A Question of Interpretation

Here are two of my favorite paintings: Diego Velasquez's portrait of Pope Innocent X (1650) and Francis Bacon's, Figure with Meat, 1954
Francis Bacon admired Velasquez's portrait so much that he spent over ten years of his career painting studies of the portrait. Figure with Meat is probably the most famous. It is housed at the Art Institute of Chicago. I visit it every time I'm in Chicago. It never gets old.





This next set of clips exemplify what happens when a song becomes so popular, so much engrained in the popular consciousness that other musicians start to interpret it. Jazz music is founded and still thrives today on this kind of endless interpretation and reinterpretation of what musicians call "standards." The first is the original Rogers and Hammerstein version from the film version of the play Oklahoma, and the second if Jazz singer Blossom Dearie giving the song a whole new feel.







Also, check out this clip from the orchestral recording of West Side Story:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoELFSc_dmU

I know, it sounds lame, but it is a fascinating look at how differences in interpretation can lead to anger and frustration. In this case, the composer and director of the score for West Side Story (you know, "Maria" and "Tonight" and all those songs) is trying to teach an Italian opera star how to sing in the jazz idiom, and he is having a really hard time doing it.

Lastly, here's a clip from a documentary on visual artist Cindy Sherman. In it you see how she appropriates the imagery of centerfolds to subvert the chauvinistic gaze.

Home Alone: A Video Poem

Audio/Video Poem Update

I decided not to put up examples of audio/video poems on the blog because I think that will influence what you produce. Just push aside the fear of doing it "wrong" and create something original. Although I will say that Jordanne's question about the Afrikaner poet quoted in Weschler's piece might be helpful. He says (on pg. 30) that "[y]ou could hear the listening." I would add to that the section of Weschler's essay in which he talks about "War Music," the retelling of the "Iliad" by Christopher Logue. Weschler is fascinated by the way Logue (following Homer's lead) juxtaposes the sounds of mortal combat with the sounds of men chopping wood on the far side of a valley, and how the sound of their conversation can be heard momentarily across that great distance. This metaphoric conflation of two sounds in two very different atmospheres (war and the peaceful, meditative work of chopping wood) is, as Logue says, "spine-tingling" because of its synaesthetic quality. More on synaesthesia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia

Think about how it may be possible to create similarly surprising connections by juxtaposing sounds and images from different atmospheres.