Sights and Sounds: Connecting Visual Arts and Music

LCS 440 Issues in Arts Administration

Sights and Sounds: Connecting Visual Arts and Music Tyler Hahn

Introduction Welcome to the online experience of “Sights and Sounds: Music and Visual Arts Don’t Have to be Separate”. The mission of this exhibit is to bring visual artists and musical artists together by presenting them with the fact that the two make up a whole that is greater than their individual parts. Everybody in this world has an innate desire to experience things that are visually appealing and audibly appealing to them, but it is not common to

get the chance to experience both at the same time. Our hope is that die-hard artists and non-artists alike will experience this exhibit and gain a better understanding of the essential and beautiful relationship between sights and sounds.

Now, presenting this exhibit online is not how we’d like to have it, but we’ll make it work.

When you enter the exhibit, you’ll receive an email with some audio tracks. The visual pieces and audio tracks will have numbers that correspond to one another. Open up the audio track and minimize the pop-up so that you can take in the art work while you enjoy the short audio experience. We encourage you to contemplate how each work makes you feel, and how the audio adds to your sensory experience. If you have troubles or questions during the experience, feel free to reach out by email to t​ hahn@bryant.edu​. Someone will assist you.

Lastly, there is a participatory element to the exhibit. If you would like to participate you may request to do so, and you will be sent another audio file. Open it up, listen to it, and create a piece of visual art on your own that you think best matches the emotion that the music brings to you. Let the sounds tell your hands what to do. Think of a place you’ve been or an experience you’ve had that makes you feel the same way that the music does. We really would love to see what you create!

Thank you for stopping in, and enjoy the experience.

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Visual Work #1

Unknown Title Unknown Artist Unknown Location Oil on Canvas

The main influences on the piece of music from this painting are the deep blues and the starry night sky. On the color and emotion spectrum, indigo is representative of the appreciation of beauty and truth ​without form​. This led me to a chord progression in a key that was deep and grounding, but didn’t give much of a sense of home. I want it to feel like you are on an adventure through the woods and you suddenly come to this beautiful image, and you know you’re feeling something but you can’t put your finger on it. Thats the story of the painting.

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Visual Work #2

Master Bedroom (and Rattler)

By Andrew Wyeth Unknown Location 1965

The story that connects this visual with its audio is one where you (the viewer) just got home from a long and tiring day out. You finally enter your bedroom and you find your beautiful Golden Retriever on your bed; and he’s already asleep. I chose the key of Bb major because it brings a sense of home and arrival, and I started the piece with some more movement than the last couple of chord progressions to bring a more profound sense of arrival at the final chord. Also, I’m the luckiest man in the world as my dog started barking randomly while I was recording the piece. It feels like you’re right there inside the painting.

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Visual Work #3

Unknown Title Unknown Artist Unknown Location Oil on Canvas

The basic idea of the sound behind this painting is that I wanted to juxtapose the beauty and brightness of the color white and the ocean with the plainness and sadness of Winter.

So, I wrote a soft (heavily influenced) piece in a bright major key (C Major) that starts its progression on a minor chord. This brings a feeling of being grounded in brightness and happiness from being in an amazing place, but also having a sad temporary feeling of a dreary season.

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Visual Work #4

Unknown Title Unknown Artist Venice, Italy Oil on Canvas

This one was a lot of fun to write. I kept it really simple. When I first saw this painting, I saw lots of really calming color combinations, but I also saw a blue sky and reflections of a bright mid-day sun off of some of the buildings. I wrote a short little piece that is in the red key (C Major) that I feel is a calming take on a stereotypical Italian Dining Room tune.

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Marketing Piece

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Tyler Hahn Sights and Sounds Museum Hartford, CT 06106 (860) 670 5581 thahn@bryant.edu

27th April 2020

Governer Ned Lamont The State of Connecticut 210 Capitol Avenue Hartford, CT 06106

Dear Governor Lamont,

My name is Tyler Hahn, and I am the Creative Director of the Sights and Sounds Museum in Avon, Connecticut. I’m writing first to thank you for the State of Connecticut’s ongoing support of the Arts in all its forms. Connecticut is a state booming with creativity in the Arts from young children in our thriving public school arts programs all the way through to our oldest community members, and that is all thanks to the incredible generosity and amazing efforts that the State has provided to its constituents. It means the world to the Arts community of our great state.

