Drawing with LightThade Buchborn, Vienna

EAS Congress in Piteå, Sweden May 2007

Basic Idea & Technique

Photography to record motion

How can music be transformed into a picture? This was the leading question Sascha Kruse (interior designer and artist) asked himself when he started his work on the project „Garden of Music Brokhausen“. Besides creating rooms and landscape elements that referred to the music of Gustav Mahler he developed a photographic method in order to transform musical gestures into graphical gestures.

When he started his work he focussed on dance as a music-related art form that is visual. If someone dances, he finds figural patterns that are fitting to the music he dances to. So dance offers a way of visualizing music.

Dance & Motion to visualize music

But dance is still time related like music and he was looking for a medium that is fixed and not related to time like a painting. For that reason he concentrated on photography in the next step. Because photography offers the possibility to record motion (Study 1).

In order to record longer motion sequences, very long exposure times were necessary. The following picture was taken in the dark. The dancer danced for about 2 minutes with two torch lamps. The lamps highlighted the moving parts of the body and left light traces on the picture (study 2).

Study 1: dancer

Study 2: dancer in the dark with two torch lamps

This technique made it possible to record long motion sequences. Our work on Mahler‘s9th Symphony could be continued. A big panorama picture was created to the first movement of this symphony. 12 people danced to the music on a large meadow. They expressed their emotional impression of the music by dancing together - realizing single figures and choreographies in the group.Different colours represent different groups of instruments (strings, windinstruments, special solos). The light traces show the development of the piece of music (duration 27 min.) from left to right on the photo.

Drawing with light to the 1st movement of Mahlers 9th Symphony

the project in school

• Listening to the music / Getting an overview• Describing the moods and atmospheres of the music• Dealing with special episodes (main theme, contrast

theme, flute episode, etc.)• Painting to the music• Developing motion sequences• Drawing with light

In the next step we decided to work with a group of 17 to 18-year-old pupils at the Schiller Gymnasium Hameln together with their teacher Lars Oberhaus.The project started with three lessons in school and ended up in a project day on a meadow near Hameln, where the pupils worked on pictures, dances and „lightpictures“ until late at night on a warm summer evening.This project won the 2nd prize at the “II. Internationalen Musikpädagogischen Wettbewerb Musik und Bewegung des Peter Cornelius Konservatoriums der Stadt Mainz und der Music Academy for Generations"

Project schedule

music-educational aspects:Dealing with music in a „non-scientific“ wayThe pupils expressed their impressions of the music without words but very precisely. This way of accessing the music helped the pupils to find personal means of musical understanding. When they needed to describe their impressions in order to discuss them with the group or to develop choreographies or motion sequences, the intense intuitive and non-verbal way of dealing with the music allowed them to find words to describe the music (atmosphere, structure, form and development).

Getting into the musicThe pupils really engaged with the music during the working process. Many of them considered that they became familiar with Mahler‘s sound and musical vocabulary during the project.

Expressing one-self in ArtThe work on the paintings, choreograhies and the lightpicture where aesthetical processes that led to artistic products had their own quality and value even without their relation to Mahler‘s music.

music-educational aspects:Transformation of music into another aesthetic medium (visual arts)By transforming musical developments into drawn gestures via motion, analogies between the different Artforms had to be found.

Event-characterWorking together in a project like this is a lot of fun and an intense experience - for the pupils and the teachers. Discovering Art in such a personal and inspiring way initiates a deep relationship to the music and the products that are created.

Mahler‘s relationship to natureComposing surrounded by the woods and whilst taking long walks through the alps was Mahler‘s favourite way of writing music. The calm and tranquility of his summer breaks in the countryside contrasted with his stressful live as a conductor during the year. Working near to nature as Mahler did and listening to Mahler‘s flowing musical sound on a calm summer evening offered a new listening experience for these students.

music-educational aspects:

Dancing in the classroom is often difficult. A lot of pupils are ashamed of their bodies and dislike expressing themselves, in front of their classmates, by dancing. In our project dancing served a special purpose: the lightpicture. That helped the pupils to overcome their inhibitions and enabled them to express themselves in dance.

Moving and dancing

Analysis of structure and formThe analysis of the music has its starting point in the intuitive and impression-based response to the piece: For every individual that takes part in the project, the first approach to the meaning of the music is moving to the music. Afterwards the choreography and the lightpicture can be compared to the piece of music in order to work out thematical elements and the formal structure of both: the music and the picture (Example 1 and 2).

Flute solo (blue trace)

accompanying horn motiv (white trace)

Example 1

Example 2:This detail shows a musical climax of approx. 1 min. length. Different colours are representing different groups of instruments (winds, strings, percussion).

The different lightcurves are tracing single motives of the music.

Future projects:• 31.8.-1.9.2007 AfS-Workshop in Walsrode, Germany for teachers of all types of schools (http://www.afs-musik.de/)

• GvE2008 - project on Gottfried von Einem in Vienna

Team: Thade Buchborn, Sascha Kruse, Lars Oberhaus and Jan Jankovic

Copyrights photos: Sascha Kruse and Jan Jankovic

Contact: Thade Buchborn buchborn@mdw.ac.atSascha Kruse sascha.kruse@web.de