About the Synthesis Series

The Synthesis exhibit creates an integrated environment in which to experience art by flipping the typical temporal frameworks associated with visual and audio media. Paintings are often taken in all at once. The sensory experience is immediate, lasting only a few minutes before a viewer moves on to another image.  By contrast, experiencing music requires time, and each work has a specific duration.  In synthesis, music becomes more atmospheric, more “all at once,” with tone and timbre taking precedence over melody. The gallery space has been modified to invite the viewer to take the time to really listen to the paintings.
 
The creative process for the synthesis artwork begins with the energy of a brushstroke or a splash of pigment on the canvas. The process is fluid; the chance interaction of form and color harmonizes with controlled composition. The images evoke a sense of space and motion without use of traditional visual cues. 
 
Several different musical processes are used in the creation of the synthesis audio pieces.  Often the actual performance is not so much a musical act as it is acoustic data entry. The creative action happens not in real time but with the mutation and combination of these elements using sequencing and editing software, a technique more similar to collage than to a concert performance.
 
Both methods allow a freeing of traditional form, allowing fluidity and improvisation built on a foundation of traditional music and color theory to become part of the composition. While chance and technique is used as part of the creative process, the outcome is ultimately fixed in both media. In some instances, the audio and visual pieces were created independently, while others were created specifically in conjunction with one another.  Ambient scores encourage a prolonged view of each painting and open up to different ways of bounding (or not bounding) both physical and metaphorical space.  Longer exposure encourages random thoughts and emotions to bubble up to the surface, catalyzing associations to synthesize a new experience.