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Michael’s paintings are, stylistically, intended to be cross-pollination between Abstract Expressionism and Impressionism… and yet they are also a stylistic approach unique to his own visual perspective. Although formally they are reflections of the visual environment he calls home, in the Cedar Canyons of northern Indiana, they could most aptly be described as souvenirs from a journey… a journey into the unknown. As the mind stills and the creative flow is focused and intensified, for we are all always creating whether we realize it or not, there is a movement from all we know to that which cannot be known. As a deliberate creator, the joy that is experienced in this creative awareness is unparalleled and is a pursuit that is being ever expanded and refined.
Technically, the paintings are realized with a pallet knife and oil paint on canvas. Layers upon layers of paint are applied creating a three-dimensional tapestry of color and light meant to provide a quiet place for the viewer to investigate and to experience… a place become a part of. Michael loves to ask viewers, “Where are you located in the painting?”
The music was created using a programming language called Csound. Michael programmed the computer to compose the music for “Echoes and Reflections”. His role in the process was as a programmer, constrainer and as an editor… the computer did all of the composing. Using mathematical constructs called tendency masks, he programmed the computer to implement quasi-random algorithms to generate musical material that he then edited into musical phrasings.
This project is a new step in Michael’s ever evolving process. It is the first to use his, newly developed, four-dimensional spatialization algorithms. Most music we listen to at home on our sound system or in our earbuds is two-dimensional. It can move from left to right and in the dimension of time. In surround sound systems and in Electroacoustic music we hear a three-dimensional sound. It can move left to right, front to back and in time. Michael’s radical approach for this installation was for it to be heard in a four-dimensional environment… left to right, front to back, in the temporal dimension as well as high or low. This was achieved by creating a 3d Cartesian coordinate system relative to the room. The speakers were considered to be perceptual “attractors”. As the amplitude for any one of them is increased it has an effect similar to that of gravity on mass… the greater the amplitude the greater the mass and the greater the effect on the path of the sound. In this way, the speakers combine to create a three-dimensional gravity well configuration for every event.
If you were listening to the music in the intended installation environment, you would notice that it is occurring all around you. You would be aware of where each musical event originates and how it moves through the space. For the contemporary computer music composer, the spatial aspects of a piece of music are equally as important as the other, more traditional, aspects of music like pitch and rhythm.
Enjoy the installation as an expression of a creative being… suspend judgment and simply allow yourself to be inundated by the breathing of the canvases and of the music…. if you are very attentive you can actually see and hear them breathe… For the artist, that is the sign that the work is complete… when it comes alive! Like all of us, they each only live for a short time and then dissolve back into the infinite ether from which they came.
Thank you for visiting!!