Secret chord
| 5 November, 2010 | Richard P. Grant |
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It’s not that I “don’t really care for music”—I do, very much—it’s more that I have a serious lack of talent, or indeed understanding. I can read music, and at a push tune up my lovely (but seriously underused) Tanglewood and crank out a recognizable tune, given some sheet music and a following wind.
Music fascinates me. I can tell you that Blur make good music (but don’t ask me to explain why) and despite my tin ear I can spot a bum note a mile off. I love classical concerts, but start talking about 9:8 ratios in the second or perfect fifths and sorry, I’m lost.
Nonetheless, I was intrigued by an email from my old college saying that a Fine Arts student has had some artwork installed in the Oxford Science Park. Even more so when I saw that it was a sculpture of heavy metal music*.
Conrad Shawcross‘s sculpture ‘FRACTION (9:8)’ is a
three-dimensional interpretation of a musical chord as it falls into silence. The chord is based on the 9:8 ratio, which is the second in the Harmonic Spectrum.
The chord is visualized using a Victorian Harmonograph, a mechanical device that uses swinging pendulums to record sound oscillations. A neat idea, and even more neat to translate that drawing into three dimensions. And if you can’t go and see it yourself (or even if you can) there’s also a cool time lapse video of the 3D chord being installed:
(There’s also some pictures of the installation at the Oxford Science Park website, although I suspect that as with most sculptures they don’t really capture the essence.)
I heard there was a secret chord
that David played and it pleased the Lord,
But you don't really care for music do you.
It goes like this the fourth the fifth
the minor fall and the major lift
The baffled king composing hallelujah
—Leonard Cohen
* Not that heavy: it’s aluminium.
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I found this extremely intriguing. And yet I don’t understand why (if indeed the lack of sound in the attached clip is intended) there is no sound in a clip about a sculpture that purportedly represents a chord. The silence baffled me. I feel strongly that any prospective audience would appreciate some insight into the aural stimulus that gave rise to this visual representation.
Its absence is mystifying, and seems to undermine the credibility of the writing.
Yes, I would have liked to hear the chord being represented too. Maybe someone out there can work out what it’s meant to sound like?
This reminds me of some audio I have from SciFoo about science/music and making the auditory visual and vice versa. I still need to edit that, *months* later, but awesomeness will be uploaded to the internet at some point…