[ANPPOM-L] FW: [Musikeion] Music for one apartment and six drummers

Sáb Fev 3 15:00:02 BRST 2007

------ Forwarded Message
> From: Rodolfo Coelho de Souza <rcoelho em bighost.com.br>
> Reply-To: MUSIKEION  --  A forum on the meaning of music <musikeion em pucsp.br>
> Date: Thu, 1 Feb 2007 20:10:17 -0200
> To: MUSIKEION  --  A forum on the meaning of music <musikeion em pucsp.br>
> Subject: Re: [Musikeion] Music for one apartment and six drummers
> 
> Dear Eufrasio and José Luiz,
> 
> I think your analysis are correct but still there some aspects to comment:
> - There are two separate "world signs" in this (and every) movie: sound
> signs and image signs.
> 
> - Obviously sound signs can be interpreted in three ways: as abstract sounds
> (by their qualities, therefore as icons), as sounds that point to a sound
> source (therefore as indexes) and as signs that "mean" something by a
> convention (as symbols). If I turn off the image of this movie and listen
> only to the sounds I may not even realize that all the sounds belong
> coherently to three familiar spaces: the kitchen, the bedroom, the living
> room. Concerning space there is not a single wrong or "dissonant" sound (I
> don't listen to sounds of pans in the bedroom, for instance). Without the
> image probably an abstract way of listening to the sounds would prevail, not
> this referential interpretation. I would pay more attention to the rhythm
> and to the quality of some sounds (for instance, the unpleasant sound of the
> electric motor calls my attention more than the short percussive sounds).
> 
> - The "world of sounds" of this movie is not perfectly realistic. It doesn't
> capture the perception of a listener standing at the scene, because the
> proportions are not real. There are performers able to synchronize the
> sounds in such a precise rhythm, but no performer would be able to make, in
> live performance, the sound of scratching a book match in loudness the sound
> of an electric motor. The image "misses" both the microphones and the mixing
> board that change the loudness relation of actual sounds. This effect of
> hyper-reality is essential to the poetics of the genre. It is based on the
> original indexial relation of the sound with its source, but transcends it
> iconically because the importance of the formal relations of the sounds
> (counterpoint balance) become more important that its cause and effect
> interpretation.
> 
> - The "world of images" of this film in itself is dull. Turn off the sound
> and you will not be able to watch the movie until the end, so boring it
> becomes. Nevertheless there are aspects of the syntax that the image
> provides. The tension of intruders against residents is a discourse created
> only by the image. It works as punctuation: the return of the residents, for
> instance, marks the end of the movie and the displacement for other room,
> the sections of the music.
> 
> - The work of this movie (or, in this respect, any other movie) depends on
> the network of relations between sound and image. The precise cut and
> assembling of images emphasize not only synchronization of sound and image,
> but turns on and off our attention to individual sounds in relation to its
> source. Again, there is not a single dissonant relation of sound and image.
> We don't see the image of a clock and listen to the sound of a scratch. The
> rhythm of images provides a complementary rhythm to the rhythm of the
> sounds. This kind of relation is maybe the most important new idiomatic
> iconic sign of this media, something that didn't exist before in music
> alone: to "watch" the sound. This way of listening became so unconsciously
> important that we hate broadcasting of live concerts that provide wrong
> clues for sound sources, like the orchestra on TV that shows a horn player
> sitting still while we listen to an oboe...
> 
> - The poetic of this movie depends therefore not only on the depiction of
> reality by indexial relations, but on the creation of an impossible reality
> where two worlds of signs collapse: a world of hyper-real sounds and a world
> of hyper-fragmented-focussed images. This is highly metaphorical, a complex
> of symbolic signs developed by its iconic relations.
> 
> Rodolfo Coelho de Souza
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Musikeion mailing list - Musikeion em pucsp.br
> http://listas.pucsp.br/mailman/listinfo/musikeion
> --
> Supported by NuCC-Internet PUC-SP
> http://www.nucc.pucsp.br

------ End of Forwarded Message