known and exploited by medieval artists
and writers; and the labyrinth was ubiquitous in manuscripts, relief
carvings, and tiled into church floors (the most famous being Chartres
Cathedral). In other words, this symbol is an elegant tool in expressing
what the human mind seeks when it creates art and music. When we begin
to plan, we can see the whole work as it were from above, and as we
plunge into the fray to begin the actual creation, we are caught up in
the narrow passages of the labyrinth itself, where one can only wind
forward, trusting to the initial plan and not fearing to be led to the
center. There is an implicit awareness of the labyrinth in Stefano’s
music. It is abstract enough that one feels a “shape”, a sense of
geometric reason or overall structure, but it is involved enough
emotionally, tangible way, that there is a strong sense of moving
through something that can be seen, of following an epic narrative.
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