# Nonexistent Artforms and the Case of Visual Music  ## Metadata - Author: [[Jerrold Levinson]] - Full Title: Nonexistent Artforms and the Case of Visual Music - Category: #articles - Summary: insert summary - My notes: - Summary: The text explores the concept of nonexistent art forms, focusing on visual music as a case study. It discusses the challenges of creating new art forms and why certain ideas like visual music have not been fully realized. The author highlights the complexities of translating musical elements into visual experiences and considers the potential limitations and possibilities in this artistic pursuit. - URL: https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/173866230 - Source File: Nonexistent Artforms and the Case of Visual Music by Levinson.pdf ## LLM Chats ## NotebookLM ## LLM Audio ## Highlights > The problem concerning nonexistent artforms of perhaps greatest interest is why certain theoretically possible ones have not been essayed, or else have not proven successful even ifessayed to some extent. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxy8rej4gwkb0d81qwhh520x)) > Examples ofnonexistent artforms, by at least the second of these tests, are kinetic painting, word- less song, danced poetry, olfactory art, and visual music. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxy8rvkwnhfsfwk23wtveax7)) > I try to cast light on why certain art- forms that seem eminently possible in fact fail to exist, through a case study of one such would-be art, that of visual music, i.e. a structured organization of colored presentations in time, such as might be provided through the medium ofcolor film. Why doesn’t visual music, despite experiments in that direction, ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxy8tbfpfwrnst8bz2bhnxr6)) > exist as an entrenched artistic activity, as a medium with promise and a loyal audience? One may be forgiven for suspecting, in a pessimistic vein, that the potential for a significant artistic visual analog to music is just not there. I will investigate, first, why this should be so, and second, how such an art might best proceed anyway—against the odds, as it were. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxy8tna5w87jcmf4yhsjbm8b)) > ? One way to construe this question is as a request for acceptable principles of generating potential artforms. Taken that way, it seems there are two approaches we could adopt, which we might characterize, respectively, as the combinatorial and the extra- polational. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxy8wg1tntehy1zn7s5nqak2)) > The first, combinatorial, approach would be to set up an abstract matrix of artistic properties (materials, modalities)—e.g. spatial, temporal, repres- entational, sonic, monochromatic, figurative, narrative, one-stage, stone- using, wood-using, human-body-employing, etc.—in which every existing and also nonexisting artform would be represented as a particular conjunction ofsuch properties (or their negations). Thus, classical Greek sculpture would be approximated by the conjunction: spatial/static/figurative/stone-using/ manually-worked, while a presently nonexistent artform would be represen- ted by the conjunction: stone-using/temporal/dramatic/multi-colored. > The other, extrapolational, approach would be to go beyond existing art- forms by the use of various intelligible rules of projection, such as juxtapos- ition, reduction, fusion, opposition, or mutual accommodation. Thus, we might have an artform which involved the simple addition ofdance to paint- ing, or which resulted from the fusion ofpoetry, music, and calligraphy. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxy8wt82zpwnvr6w7mby8gqm)) > One problem with the combinatorial approach to identifying nonexistent potential artforms is that we have not said where the primitive terms—the properties whose combination is to represent any given artform—are to come ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxy90wazg7gg5ydph6emeecd)) > from. What justifies the particular set of elements out of which the matrix would be constructed? Why are stone-using, temporal,and narrative reason- ably included in this set but not, say, water-soluble, high-risk, expensive,or innate? ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxy911803krc6efghm05d0g2)) > Having ar- rived at such ‘elements’, we can then mentally experiment with ‘recompos- ing’ them in different ways—grouping them in different packages—and reflecting on the outcome. It must be observed, though, that we will not, by this method, really have constructed all possible arts from the ground up—that is, from a purely abstract field of possibilities. For the terms of our matrix will inevitably come from the arts we know and love, as they are, or have been, constituted. The combinatorial method, despite initial appear- ances, could not be deployed ahistorically, at least not with any hope of interesting results. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxy92btb7n283f6k8t5jnpz6)) > All told, then, I suspect we are perhaps better off pursuing the extrapol- ational method—combining or modifying existing artforms directly—as a way of thinking our way toward the field of nonexistent artforms. Such a procedure has also the advantage of paralleling, to a much greater degree, the ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxy98ht82ef6yxh80jzskk59)) > evolutionary and synthetic process by which new artforms (e.g. film, kinetic sculpture, video art) have actually been generated in the past. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxy98camb2perwa916b0ddvs)) > Advances in art on the level ofartforms have regularly come about through the impact of disparate arts on one another, or through the modification of existing artforms in the direction ofothers, but not through positing artforms de novo to correspond to abstract congeries ofartistic properties not previously bundled together. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxy98yrt4m4sv975wz7n0cyc)) > labelling these ‘hybrid artforms’—and suggested a threefold categor- ization of such hybrids, into juxtapositional (additive), synthetic (fusional), and transformational ones. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxy99fxwqm84q403293agnth)) > In a juxtapositional hybrid the arts are combined in a largely discrete, non-interpenetrating manner, so that the contributions ofeach artform enter- ing into the result are independently identifiable. In an object of the hybrid art, objects ofthe contributing arts are still discernible as simply parts, spatial or temporal, of the hybrid art object. In a synthetic hybrid, by contrast, the contributing artforms are more or less fused in the result, so that an object of the hybrid fails to belong clearly to either of the contributing artforms, in their standard conceptions, and fails also to exhibit parts which can be simply assigned to one artform or the other. Finally, a transformational hybrid is intermediate between the previous two cases, and occurs when there is some interpenetration, rather than mere addition, of two artforms, as evidenced in the nature of the resulting art object, but where one artform clearly holds sway in the end and can still claim the product as one of its own, if singularly modified in the direction of the other art.³ Examples offered of these three categories were the following: (a) symphony with light show, dance with calli- graphic drawings [juxtapositional]; (b) music drama, concrete poetry, shaped canvas [synthetic]; (c) kinetic sculpture [transformational]. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxy9grk8waqt8tx0vcedz7bd)) > Visual music, in the form of abstract color film, could probably be con- sidered a transformational case—as color film pushed in the direction ofpure music, adopting both its means and the sort of experience and expressive- ness characteristically aimed at. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxy9dfjy8fay88q65d3yqg9b)) > More obviously, such visual music would be transformational, rather than juxtapositional, because music there serves as a model or inspiration, and not as a literal component in the result.⁴ ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxy9nnm3tfdgsv72vkwgwfse)) > o ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxy9s6mgzp4dgfk7zpc6kapj)) - Note: juxtaposition > Thus, we might have musidraw- ing, the art of drawings exhibited for prearranged lengths of time simultan- eously with selected or newly composed stretches ofmusic, or pulpture,the art of pairs of paintings and sculptures made to be presented and experienced together, in definite spatial relation to one another. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxy9r4h6q6herp6jfk2s1e0g)) > One is this. Given two artforms, α and ß, posit an artform whose objects are structurally or formally halfway between those ofα and those of ß. The genres ofshaped canvases (e.g. those ofFrank Stella) and canvases- with-attachments (e.g. those of Jasper Johns), are ones that have come about through that sort of cross-fertilization. Both cases mediate between painting and sculpture, in that objects of these genres are neither as flat and rectangu- lar as the paradigms of the former, nor as three-dimensionally rounded and conceived as paradigms of the latter. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxy9rvyry2gnkeqk2kn9wk1h)) - Note: synthetic > But consider now the art of danceotry, intermediate between dance and poetry. A typical work of danceotry would involve a performer who goes through a series ofmovements during her recit- ation, but ones of more restricted scope and ambit than are generally found ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxy9t62008rrhdbzw4v47327)) > archisculpture ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxy9tq0apxtq880njmr4zc0k)) - Note: synthetic > sonopoetry ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxy9ty39zq7t87m0zgk6sh16)) - Note: synthetic > One principle ofgeneration with wide application might be this. Given an existing artform, whose objects exhibit certain standard (or defining) features, and certain variable (or elective) features, and for which certain features are contra-standard (or disqualifying), posit another artform that is just like the first except that some standard feature of the objects of the first artform is now allowed to become a variable,or contra-standard, feature, or else some variable or contra-standard feature allowed to become a standard feature.⁸ ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxya4y9aqw0g0n8f6zxhzyts)) > Iwould suggest just one further transformational principle for generating, in the abstract way we have been pursuing, artforms that do not currently exist—one that, once more, yields visual music as an output. It is this: posit an artform, as far as possible like an existent artform, in which the sense modality centrally appealed to in the latter is replaced by some other sense modality. The idea is to see whether unprecedented arts, modeled on established ones, can be built around senses other than those already in play. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxyb8jdekq7jrzry4cdmtcfh)) > In tactile sculpture objects are fashioned for palpation and caressing with no concern for, or even explicit disregard of, how they look. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxyba9qfxq407qs5bsh28vgf)) > The only problem, from present point ofview, is that there is no way to anticipate what these might be—as noted earlier, my toolkit as essayist con- tains no crystal ball—and so nothing contentful on this wavelength to add to my sketch of the domain of possible but unrealized arts. It is hard not to appreciate the essential technological contributions to, or at least precondi- tions of, the emergence of photography, etching, cinema, computer music, musique concr`ete, video art, holography, earthworks, and jazz;¹¹ these did not come about merely because some overlooked combination or transformation ofexisting arts was finally hit upon, some underutilization ofan existing sense capacity finally noticed, or some approach of one art to the aims of another finally worked out. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxybcy33ev6rdjh8z70cxcwh)) > Still, in many of these cases, one might locate the spur to develop tech- nological means enabling these arts to exist, or at least a rationale for their emergence after the fact, in projections ofthe kind I have been pursuing. On this way ofthinking, photography arises in part because a visual artform cap- able of the detail and precision of painting or engraving, but executable with the spontaneity and speed of, say, a charcoal sketch, was really asking to be brought into existence. Holography comes to fill the space opened up logic- ally by positing a cross, in the biological sense, between photography and sculpture; a hologram is a synthetic hybrid that no longer comfortably resides ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxybe5ecshqcdadqxghgaqaw)) > ¹ I am thinking here of the crucial role of the saxophone, a late nineteenth-century Belgian invention, in the evolution of jazz sound. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxybcec6aw0sjvwkh1jgcdp9)) > under either banner, photography or sculpture, but exhibits features ofboth: fashioning by light, and three-dimensional form. Musique concr`ete, or ‘col- lage music’, while obviously unrealizable without the magnetophone or tape recorder, just as obviously gets off the ground conceptually by attempting to transpose the collage and constructivist procedures of modern painting and assemblage to the realm ofsounds in time. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxybe97sw9dqe6t24q35hxse)) > Iturn now tothe question of why nonexistent yet possible artforms remain nonexistent, or more exactly, why any number of them that seem appealing ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxybskpmhfn1eypt8jg7dsbg)) > in prospect, conceptually unproblematic, and technologically feasible are yet not pursued with any vigor. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxybsp145367mwts2exqsx1v)) > A short answer would be that there is surely some insufficiency in the struc- tures of which abstract color film is capable, or some insufficiency in the human visual system relative to the auditory, or else some mismatch between those structures and the capacities of that visual system. But let us look to more specific explanatory factors, in the hope of giving more body to the schematic diagnosis just tendered. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxybxfgn5pq8c79j3yz9pyyc)) > Third, there is the notion ofkey (and key feeling), and the consequent pos- sibility of key change (or modulation), which is the basis for so much of the large-scale dialectic of a piece of music, and for a good deal of its emotional power. It is hard to see what might do duty for this in the color realm, unless it would be something like the contrast between the ‘warm’ colors (red, yel- low, orange) and the ‘cool’ ones (blue, green, violet), and the potential force of shifts from one set to the other. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxyc1v1b0ja843dxszjkgn4w)) > The series of hues in the spectrum, by contrast, does not appear to form a space-like dimension in the same way; there is no clear impression of direc- tionality in the succession of hues from red to violet, nor is there the sense of an underlying variable property which binds together the different hues, and in respect of which alone they differ from one another.¹ ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxyc5ywycf7fbb34yx92v4sf)) > By contrast, ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxyc6fjxhvsry6rt9mxgs3ha)) > when one proceeds from C to C’ there is an unavoidable impression ofrising, and the strong sense ofa binding property—high/low-ness ofpitch—that is being progressively modulated. For these reasons, it seems, succession ofhues is not inevitably, and certainly not readily, perceived as a kind of motion or movement, but only as change simpliciter. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxyc6bbeh85zdkcqmwbsjrtn)) > Without a sense ofdimensionality and directionality in the realm ofpitches, i.e. without there being a space of pitches, there could be no experiences of movement through music, or even ofmelodic shape or contour. But without the possib- ility ofhearing shape and movement in music, we would be barred, afortiori, from hearing such shape and movement as gesture,and in turn, such gesture as the imagined expression ofemotion.¹⁷ Thus, music without its spatial/kinetic aspect would be incapable of embodying expressiveness in the chief way that it seems to do. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxycb6w9864d1add37wgz9jz)) > If in light of the above we accept that there can be nothing like the spatial and motional possibilities we are familiar with in the auditory realm available to us in the chromatic one, the artistic burden carried by rhythm per se—the temporal patterning ofcolor presentations—will be correspondingly greater. Unfortunately, though, there is reason to believe that our sensitivity to visual temporal rhythm is considerably poorer than our sensitivity to rhythm in the auditory sphere. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxyccwqa8155hzc3hjj378wd)) > This bears directly on the critical issue of recognizable basic units in our proposed visual music. Can the realm of visual music sustain something analogous to the reidentifiable melodic-rhythmic units—motives, phrases, figures—without which musical experience in the ordinary sense would be unthinkable? ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxycdjrysjrvdqwew1snav4w)) > Finally, if all choices in the dimensions just reviewed were to prove in vain, so far as generating a sequence of color presentations that would have the interest, appeal, and expressiveness of even the simplest music was concerned, one might then open the door to manipulations ofsize, shape, and two-dimensional patterning of color presentations as well—expanding and contracting color fields, swirling and intermingling chromatic constellations, many-hued patches dancing from left to right, and corner to corner, etc.²¹ But note that such ‘visual music’ would no longer be a strict analog of monophonic or simple polyphonic instrumental music, whose basic material is just sequences ofpitches-with-durations. The sort of‘visual music’ we have just envisaged, which is in effect a kind of abstract painting in time, might well be expected to have more power and impact than the strict, spartan music of colors whose prospects have been my proper target in this section; for one, it would partake of all sorts of representational resonances which forms in space, and especially changing ones, possess. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxyctscp44e983gswdaf0n24)) > Another writer who has treated this topic, I belatedly discovered, is Peter Kivy.²⁵ Speaking ofhis sense ofwonder at the very existence of‘music alone’, Kivy suggests that it ‘begins with what seems to me to be the genuine, ifinsol- uble, mystery ofwhy we have ‘‘pure’’ music at all, and why, since we do, we don’t have ‘‘music’’ for our other sense modalities.’²⁶ Nevertheless, Kivy pro- poses an evolutionary explanation for why humans have not developed visual music, in particular. It is, according to Kivy, because we have evolved ‘hard- wired’ to see defensively, and so to unstoppably place a representational (or ‘realistic’) interpretation on visual perceptions, thus foreclosing on a tempor- ally extended art ofpurely visual phenomena.²⁷ ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxycwv6mkj86fhw63nrw4n5k))