THE UNFOLDING PORTRAIT: SOUND, IMAGE, PSYCHE revealed in time

 

 

“The spirit is often concealed within matter to such an extent that few people are generally capable of perceiving it.” (Wassily Kandinsky)

 

CREATIVE WORK

 

I propose to create a series of intimate human portraits told by way of sound – music, spoken word and soundings from the external world - to explore the durational, unfolding inner world of my subjects’ psyche. My portraits will prioritise time-based sound in all its forms and in response to the sound and as an anchor or signpost to meaning, will be placed image in time - film in all its forms and delivery. The portraits will have a strong grounding in psychological views of identity and will aim to communicate the deepest reaches of a subjects’ unfolding psyche.

 

“The eye takes a person into the world. The ear brings the world into a human being” Lorenz Oken (1779-1851) – naturalist, botanist, philosopher

 

In Buddhist meditation, eyes closed, ears open to the sound of being, we find the most powerful way to inner development on the deepest level. We live in a world dominated by the visual; media in general prioritises the visually perceptible to the neglect of hearing.  The sound that has increased in direct proportion is noise; traffic noise, industrial noise, machines; things powered by the need for fast, direct movement from start to goal. As a consequence, does our perception of all things – ourselves, our fellow humans - slip fast across the surface, failing to take time to penetrate below the top layer?

 

Music and sound unfolds in time; it exists only in experienced duration. My portraits will use sound’s unfolding in time to delve below that surface, to explore the possibilities of revealing the transient inner being. The experienced duration of sound and music allows the artist who works in it, time to unpack her subject, to open it out, to dismember it, to dig slowly and surely below that top layer to reveal what lies hidden; and it allows the listener a freedom of unfolding imagination, shifting interpretation and emotional response that is not based on the quick judgement of a moment.

 

While it’s clear that a static visual portrait or photograph is able to depict a fine likeness in the rendering of face and body, the limitation of a visual portrait is that it can only capture a moment, albeit a moment the artist has heavily laden with signs, but none the less, a single moment.  Even as portraiture developed during the Renaissance, where objects from real life and of a symbolic nature were added to depict a persons’ scholarly, spiritual or domestic interests or their position in society, the limitation still remained; how is it possible to render a persons’ shifting psychological states; their reflective, reactive or emotional nature?

 

I will create a series of durational portraits of artists and musicians that will unfold over time. Every individual has a life soundtrack; their internal thoughts, the sound of their body’s life force, music they create or is meaningful to them, the sounds of their daily life, their friends and family, their workspace, conversations, their hobbies, the street outside as it enters their personal space; all these sounds live with and within us yet it’s not something of which we are generally consciously aware.  Much like a counsellor, I will work in collaboration with my subjects over an extended period of time, to record, edit and hence reveal the soundtrack of their life, to bring mindful attention to the sounds of their inner and outer world.

 

In response to this sound portrait I will create durational image by filming the unfolding of their daily lives; sometimes the images will be depictive and literal or, as a renaissance portrait might, they will be a series of moments, each one symbolic and metaphoric. Like the soundtrack, the images will be laden with meaning.

 

My intent will be a portrait that allows a subject to unfold and reveal themselves through time; through different locations, challenges and relationships in the world as well as their passing moods, and it will be the process that we both engage in, together, that will determine the direction each portrait will take in its unfolding.

 

The question then arises, where does the audience stand in relation to these portraits? It’s a vital question; literally where will they stand, from what place will they view the portraits and equally important; as in real life, are their responses part of an unfolding portrait conversation? Certainly I know that the portraits I create will not be films created for public broadcast, as were my previous films, with all the conventions and restrictions that attend that medium; single screened with a static, seated audience being ‘delivered’ a product whose parameters are strictly set by broadcasters. They will be multi-screened or alternate-screened, durational portraits in a predetermined and significant space that will aim to immerse the viewer into the inner world of my subject; that will allow the audience the freedom of unfolding imagination, shifting interpretation and emotional response on many levels.

 

 

RESEARCH

 

My most immediate research question will be, how to best achieve the outcomes I would want for my portraits? To find the answer to this question will require theoretical research of several things.

 

First, what are the mechanisms in music and sound that convey the meaning, emotion, mood, feeling-tone, relationship and place in the world, to a listener? How can music and sound work to reveal the deep psychology of a subject? Ultimately, can it reveal this or are we always left with a sense of not truly seeing?

