Jessica Harvey

This project draws upon the viewer’s physiological reaction to Riley’s Fall by exploring the visual processes involved in recognizing an over-stimulating image, which are the brain’s acknowledgement of colour, brightness and then positioning. It could be said that the image makes more sense as sound rather than music, so throughout this composition there is heavy use of quarter tones in order to tap into the wave’s varying frequencies.

 

My musical interpretation takes its sectional durations from the construction of the wave, such that each swell represents the start of a new section. The distance between each peak of the wave has been measured, resulting in the ratio 0.75:1:2:3cm. The total of these units is 6.75cm and if the entire piece lasts for 210 seconds (3.5 minutes), then 1 unit is 31 seconds, which creates a revised ratio of 23:31:62:99 seconds. As there is a feeling of limitlessness about the image, which has been described by Reilly as ‘repeated uniform arabesques’, there is a consistent connection to the time continuum by the setting of this composition to the same tempo as that at which seconds pass i.e. 60 bpm. Therefore, theoretically the work is boundless and unrestrained by time, a player just having to look at the projected digital clock to know if he is still ‘in time’. Hence, each section has the same amount of crotchet beats within it as it does seconds.

By using varied approaches, the ‘unstable and individual nature of perception’, as Riley says, has been conveyed and the orchestra manipulated in a comparable way to how this physiological illusion manipulates your mind.