I am also writing to shed some light on and advocate for a particular niche of Arts organizations that are essential for struggling communities in the Hartford area. These organizations often have the most impact on the community that they serve, but they require a certain amount of funding in order to stay afloat. Larger Arts organizations like big theatre groups typically put on very popular shows that allow them to bring in large sums of ticket revenue. This is a great way to run a business and these organizations are certainly an important part of a thriving Arts community, but it is less often that these programs have the social impact that smaller organizations are able to have.

Community Arts organizations focus on programming that their communities need. For example, a small museum that focuses its programming on Black Empowerment and after-school Arts programs for inner-city school kids will have a much greater impact on an inner-city community in Hartford than the major downtown theatre putting on shows like B ​ ye Bye Birdie​ for high ticket prices.

These organizations also don’t have as large of a stream of revenue, so it is essential that the State continues to support them so that they can continue the incredible community engagement that they bring to their communities.

I hope that I was able to bring some clarity to the importance of small community-based Arts organizations in our Capitol city, and I hope that you consider continuing to give them the support that they need to lift our struggling communities off of the ground. I would also love to get the chance to meet with you and discuss this topic in more detail; you can reach me at any time at my contact information listed at the top of this letter.

I look forward to hearing from you, and I hope that you and your loved ones are staying safe and healthy.

Sincerely,

Tyler Hahn

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Background Research

Most of the knowledge that I gained from research while building this museum came from one article titled “The Seven Colors of Music”. The article is an in-depth exploration into the relationship between music and color. There are many conclusions that are made in various sections of the long article, but there are a couple that I found particularly useful while working on this museum.

First, one of the conclusions that is drawn during the “Emotional Energy in Music” section is that each color of the rainbow has an array of emotions that are associated with it. Plenty of colors have some of the same emotions tied to them, but each color has a unique array of emotions associated with it, giving each color a different emotional energy. I was able to use this knowledge quite a lot in writing pieces for the museum because I am already familiar with connections between different things in the music world and different emotions. This article was the perfect bridge that allowed me to both make the connection from music to emotion to color, and give the visitors of the museum a more emotionally profound experience.

The other conclusion drawn on the same page of the article that I found very useful was the section that discussed the relationship between the circle of fifths and emotional response. The circle of fifths is a complex but extremely useful tool in music:

The conclusion that was drawn is that as you move clockwise from C Major around the right side of the circle, the emotional response to the key becomes brighter and more lively, but as you move in the counterclockwise direction towards F and Bb, the emotional response to the key becomes more solemn and grounded. This conclusion greatly assisted my choice of key for each piece. http://www.sevencolorsofmusic.com/Chapter2B.php

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Class Connections

The main motivation that I had in creating a museum that would bring people together didn’t really come from any of the readings that we had; it came from the discussion that we opened the semester with.

One of the first conversations that we had in this class was about which genre of an arts show/exhibit we would be least likely to visit. There were a variety of different answers from my classmates, and it became clear to me that lots of people have certain interests and are not very willing to stray from them. When they see something that hasn’t sparked their interest in the past, it likely won’t spark it now either.

I feel that the whole point of this class is to push us to not feel this way anymore, and to understand that all of the different forms of art that exist (when presented the right way) are truly for everyone. We saw this with Big Nazo, Shakespeare’s Globe, and many others.

In this final project I really wanted to try to do something like this myself.

Visual artists can sometimes not have a great love for music, musicians can sometimes not understand what’s so great about paintings, and non-artists can feel like they have no emotional connection to either one of them on their own. However, I feel that this tiny museum is living proof that the two forms of art are the most beautiful when they are married to each other; when the two come together to make up a whole that is greater than the sum of their individual parts.

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