 

There has been much research by music psychologists into how Western classical music - linear, tonal and based on the predictability of the Western harmonic system and structure - reveals meaning to a listener (Meyer, 1956; Sloboda, 1985-2009; Adorno, 1941 etc) Film music, being largely based on tonal harmonic structures, likewise has been researched extensively to better understand the way in which it is able to convey meaning. I have insights into creating meaning through music from my own experience as a film composer and director. I can create meaningful film scores because both composers of film scores and listeners of the music understand very well the lexicon of Hollywood style film music in any culture where these films are pervasive. It is well understood by the regular film viewer because the producers of these films allow their composers very little deviation from the expected lexicon; and with constant repetition, we learn.

 

So, while this area of research holds interest and will play a part in my own explorations, I am more interested in looking at the ability of atonal, nonlinear, discontinuous or ‘moment music’ as Jonathon Kramer calls it in his book ‘The Time of Music”, to reveal meaning. This style, pioneered by the Futurists in the early 1900s, was refined into a new form of music by Schoenberg and the twelve-tone composers and brought to its zenith by Stockhausen, Cage, Cornelius Cardew, Morton Feldman and those who have followed from this musically innovative period. Improvisation and works in sound can also be seen to belong in part to this group definition because of their quality of being ‘in the moment’ rather than being determined by what went before or what is expected to come after each sound. Schoenberg in particular was trying to produce a new type of music that captured emotions; a music with free chromaticism, nonharmonic and unresolved tones of dissonance, and this ushered in a new era in abstract art, influencing in particular Kandinsky’s upturning of the artistic world with his abstract ‘Compositions’.

 

Why does this interest me? It was as a very young musician in the 1970s, when I was performing in David Ahern’s ensemble A-Z Music, that I first became intrigued by the non climactic, non goal oriented, ‘miniature eternities’ (Kramer, 1988) of non-linear atonal music, sound and art. I wonder if it is this style of music and sound that is best able to illustrate the seeming irrationality of our internal world as the composers and artists who developed this style believed? Our external lives are essentially ordered; by clocks, schedules, daily routines, and yet our inner thoughts are largely discontinuous and even chaotic at times. Wouldn’t the irrationality of this style of music be the best illustrator of ”… our shadowy, jumbled, totally personal interior lives?” (Kramer, 1988, p45) This is worth investigating.

 

Second, I would also look in more depth at portraiture in the visual arts; in particular how is the artist able to reveal in a visual image, the sitter's psychological awareness, consciousness and inner emotional life  - the person's 'air' as Roland Barthes (1977) calls it? Barthe’s 'unpacking’ of the meanings held in photographic and film images holds interest, as does all his writings in the field of semiotics as it relates to signs, signifieds and signifiers, denotation and the chains of connotation that can be held within image.  It’s clear that meaning is conveyed by more than merely meets the eye; it includes the symbols that are culturally determined as well as the deeper archetypes understood across cultures.

 

I will research how successful other artists have been in communicating meaning to their audiences and by what mechanisms they have achieved this.  For example, the Renaissance portraits of Holbein and Jan Van Eyck, were able to reveal elements of a persons’ interests, morality and status in the world via the symbol-laden objects surrounding them. They are fine examples of how much information can be packed into a moment in time but also reveal the limits of this type of portrait. Are they able to render a persons’ shifting psychological states; their reflective, reactive or emotional nature?

 

Tracy Moffatt & Cindy Sherman, as modern versions of these painters, both use images in their portraits that capture moments heavily laden with objects, symbols and hence meaning. In the moment of these portraits we, as audience, are able to imagine a back-story that led to the moment in time that has been captured, and even a possible outcome. Our imaginations can also elicit an emotion to attach to that moment, but unless we choose to spend time continuing to imagine, that is the limit of the meaning that can be conveyed. Imagine how much more effective would be a durational portrait over time with many moments in both sound and image, as heavily laden as this one moment.

 

Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests, on the other hand, are almost devoid of signs, symbols or metaphors that convey meaning to the audience. He filmed his subjects in one long take and then slowed the film to allow the audience to take time to observe and imagine. As Warhol himself said “What I liked was chunks of time all together, every real moment…I only wanted to find great people and let them be themselves…” While the portraits are limited in what they intentionally communicate to the audience, I can certainly aspire to Warhol’s desire to tie chunks of time together and to let the subjects simply be themselves. In this way he allowed the audience time to imagine the portraits as windows to their soul.

