We had been spending time in class, looking at infinity from Philosophical, math, and art point of view. However, we haven’t spent much time, discussing what infinity is like in music. Is there such a thing as infinity in music or even in sound over all? In order to know if infinity exists in sound or not, one has to understand what sound is. This raised a question in class last week as to what considered as sound. Is silence a sound? According to the web, sound is a vibration that travel through the air or another medium and can be heard when they reach a person's or animal's ear. Thus, can silence be heard? Of course it can!! Have you ever heard of the expression “read inside your head?” It’s completely silence, yet there’s sound that read what was written on the page. Have you ever dreamt of people speaking in your dream? That’s too, completely silence from the outside, yet sound exists in the inside.
One of the most amazing things that humans discover is music for deaf people. Deaf people sense vibration in the part of the brain that other people use for hearing – which helps explain how deaf musicians can sense music, and how deaf people can enjoy concerts and other musical events. "These findings suggest that the experience deaf people have when ‘feeling’ music is similar to the experience other people have when hearing music. The perception of the musical vibrations by the deaf is likely every bit as real as the equivalent sounds, since they are ultimately processed in the same part of the brain," says Dr. Dean Shibata, assistant professor of radiology at the University of Washington. To us, it might just be sound and sign languages, but to them, it is music.
Just because it is silence, doesn’t mean you can’t hear the sound. Sound is everywhere around you; it’s outside of you, inside of you; it’s infinite. And when there’s sound, there is music. Thus, music is infinite.
So this whole idea of music/sound and whether or not it is infinite has been on my mind since we last had class. My mind tells me that it is, but I've been struggling for "proof" to convince me totally. I have to say that I feel SO much better after having read your post. This is EXACTLY the kind of information that I need! I never even considered the voice inside my head (insert all crazy jokes here). Music is infinite!!! Nice job.
ReplyDeleteHi Vorleak,
ReplyDeleteYour points are very clear and precise and your comparison with sound and music is good but I don't agree to the idea that you stated that " music is infinite because where is sound, there is music" Why is music infinite in the first place? If you hear sounds, it doesn't mean its music. Remember there are different kinds of sounds and music is part of them. Music comprises of words and different types of instrument. Music starts from one point where I can calculate the time and when it ended. Can you please clarify the infinite state of music? Thanks
Yaa
Yaa,
ReplyDeleteThat is a very good question. To me music is a very abstract thing. It might not be music to you, but it's music to others. For instance, it's just sound to us, but to deaf people it's music. Prof. Hamman, also, stated in class that a musician who took a bow in the beginning of the show, sat at the piano for 4 mins; then took another bow, ending his show. During that 4 mins, this musician allowed us to listen to the sound around us that we never aware or pay close attention to. Personally, I don't think music is part of sound, but sound is part of music. I feel as though you can find music anywhere; it doesn't have to be a place where there is sound. You can find music in poetry without reading it aloud, and even if it's silent, you still can find music.
Hope this helps clarifying it a little :)
Vorleak
I think the issue with music was slightly different, how infinity can be expressed through music instead of if there is an infinite amount of music. I think there are two ways to represent infinity in a piece of art: one, to attempt showing an infinite amount of things at once, or two, to have the piece of art be infinitely large. These may sound the same, but are slightly different. The first allows the user to see the 'infinite' part of the art all at once, however the second allows them to keep looking through the piece of art and find new parts, but never see it all at once. For paintings, the first is doable through tessellations and other patterns, but the second is not very practical. However, for music, the first would require an infinite amount of sounds to be played simultaneously, and the second would be a piece of music that does not end. However, I have no idea how to do either of these practically, and I think that is what Escher meant by problems with representing infinity through music. However, he still may have meant something else completely.
ReplyDeletePlease check your myMC email for my post...
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ReplyDeleteAwesome post Vorleak. I'm really glad you posted about this because I got inspired and asked musician friends of mine on their opinion. My boyfriend who composes classical music told me about what is called a Shepard Tone named after Robert Shepard. Now in order to explain it technically, we would all need to understand composition terminology, which I don't. But essentially what it is is a auditory illusion that gives the impression as though a sound or upward or downward tone will reach its end. When you listen to a shepard tone, you either hear a falling or a rising in its tone and expect it to end but it doesn't. IT is explained as the following:
ReplyDelete"The Shepard Tone fundamentally is based on sine waves. You start with a Sine wave say on note A4 which sits at 440 Hz and you have it glissando down to A3 at 220 Hz over a period of time. During the same time you have another glissando starting on A5 at 880 Hz and dropping down to 440 Hz.
If you were to repeat this cycle the glissando starting on 440 Hz would pick up where the glissando starting on 880 Hz left off. This creates the continued sensation of a falling pitch. However, if you repeat the cycle then you will quickly jump back to 880 Hz and will noticably hear it. So what do we do? In order to achieve a smooth and seemingly endless cycle we need to fade in the upper most glissando and fade out the lower most."
http://audio.tutsplus.com/tutorials/sound-design/sound-design-falling-forever-the-shepard-tone/
Here is a video of it if you want to listen. I think it's definitely a good representation of infinity through sound. Probably the best I've heard of.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeNUO2mg_vE&feature=related
music is art. art is a cultural practice. its existence is solely dependent of humans. therefore, not infinite. Art can depict many things and make you feel many things. ask a deaf person if they dream in waves. sound resides in you through the ability of your brain to remember certain sensations, sound being a big sensation seeing as it is one of the senses. i think this whole thing with sound is getting a bit absurd. can art depict infinity? sure. that does not mean what the artist projects is infinite. Silence is infinite. it exists all around us. it was and still is tomorrow. it doesn't need ears to verify that it is silent. not hearing a sound doesn't mean you can hear silence. i think of it like the number zero. you can't make zero but it's that existing "nothingness."
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