Discover Top Posts Tagged with #academis

John William Godward (1861-1922), A Siesta, 1895, oil on canvas, 82.9 x 73 cm. In a private collection.

#john william godward #academis #neo classicism #painting

yüzeysel açıklamaların çekimine kapılmamak için çok güçlü zihinler gerekir.

albert einstein

WHALES MUiSIC

I get very excited about this topic.

Whale songs are an astonishing example of how music, what is considered a deeply human expression, has innate and startling parallels in the natural world outside of us. In the oceans, whales produce intricate, resonating songs that echo across miles of water, a “far cry” from the melodies we compose in the air up here. The sounds they create are propagated through the medium of water, which behaves fundamentally differently from air—propagating sound waves further and with a ton of different qualities, timbral and resonant. For us, this means their music exists in a realm of sensory perception that we can barely grasp, much less reproduce. We cannot fathom what it is like to hear a whale’s song as a whale much less could we fathom or understand how differently their experience of time would make that listening. The very idea of how whales experience time, with their songs lasting for hours or even days, challenges our human understanding of temporal perception, like some John Cage shit. Unlike the relatively brief moments that music typically occupies for us, whales live in a dimension of extended time (not for them but in context to us), where a song’s duration might feel like a human eternity.

Music, as we understand it, is bound by time, it’s a temporal art form. Yet, the concept of time for a whale could stretch in ways that make our notions of rhythm and duration seem restrictive and redundantly ordered (which is my opinion anyway (not that I don't fw the groove don't get me wrong)). Just as the pace of a whale’s song might resonate through long oceanic distances due to their living in large bodies underwater, our music is often to the general rate at which we walk or at which our hearts pump blood. The temporal frame for their music creates an entirely different listening experience in our context of understanding. Their songs are not just audible; they are emotional expressions, social signals, and cultural markers, much like how we humans express ourselves through musical communication and community.

Whales, as social, emotional mammals, are not so different from us in their use of sound to connect with one another. In some ways, their songs create an interconnectedness that mirrors our own need for musical expression. Imagine singing to your wife from across the planet, how sweet. What is remarkable is how, despite the vast difference in environment (air for us, water for them) the fundamental act of expressing identity, belonging, and emotion through sound is strikingly similar for two earth-stuck, mammalian species.

For electroacoustic composers, this parallel holds rich potential. Just as whale songs manipulate their acoustic space, composers might explore how sound can be used to move beyond conventional limits of duration, space, and structure, which is why I think this presentation for our class held a lot of credence. The fluidity of the water, where whale songs echo across great distances could inspire more immersive approaches to composition in electroacoustic music, using extended techniques and spatialization that reflect the expansive, enveloping quality of sound and imagine it in different temporal realities and mediums of propagation.

In embracing the fluid, extended nature of whale music, we could explore new ways to compose for electroacoustic audiences. We could offer them more than just sound but an experience of space, time, and emotion that transcends traditional structures, all inspired by these giant cuties that float around and eat krill. We could learn to break free from our own constraints, moving beyond the temporal limitations that often define music like meter and rhythm in human contexts, and instead crafting works that, much like whale songs, communicate not only through melody and rhythm but through the very experience of listening itself.

We can even extend this, imagine a series of works by a composer limiting themself to compose on the human comprehension of the timescale of a whole host of different species: a song in bird time, a song in lizard time, a song in whale time, a song in ant time, elephant time, the possibilities are enlightening unexplored. Imagine if a collective of EA composers did this, what a sound to hear it would be. Just an idea though…

#academis