 

Fiona Tan and Bill Viola are two artists whose powerful use of video reveals deeper aspects of our selves and our spirituality. In both these artist’s works, not only the content but in particular, the installation of the work is vital and inspiring. Tan’s work ‘Correction’ (2004) shows her almost still video portraits at larger than life size, spaced around the room in a shape resembling the prison in which the subjects are incarcerated. Viola’s work, which deals with the fundamental human issues of birth, death and unfolding consciousness on a spiritual level, is often placed in a black space the viewer has to tentatively negotiate their way in to, with high quality sound undisturbed by any outside noise, and high quality larger than life video, creating a highly immersive and emotive experience for the audience.

 

And finally, all these ideas tie in with our changing ideas of what constitutes a ‘self’, a personality, an identity. What is it we are actually trying to reveal in a portrait; what is this consciousness that sets us apart from other species? From Plato through Descartes to modern psychological theories of self and personality, as well as Eastern ideas from Buddhism of a non-dual non-self, there is much to research and question. I'm interested in the field of Depth Psychology pioneered by Jung, Freud, William James and Alfred Adler; the concept of looking below the surface behaviours to find the visual and phonetic images that hold the symbols and archetype clues to who we are. Is it possible to use the power of these word sounds or phonetic images, to illustrate a subject, to create meaningful portraits?

 

 

A SELF-PORTRAIT

 

It’s clear as I develop my ideas for this PhD that throughout my career I have been creating the pathway for the directions I am now taking; the future is a continuous journey from the past.

I am at this moment, a professional musician - performer and composer. For many years I was a principal flautist with the Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra, the Sydney Symphony and others. I am also a freelance performer and composer of experimental, contemporary and film music. Throughout my career I have sought to explore new ideas in music making and I continue to be inspired by new ideas in sound and music. I have taught improvisation at Queensland University of Technology and will continue during this PhD, to research the impetus and power of contemporary sounds, music and improvisation as a tool for expression and revelation.

 

While training as a musician, I also completed a psychology degree from the University of Sydney and undertook various studies in visual arts (Chelsea School of Art, London; Southern Cross University, Lismore). It has been the combination of these three disciplines – the visual, aural and psychological – that have informed my desire to create new metaphors of expression involving music, sound, word and image.

 

In 2003, after completing a Masters degree in music and film, I began my own film production company, See TEa Productions, specialising in arts documentaries and art films. My creative imperative was to reveal the intimate world of the artist. With various Australia Council and Arts Queensland grants I made several award winning films for festivals, TV and radio and in all of them, unlike most film and TV today, the visual was not created first; rather music and sound were created in response to the subject and the visual element was added last.

 

I also have an interest in Argentine tango and have travelled often to Buenos Aires to document, study and perform both the music and dance. This interest led to the making of a more traditional style documentary that revealed the personal stories of the Australian tango champions as they competed in the world championships in Buenos Aires, “One Tango Moment” shown at the Chauvel cinema in Sydney. The film has proved very popular on YouTube with 22,000 views in less than a year.

 

In all these works can be seen the beginnings of an intent and method that I will develop in my future PhD. However, the portraits I create in the process of exploring the ability of music, sound and image to convey meaning, will move beyond the restrictions I faced in creating film for public broadcast, to a new way of communicating the human condition.

 

In addition to all I have already referenced, in the following works can be seen the elements that have inspired my past and future work.

In the world of classic films, Toru Takamitsu’s film scores (with director Kurasawa in particular) stand apart. His music eschewed the conventional harmonies of the traditional film score and instead explored atonality and nonlinearity to illustrate the storyline. The quiet spaciousness of the music gave the audience both time and space to mindfully experience their shifting emotional reactions to the intense storyline. It is this spaciousness that I intend to bring to my portraits. Louis Andriessen’s music combined with film by Peter Greenaway also was an inspiration for me in my work “Circus Sweet” which incorporated live music with film; something that could well feature in my portraits.

Samuel Beckett’s “Not I” with Julianne Moore is a wonderful illustration of how simply words with minimal visuals can reveal so much in a portrait. The intensity of our reaction to Moore’s speaking face in close up is worth exploring.

 

STUDIO REQUIREMENTS

 

I’m experienced in the use of Final Cut Pro for film editing; Protools and Cubase for audio and music composition; Photoshop for image editing. I have my own studio with computer, small professional HD camera and sampler for composition, film editing and limited recording. It would be a bonus if there was a film studio available with some use of camera, lights and blue/green screen as well as a better soundproofed studio for recording. Otherwise I am fairly self sufficient.

