Occidental music and musicology has always been shaped by emerging technological paradigms. [1] In the twentieth century, the application of new technologies to musical creation precipitated the development of music in which pitch, rhythm, and harmony ceased to be entirely useful categories for musical events. This precipitated the development of alternative meta-languages and models of music. The term musicography [2] has been used to describe a meta-language of music that involves the categorisation of musical phenomena using visual-tactile metaphore. Besides being a useful meta-language of musique concrete and electronic music, musicography presents itself as an important meta-language of inter-disciplinary art.
It has been shown that conceptualisation commonly involves the assignment of disparate perceptual attributes to otherwise abstract or amodal concepts to induce comprehension. [3] The objectification of music pre-required for its discussion initially takes place at a level of cognition which Psychologists describe as primary process thinking. At this level of thought, disparate phenomena may be compared across modal categories, and new trans-modal categories formulated. This de-differentiated style of thought is highly analogous to the process described as creativity. [4]
A course in musicography is proposed in which areas of cognition and metaphore pertinent to inter-disciplinary art are explored theoretically, and reinforced practically, with the development of audio-visual pieces. A course in applied musicography could be designed which would promote development in the following broad areas:
The practical aspects of the course in applied musicography would require students to have access to a computer facility appropriate for education in multi-media. At an introductory level, the course would pre-require students to have basic computer software skills. Whilst the course could be developed as a major study in interdisciplinary art, it could be simplified to any number of units as required. If there is interest in pursuing the development of a course of this sort, the author would be happy to both develop curriculum and lecture. Such a course would present the technical and conceptual results of over ten years of applied research and three years of intensive research at post-graduate level into visual-music.
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[1]David B. Doty. Just Intonation Primer. San Francisco: The Just Intonation Network, 1993.
[2] Carlos Palombini. Pierre Schaeffer's Typo-Morphology of Sonic Objects. PhD Dissertation, University of Durham, School of Music, 1993. p. vi
[3] Steven A. Sloman and Lance J. Rips. (eds.) Similarity and symbols in human thinking. Cambridge, Mass. : MIT, Press, 1999.
[4] Dailey, Audrey R. Creativity, Primary Process Thinking, Synesthesia, and Physiognomic Perception. (PhD Diss.) University of Maine, 1995.
[5] Intermedia is a term used to describe the application of techniques and theories native to one artistic tradition to other traditions. ie. Visual art theory applied to sonic arts etc.