Last night I went to an event to celebrate the launch of Zounds, the new album by Dappled Cities. Held in a warehouse storage facility, the event revolved around 12 art installations – one for each track – that represented the album in artistic form. There were some interesting ideas on display – performance art, interactive art, drawing, sculpture, video; often suitably abstract, and all reflecting the artists’ interpretations of the songs – literally, metaphorically, cosmically and the rest…
As I pondered these installations, brow firmly furrowed, it felt like being involved in an obtuse form of artistic chinese whispers. The creator of each installation had listened to, considered and interpreted the music, and then used art to represent this interpretation. The art installation was then presented to me, complete with musical accompaniment, for my own interpretation. My experience of the music was immediately coloured by my understanding of the art – my interpretation of the artists’ interpretation of the music. Interpretation was clearly the order of the day.
It was certainly an intriguing way to discover new music. But perhaps, I reflected as I stroked my chin, in some ways it wasn’t so different to reading a piece of writing about the music, albeit far more novel.
Although we habitually, and often skillfully, rely on written and spoken words as the medium to explain and discuss music, these words remain, nonetheless, a form of chinese whispers. We use them to interpret and express the emotion conjured up by music, only for others to decipher these words themselves in an attempt to understand the emotion and therefore the music. The essence of the music is continually reinterpreted, distorted and lost in translation. Or something like that.
In the case of these art installations, there was also a brief written description, which only added another layer of interpretation/discussion/general confusion to the whole shebang. Luckily I had a plastic pint-glass of red wine to help me out. Perhaps that was the problem.
Someone once said, “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.”* Now there’s an idea.
* The origins of this quote appear to be lost in the mists of time; it has been variously attributed to Elvis Costello, Frank Zappa, Steve Martin, Martin Mull and William S. Burroughs among others. Whoever it was, a bunch of French philosophers would have been proud.
