Dynamics
with artists Rubbena Aurangzeb-Tariq and Lisa Harker
“…Changes in dynamic (and thus mood and colour of music) can be identified interpreted by both Deaf and hearing people...”
Deaf Artist, Rubbena Aurangzeb-Tariq, and hearing artist, Lisa Harker, were both asked to interpret the music of Nao Masuda onto canvas. The challenge was to represent ‘dynamics’ visually. The word ‘dynamics’ denotes volume: it describes how loud or soft something within music is played. In this two-part series the Nao played her piece twice, once loudly (forte) and once quietly (piano).
Designed to compare and contrast, the task looked at the approach each artist took to visually representing the music they were experiencing.
An obvious difference was the physical position the artists took when creating their pieces. Lisa turned her back, head down, and responded to what she was hearing. Rubbena turned her canvass to face Nao head on and began to produce work which represented the striking drums she was seeing.
When she began to paint, she worked quickly, reflecting the power of the performance in her art. Rubbena’s work is striking – its centerpiece, which consists of overlapping thick yellow and orange arches, visually describes the strength of sound and rhythm filling the room. Rubbena associates these bright colours with positive emotions, which she felt was coming through in the performance. Punctuating the brightness is a collection of darker fragmented lines, derived from the steady beats through parts of the music. The larger patches of earthy, ‘mossy’ greens at the bottom of the finished piece are representative of the vibrations that Rubbena could feel through the floor.
In contrast, Lisa’s painting consists of thin, seemingly chaotic black and golds lines. Texture is added to the canvas with the use of deeper copper coloured paint, whilst a variety of splashes and specks of yellows and reds finish the work. The artwork can be seen to reflect the high levels of energy in Nao’s composition and performance, and has been highly influenced by the strong rhythmic elements in the music. Lisa’s colours were inspired by the metallic instruments used – the dull golds matched those of the metallic bowls; the hints of red reflected the bright strings of the suspended Indian Noah Bells; the paler colours complemented the drum skins, and the swirling lines of silver represented the colour and ‘shiny’ sounds from the small Tibetan Bells.
In the second part, the same piece was played again by Nao only this time she exchanged the large, thick sticks and solid wooden blocks seen in the first performance with softer bamboo brush sticks and plastic beaters. Nao’s physical movements were also much smaller during this performance.
Both artists spent several minutes listening to the second performance before starting to interpret what they were hearing. Rubbena’s final piece was largely similar to her first one; however, the yellow arches and rhythmic fragmented lines were much more small and tame to reflect the softer dynamic of the music. Overall, the brighter blocks of colour on this canvas are much more balanced and there are no sharp edges to the shapes, making the painting softer and gentler to look at.
Lisa’s response to the second performance was different to Rubbena’s. She not only noticed the difference in dynamic, but also identified that the composition itself was exactly the same, so in response covered the entire canvas with a bold red paint to indicate the deep levels of strength and warmth in the composition. Lisa later explained that she felt the colour was too strong for this artwork, wishing that she had chosen something milder instead. As Lisa felt that she knew the piece very well by this point, she added grid lines to show organised patterns and predictability. The red lines in this artwork represent the body of sound, whilst the golden and yellow coloured specks highlight the newfound prominence of the bells.