 

DESCRIPTION OF CREATIVE WORKS SUBMITTED BY LINKS:

 

1. Showreel

10 min excerpts from ‘Sex, Drugs & String Quartets’ and ‘Circus Sweet’

https://vimeo.com/109872810

 

A brief overview of these works but to get a fuller picture I suggest you watch at least the first full story of ‘Sex, Drugs…’ (7 min)

 

2. “Sex, Drugs and String Quartets” – filmmaker and composer, 2004

27 min dramatised documentary (Arts Queensland funded) Broadcast ABC TV; NZ TV; Commonwealth Film Festival, UK; Sarasota International Film Festival, USA; Brisbane International Film Festival.

https://vimeo.com/109761210

 

This film seeks to reveal the deep psychological correspondence between a musician’s definition of self and their instrument. The stories are taken from interviews with the musicians. The soundtrack – words and music – was created first and broadcast by ABC radio as a stand-alone sound work. I then collaborated with 3 other visual artists to conceptualise, design and direct the creation of the visuals.

 

3. “Circus Sweet” – filmmaker and composer, 2007

30 mins. Edited archival footage with music performed live by contemporary music ensemble, Topology, The Block, QUT, Brisbane. Released on DVD ‘Video Circus’  (Australia Council and Arts Queensland funded)

https://vimeo.com/109794993

 

Circus Sweet is a collection of archival footage from the National Film and Sound Archive featuring circus and circus-like acts. The circus is a place of illusion and enchantment on many levels. In this piece I wanted to delve below the world of simple party tricks, to reach another, more honest level; to reach the dark grimy underworld of a performers’ life. The music was written to mirror this illusion. On one level it is a simple dance ‘sweet’ based on traditional form, tonal and entertaining in its intention. However interspersed amongst the dance music is unexpected tonalities and sound textures created with digitally altered voice samples – both from the original soundtrack and specially recorded samples of my own voice, which create an unsettling element to the work.

 

4. “One Tango Moment” – film maker Carla Thackrah, 2008

57 min Documentary. Chauvel Cinema and YouTube (22,000 views in 1 year)

http://youtu.be/lZMtZ_UZh_Y

 

Although I made this film in conventional documentary format, the desire to understand the deeper motivations of my subjects was paramount.  Filmed in Argentina I chart the songline of tango and how it is inextricably linked to the culture of Buenos Aires.

 

5. Fastness of Forgetting – Film maker, Carla Thackrah; Composer and concept, Dr Christine McCombe

Released on DVD ‘Video Circus’ (Australia Council funded)

https://vimeo.com/110229022       PASSWORD: carla

 

Made in collaboration with Christine, this work was created as sound / video art and therefore not constrained by broadcast requirements. This house was chosen as a site haunted with meaning and the slow moving camera-as-eye allowed time to observe and absorb as a trespasser might in a forbidden place.

 

6. Frocks Off – composer, Carla Thackrah. Film maker, Rosetta Cook. Broadcast SBS TV, 2006-7

https://vimeo.com/110229023 PASSWORD: carla

 

A selection of three short films from the original twelve made for SBSi. An example of my broadcast film music.

 

7. 8. 9. 10. Four sound works by Carla Thackrah all available here

http://www.carlathackrah.com/#!recordings/cnnz

 

Toning – flautist & composer. Released on CD “Earthgods; The Yoga of Sound”

This track is reminiscent of a CD I have of the brainwaves of an experienced meditator that had been mapped and turned into sound. I am also a sometime meditator and I realise that on an intuitive level, this is what I was trying to create with this music – the deep inner world made audible.

Improvisation with percussionist Michael Askill, 2012

Flute Slide for solo flute – composer, performer, 2004

Sandlines – composer. Released on the Liverpool Biennale of Art UK CD, 1999

 

 

 

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

 

Barthes, Roland, Image, Music Text (Fontana Press1977)

Berendt, Joachim–Ernst, The Third Ear (Element Books 1988)

Cook, Nicholas Analysing Musical Multimedia (Oxford,1998)

Freeland, Cynthia, Portraits and Persons: A philosophical Enquiry (Oxford, 2010)

Kemp, Sandra, Future Face (Profile Books, 2004)

Kramer, Jonathon D. The Time of Music (Schirmer Books, 1988)

Kugler, Paul The Alchemy of Discourse: Image, Sound, Psyche (Daimon, 2012)

Meyer, Leonard B. Emotion and Meaning in Music (Uni Chicago, 1961)

Rieser, M. Zapp, A. New Screen media: Cinema, Art, Narrative (BFI, 2002)

Schaffer, Murray, The Soundscape: The Tuning of the World (Destiny Books, 1977, 94)

Vella, Richard, Musical Environments (Currency Press, 2000)