Abstract – Hello.

Artist Statement

Whilst trying to create a sound for what resembled the experience of Omnipresence Sans Omnipotence, the artist realised that he was not achieving anything close. It would always feel like something was missing; something that could not be expressed. As a result, what came out was a sonic portrait of attempting to perceive something that was unperceivable, i.e. Omnipresence Sans Omnipotence.

The ordinary world makes sense to us. It may not always be explainable, but it makes sense. Some questions beget more questions, ad infinitum. That was the case with Omnipresence Sans Omnipotence.

This sonic portrait is about the descent down the rabbit hole, getting some idea, but mostly getting more questions and eventually, being overwhelmed by the experience.

Process

I wanted to create a sound for something that could not be seen. Somehow, my mind wandered into Omnipresence, specifically, Omnipresence Sans Omnipotence.

I researched on all the given sound designers and decided to reference Chong Li-Chuan who made The Bowing Plant’s Dream. I thought about Bani Haykal’s work as it seemed like a relevant style, but for the life of me, I just could not understand his art.

I recorded all the sounds used in the submitted work. I knew that I wanted to use musical instruments to create a variety of sounds of different quality so that I could experiment on them in Audition. Apart from that, I seized the opportunity with the H4 zoom to record what I could from my surroundings before I had to return it.

Up to this point, I only had a vague idea of what Omnipresence was to me. I was hoping that through listening to the different sound qualities that I had recorded, I would form a better understanding of what I wanted. However, I still formed no impression of the idea. I then told myself, “Just make a rough cut. Maybe then it’ll make sense.”

It didn’t. Perhaps it might convey the idea of Omnipresence to someone, but I could not convince myself.

After taking a break and returning, I listened to it again and it dawned on me that it sounded like someone attempting to perceive something unperceivable. From there, I aligned the sonic portrait to fit the new idea.

As interesting as Yves Klein is as an artist, I’ll be keeping this as closely related to 2D mark making as possible. With that in mind, let’s dive in to the deep blue.

As I lay stretched upon the beach of Nice, I began to feel hatred for birds which flew back and forth across my blue sky, cloudless sky, because they tried to bore holes in my greatest and most beautiful work.

-Yves Klein

Klein’s feelings towards the birds were in response to a spiritual activity that he was engaged in with his friends, who were also artists. They were to divide up the world between themselves. Klein got the sky and he was to “sign” his name on it- but then came the birds.

Yves Klein is most well known for his use of a single colour: International Klein blue (IKB).

In a way, Klein’s approach to art is translated in the boldness of IKB. Klein was high controversial for his time for his critique of the accepted understanding of abstract art. In the 1950s, abstract art had been accepted as a means for the artist to communicate with viewers through abstraction. Klein rebutted this notion with this monochrome blue paintings much like the one above.

monochrome — He insisted that there was no motif, only “the void”.

“Blue…is beyond dimensions, whereas the other colors are not. All colours arouse specific ideas, while blue suggests at most the sea and the sky; and they, after all, are in actual, visible nature what is most abstract.”

-Yves Klein

Klein was a pioneer in developing performance art and currently, I stay in Pioneer hall. Coincidence? I think not.

Bad jokes aside, here’s a video showing the performance of two pieces of work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mJCVM3d7jw

With performance art, Klein wanted to put an emphasis on the immediate experience of the art itself.

anthro — Anthropometry of the Blue Period (1960)

Gaining access to one of France’s major destructive testing laboratories, he made use of “flamethrowers” to create fire paintings as shown in the video. Much like Anthropometry of the Blue Period, got his models to make prints on the canvas but covered them in fire retardant instead. He then used the “flamethrower” to create his fire paintings.

I feel that it becomes harder to feel for the kind of marks being made when you are unaware of the performance that went behind it. There is meaning in the action of using nude models and IKB. There is meaning in using fire against the fire retardant marks of the nude models.

If there is any take away from Klein, it’s that if you want getting the kind of feeling or message to come across clearly , you need to put in careful thought not just into what kind of marks you make but also how you go about making your marks.

Then again, he was also big on the idea of voids so maybe the take away is that once the performance of art is over, what is left is the remains of art; and there is an element of emptiness to the product of performance art.

2 fairly contrasting take aways for you to decide what you want to do with.

Tag: Abstract

4D II Project 2 – Soundscape

Blue is the Abstractest Colour