Hearing the Color, Seeing the Sound:
"Visual Music" at MOCA

by Justin Izbinski

Long before the black light posters of the 1960's, artists were trying to merge art and music for new experiences. "Visual Music," at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles attempts the difficult task of examining the relationship between art and music over the last century. Synaesthesia, the concept of combining or compounding the senses and potentially leading to "heightened state of consciousness" serves as the basis for exhibition. With works combining art and music in painting, experimental film, and installation art, "Visual Music" illustrates how artists have dealt with the new technologies and scientific findings from the beginning of the 20th century to its very end. It presents an international group of artists and artwork, many unknown to the general public, and a new way to look at some old choice paintings. Most of the pieces in this exhibition were precursors to video, installation, and multimedia art that we know today.

Visitors are engulfed in a collection of early 20th century abstract art at the beginning of the exhibition. Artists such as Frantisek Kupka, Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky are just some of the painters exhibited. These painters were influenced by music and used it as a platform for creating their art, striving to evoke a resonance with the music by means of bright vivid colors and a sense of motion. The paintings serve as markers for the modernism that these artists were witnessing and set the tone for the rest of the works in the exhibition.

The main exhibition space is divided into different rooms to house the installation and film works. Son of Beyond Image (1969) is a film piece by Mark Boyle and Joan Hills. Psychedelic rock blares while lava lamp-like amoebas move in and out of each other. The music transitions into a jazz breakdown with the colors blending in and out, serene at times, chaotic at others. This piece is definitely an attempt for an altered or heightened experience and the only things missing are the controlled substances.

One of the newest works in the exhibition is Jennifer Steinkamp's SWELL (1995), a computer animated projection that divides a large space. The projections appear on both sides of the dividing wall and resemble a pastel cosmic snowstorm with each screen moving in and out like a vortex about to swallow the viewer. Although it is one of few pieces in the exhibition that is not accompanied by music, the theme of synaesthesia is maintained by accompanying sound effects of air being enveloped. This work questions the title of the exhibition as far as the music aspect is concerned, but one wonders if the shows emphasis is really on sound and visual art instead of music as it is traditionally defined. Nevertheless SWELL is, well, just that, swell.

Lapis (1963-1966) by James Whitney is projected in the largest exhibition space in the museum and is clearly the highlight of the show. In this piece smaller circles oscillate in and out in an array of colors resembling a kaleidoscope while being accompanied with Indian sitar music. The patterns become hypnotic and trance inducing. This work clearly correlates the auditory and the visual and is a wonderful example of the concept of synaesthesia. Larry Cuba's 3/78 (Objects and Transformations) (1978), is a film where dots form the structures of different geometric shapes then transform into waves while traditional Japanese music plays.

The only fault of the show is the last exhibition space. Nike Savvas' Anthem (The Carney) (2003) contains a disco ball, club lights, and a hazer representing a night club scene--an obvious and uninteresting example of the mixture of audio and visual in popular culture but in a museum setting.

The exhibition succeeds in bringing the unfamiliar concept of synaesthesia to the public's attention. It also does justice to the artists and artworks by successfully showing the mixture of two different art forms, the auditory and the visual, together in a single exhibition space. Although the heightened experience might not be prevalent in all the works, "Visual Music" is definitely guaranteed to give you one hell of a trip.

publication date: April 2005