Pitch
“Imagine that the land represents middle pitch……….”
Newcastle-based artist James Boyle was chosen to visually interpret Ruth’s vision of ‘pitch’ by drawing, painting, and collaging on three large separate canvases.
Profoundly deaf from birth, James wears a cochlear implant, his artistic vision and creativity is strongly driven by the heavy Rave Culture, DJ/Electronic Dance, and House music scene.
The first canvas shows a painting of a realistic-looking landscape showing the mountainous land, sky, and ocean. Imagine that the land represents middle pitch – it is where we build our houses and communities, and where the right level of oxygen is for humans to thrive. The higher up we go, the higher the pitch becomes – as we climb higher and higher, the air gets thinner making it harder to breathe. Being closer to the sun exposes us to extreme brightness and discomfort, which is similar to the discomfort that hearing people experience when hearing very high-pitched sounds. On the opposite end of the scale, diving deeper into the water represents lower pitches as the light fades away until there is eventually no light left. Sounds become so deep that they are felt and heard through the lower parts of the body and hearing.
The collection not only represents pitch through light vs dark/high vs low, but also through physical size. The second piece plays with this concept, using animals (including humans) at various intervals to illustrate their individual pitch ranges. The yellow line represents ‘middle C’ at 440Hz (this is around the middle of a piano keyboard). Here, two people are standing to show that their vocal range ‘comfort zone’ is around here. Smaller animals can be seen above the humans, representing higher pitches, larger animals are below representing lower pitches.
In the third and final piece of work, the same colourful lines seen on the second canvas appear again, though this time are representing octaves. Again, the yellow line represents ‘middle C’, where instruments in the middle-high registers (such as the flute and violin) can be heard. Just like animals, the smaller the instrument, the higher pitch, and the larger the instrument, the lower the pitch. For instance, the piccolo (a small flute) can be seen at the top, whilst the huge double bass, tuba, kettle drums can be seen at the bottom.
