Sound Bites comprises of a series of 50+ indexical drawings created using charcoal on vellum whilst listening to music in an immersive environment using headphones devoid of distractions and other external influences. This experimental research enabled me to respond intuitively to melody, rythym and harmony as a somatic response to sound through mark-making. The variation of line, marks and flow across multiple sheets of vellum captured what I refer to as ‘soundbites’ i.e. sample sections or snippets of a song or melody selected from a range of songs from my personal playlist spanning different music genres. The purpose of the experiment was to respond to music in an emotively responsive and multi-sensory way whilst at the same time develop a visual library or catalogue of drawings for further analysis and review as part of developing my artistic practice and research.
As part of this experimentation I wanted to remove the need of looking, thinking and relying more on sensing; throwing away the dependency on creating a perceptual view of the world; working emotively; coordinating movement and sound; tuning in to my own immersive environment at a point in time and space, expressing the nature, feelings and following gut instincts initiated by listening to music; being more reliant on intuition and instinct; drawing inspiration from the inner self, with an aim for the work to be somewhat representative of music whilst exploring my own proprioceptions in response to sound, reflecting them back onto a surface using drawing.
The most interesting aspect of this experimental research was the variation, flow, spacing and repetition of line, marks and pattern created depending on the type of music I was listening to at the time, which I found to be fairly representative of my perceptions of its rhythm and harmony.