For a number of months, I've been working on a project based around the Gojira song The Art of Dying.
I'll talk more about the ideas behind the project a bit later on, but here are several photos showing the initial sketches. I'm working in a Moleskine Japanese album, which folds out to 60 pages. I'll be drawing on both sides of the notebook, and using Tria markers in nuances of grey, filling in the curves with linear textures.
Here is one of the initial studies using Tria markers. I did several studies using different mediums (watercolor colored pencils, india ink, heavy black pencil, etc) but the Tria markers gave the sharpest, most graphic result.
I'll be posting a bit more about this project as I get time.
Listening to extreme metal is a fascinating process. In my experience, I've found that songs often sound like noise until your ear adjusts and you become familiar with the patters, which allows you to decode and organize the sounds you're listening to.
I began listening to the French metal band Gojira several years ago, when their album From Mars to Sirius came out. At that time, I wasn't interested in listening to groups whose drummers played too rapidly or whose singers growled instead of singing melodically. But I really, really liked Gojira's the ultra-heavy riffs and the groove moment I first listened to them. And so my ear gradually adjusted, and I learned to really appreciate their style and the technical virtuosity.
Having synesthesia made learning to decode Gojira a really interesting and intense experience, as I could literally "see" the music taking form, becoming less dense, less "noisy" with repeated listenings.
Synesthetically-speaking, I see graphemes, sound, touch and odors as colors and shapes. But sound is the most intense experience for me: sounds (both musical and non-musical) all have very specific colors and colorings, textures, and shapes. Songs become defined by their "map" - to the point when I recognize music first by its shape, then by its melody. I suppose this is a bit odd, but I've come to fully enjoy it.
The process
In the beginning, Gojira's sound looked something like this to me. This particular image doesn't represent a specific song or passage, rather, it's just an idea of what the Gojira sound looked like initially: relatively undefined, poorly contrasted splotches of black and shades of gray.
With time, the shapes became more and more defined.
And after a while, they refined to a point of being entirely articulated and precise - even during extremely aggressive or rapid passages.
This process of learning to decode Gojira has been very rewarding, The shapes and nuances of color of their music are just so striking, so riveting that they've inpired much of my artwork over the past year. I'll be posting more about these projects as I get time in the following weeks.
A bit of music
Here are a few songs by Gojira that represent several different facets of their sound.
Last Sunday, November 1st, we went to see Akiko Suwanai perform the Brahms violin concerto with the Monte-Carlo Philharmonic. I really enjoyed her interpretation of the concerto and her style of playing. She plays with a very rich, warm, controlled tone, without being overly flashy, which I felt fit the piece perfectly.
Here is a cross-section of what her sound looks like to me, synesthetically. The deeper tones in her sound were a nice, warm red - even leaning towards a brownish-red at times - but with an airy texture. When playing in a higher register, it was interesting to see that she kept that same light, airy tone. I also felt the shape of her sound was interesting, because it wasn't perfectly round.
I first began working on the "Shapes for Sound" theme last year in February, for Create-a-Thing-a-Day month.
I have, as long as I can remember, visualized music and any types of sound. Sounds take on shapes and color, independantly from the sound, what is producing it, or what it signifies. I learned a few years ago that this is synesthesia. I also "see" colors with letters and numbers, tastes, odors and touch.
I'm really quite interested by Gojira, a French death metal band. This group plays with a very rich, complex sound texture that I find immensely fascinating. So naturally, quite a bit of my work has been focused on capturing certain aspects of their sound.
Here, I was working on visually capturing the sound textures that occur around the :20 mark of the song Backbone. I worked in india ink, scanned the drawing and then overlayed a Gojira concert photo into the composition.
