Commentaries

Commentaries Readers’ comments offering substantial theoretical and practical contributions to issues that have been raisedin Lewdonre welcomed.TheEditorsreservetberighttoshortenletters.Lettersshouldbewrittenin English and sent to the Main Editorial Office. COMMENTSON “VISUAL MUSIC: THE SEARCH FOR AN AESTHETIC” In the last quarter century my work has been exclusively with digital concepts, which my book Digital Harmony-On the Complementarity of Music and VisualArt attempts to outline. Ithink it is misleading that Tom DeWitt (Leonardo 20, No. 2, 1986) attributes to me the following: “Whitneydescribeshissimpleandeffective algorithms for producing a pleasing timevariant image by modulating spirals.” In fact I believe we can introduce concepts of harmony into the world of visual aesthetics only because we have at last at our disposal the fast digital computer. Further, by far the greatest potential for musical structures derives from the dynamic physics of acoustic harmony which has sustained musical cultures around the world, not merely since pre-history but probably since before the dawn of universal language skills. Computers, once and for all time, havedoubled harmony’shistoricaesthetic domain. Music engages us and focuses our attention upon its dynamic patterns of time. Ranging from consonance to dissonance, the domain of harmony allows us to modulate time through dissonant tensions which can be resolved to cadential repose (in time). Differential digitalgraphicsallowsimilarmodulations in a domain that stretches across visual range from order to disorder. Digital harmony will introduce a new breed of artist/composer who will give active aestheticshapeto time through patterned interference which can be resolved (in time) with its own cadences. Color too will be modulated and resolved in many ways that stem from the computer’s active control of the pixel point field in digital gray-scale steps of red, green and blue. The purpose of my book was to define, as I understood them, some principles of harmony as they applied to graphic manipulations of dynamic, differential motion-pattern by computer. Whether my efforts constituted a final valid grammar seemedirrelevant. The purpose was to document my own approach and topropose the seminal idea of making an approach to establish this lively new visual art and I urged others to join in. I am happy that a colleague has taken up what was meant to be an intellectual challenge to enter into a dialog to examine the harmonic potentials that I had found in computer graphics. Tom DeWitt’s considerable efforts in this direction are to be commended. John Whitney 12018 Herradura Pacific Palisades, CA 90272 U.S.A. COMMENTSON “SOUND SCULPTURE:ART, MUSIC, EDUCATIONAND RECREATION” As an unwavering admirerof the Baschet brothers’ work (Leonardo 20, Vol. 2, 1987) and thus likely to be blind to its faults, I can still perhaps be of some service by attempting briefly to put their work in a broad context. It is remarkable how narrowly we humans tend to think of the sounding arts. In a world full of sound, a world potentially full of music, it would seem a natural thing to try to explore with open minds and imaginations the endless possibilities for producing colorful and divergent aural events; for devising new and various acoustical systems which might be harnessed for musical purposes, or, in a broader sense, enhance our general sound environment. Nowadays a modest number of artists and musicians are doing this. In the early 1950s, when Bernard and Francois Baschet began their acoustic explorations, very few were. Two other builders who did create some extraordinary non-standard instruments earlier in this century come to mind, and the comparison to the Baschets may be interesting. The first was Luigi Russolo (1885- 1947),the Italian Futurist who sought to develop a music based in every day sounds rather than the convential approach to pitches and durations. To this end he built a number of sounding devices which he called Zntonarumuri.The other earlybuilder was the American Harry Partch (1901-1976), who railed against the ascendancy of the twelve-tone equally tempered scale and designed instruments to produce a just scale which fit his own music theory. What is noteworthy about these two, in contrastto the BrothersBaschet, isthat in devising new sound sources they were acting in the serviceof (if the term can be freed of prejudicial connotations) dogma...