On the Nature of Art

[youtube=://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1pJwOnYrs0&w=854&h=480]

The video shows two Laysan Albatross in a courtship dance.

A word of warning, this writing is probably quite technical, and is more written for my colleagues in movement and sound, both practitioners as well as supporters.

I first saw this video on social media, being shared and admired by senior choreographers for a variety of good reasons. A quick unpack of those reasons may include;

  • the movements themselves are very diverse (entire body bobbing, shaking head, beak contacts, raising head revealing full neck etc) and interesting,

  • the fact there’s a specific collection of movements

  • the rhythmic diversity of the movements themselves (some are poses whilst others are quickly repeated fragments; in music these are called “pauses” (shown by a fermata) and “fragmentation and alliteration” (notated repetitions or close-enough repetitions).

  • The diversity of rhythm within the repeated fragments (semi-quavers through to minims, if one cared to quantise the durations, but let’s use more organic language and just say the array of speeds/pulses is on a spectrum of “very fast” through to “sustained”).

  • The relational aspects including;

    • call and response within a specific range of movements

    • synchronous and asynchronous phrasing

    • exact unison and phasing in mimicry

    • unison, phasing and counterpoint spectrum

    • sustain and departure (i.e one bird sustains their movement whilst the other changes to another movement)

    • observation (“listening”) and response; which can also be a part of…

    • stillnesses

    • travelling movement and non-travelling movement (towards the end) in relation to one another’s positioning in space (i.e they’re travelling in relation to one another, not external stimulus)

  • imagining what is informing the choices being made within this display.

The same analysis could be applied to the sound. Some of the specific sounds made are tied to specific movements, others are not. The percussive sounds are of course directly linked to movement (a beak chattering sound can only be made by chattering the beak!) but others are not; the vocal sounds are made by a different set of anatomy (of course; the vocal anatomy) than the movement and so there are variations of when and how vocalisations come, but still within a paradigm of set relationships.

All the above can also be applied to the sounds components, however there’s additional aspects within the sound which I observe as a composer;

  • pitch

  • amplitude (or dynamic, or volume, depending on what part of music you’re from),

  • timbre (timbral differences achieved in a variety of ways),

  • directional projection of sound (are they singing to one another, or the sky above, is the percussive beak-clap high, low, directed at the partner’s face, muffled under the wing, etc)

  • micro-detailing of sung phrases (tempo, repetition, pitch and timbral modulation etc)

And I could go into the relationship between the phrases over time (i.e “development” and “exposition” as we like to call it in sonata form); because there is development; specifically in the duration and synchronicity of repeated motifs, the addition of traverse movements etc.

The thing we can’t observe are the moment-to-moment reasons for making creative choices that inform the use of the tools mentioned above, though we can take a guess.

We do know that this pair is in a courtship performance (note, it isn’t a “dance” because that diminishes the sound component, and it isn’t a “song” because that diminishes the movement component), - deep instincts of survival of the species is at play here.

I think we can also safely say there is a communication going on.

At this point, I’d like to highlight that “songs” are “works of sound” that have vocal components which can be both (or either) linguistic and non-linguistic. In our human species, “language” is mostly understood to be spoken word, but I don’t like to think of this as being the case all the time. There’s written language, sign language too - but I reckon there’s WAY more than mere codification when it comes to “language”. We use colours to communicate, clothes and accessories, interior design, architecture, vocal inflection (timbral and dynamic modulations), directed and non-directed body-language (as differentiated from sign language, a directed body-”word” is in response to a specific individual or group and a non-directed body-”word” could be exemplified by the slouched shoulders of someone suffering depression, or the more excited gait of someone who’s joyful), pheromones and smell (which we try to control using perfume), our choice of car, instruments, profession, drink, food, product, brand. All these things are on spectrums of intention to non-intended (influenced-aleotoricism), directed to non-directed, precise to ambiguous. Over many generations, we have developed an extremely complex, beautifully layered language.

Not to mention creative practices. I could unpack this anthropological perspective of modern environments and phenomena as part of a larger thesis but there’s just not enough headspace/room here!!!

Many living beings have their version of language if once considers that language doesn’t have to be confined to codified sound. What we see as movement and sound (and if we could smell it, pheromones) between these two birds is a language. Probably going the lines of;

“hey, let’s make babies!”

“I dunno, will we make strong ones that will survive this terrible world?”

“well, let’s work this out… “

the conversation probably trails off beyond what we can assume as humans from there. I think humans, in consenting contexts, would probably compare bank accounts/job titles, life-values, health, current economy and culture, so much to consider - or just go for it regardless with less planning and consideration because life happens (though this again is a choice)… until it gets to;

“I think you’re all right, let’s make babies”

Heaps of awesome artists have taken direct inspiration from nature - and I’m one of them!

I went for a bush walk a while back and was accosted by a female lyrebird. We did a vocal call and response for a few minutes, with some traverse-movement, followed by a “lead and follow” movement modality. It was a deep experience for me… affecting many layers of me. The artist in me was excited to do a full on amazing vocal improv with some movement with a fellow vocal improvisor and mover, but the vulnerable human felt cradled and understood within nature itself. This deeply affecting experience was only made possible by having extended time and solitude with nature. After reading a lot about lyrebirds recently, I think she may probably have seen me as a threat rather than anything of curiosity - but who knows.

This experience of communication with animals (and plants, and our planet), isn’t a new phenomenon, it’s one that’s always existed. Some entire cultures (and aspects of many cultures) have diminished this deep connection with nature to near obsolescence, or (even worse) abstracted the connection itself so far outside of its origin to lose the reality of it.

The colonisation of art by capitalist and classist thinking (including inter-species heirarchy assumptions) have really contributed to this disconnect. Why is some art considered “high art” still, and other art considered “low-brow”?

At all levels of my education, I was taught a broad taxonomy of human language (as defined in the first section of this essay), from the “correct” (note the slight roll of the “r” and slight pause before a punctuated “t” at the end) pronunciation of words through to “acceptable” chords and chord progressions. Some of my darker chords/tones, although considered “brilliant” by some of my mentors, haven’t really resonated well with performers or audiences.

I’ve always written music to find a way of expressing something deep, innate, “natural”, and I’m always trying to reconcile that with the acceptable language taxonomy within our culture… and when I say “acceptable” here, I expressly mean “acceptable by the funding structures of the artform”; funding bodies, artistic directors, curators, financial supporters of the arts.

Unfortuantely, Art has also been increasingly invaded by business and risk analysis thinking… approaching the making of art in professional contexts has changed so much in the last 30 yaers and an increasing amount of red tape, policy, and financial responsibility has been placed on the artist.

Wouldn’t it be amazing if, like these Albatross, we used poetry through movement, sound and maybe even language, for the purposes of finding a mate, or asserting our social status. Lots of song and dance, a lot less melting glaciers and fishing-net entangled whales, and those loud ferraris. .

There currently exists today cultures that already give such importance to artistic expression. Australia is home to the oldest living culture in the world, and it, amongst other indigenous cultures world-wide, haven’t abstracted inspiration from nature so far as to begin to destroy the environment like western culture has.

The individual Albatross’s performances are fascinating unto themselves, but the art lies within the relationship between their performances - the communication between them.

Just as the Art doesn’t lie just in the stand alone performance of human culture and the stand alone “performance” of nature, it is the relationship between their performances - the communications between them.

For me, the Nature of (Hunan) Art is found in the relationship between the language of humanity and the language of nature.

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