Syllabus for Mus 127s - The Harmony of Sound and Light
Harvey Mudd College, Spring 2002
Fridays 1:15 - 4:00 Jacobs 132
Since the discovery that both sound and light are made of up waves, speculation about the art of combining the visual and the aural has moved beyond dance and theater. Now modern technologies make it possible to create new art forms that combine light and sound in ways undreamed of by such early speculators such as Newton and Goethe.
This course will introduce the history of the arts of sound and light, from the early "color organs," the music theories of abstract artists, through the abstract animation of such artists as Hans Richter, Oskar Fischinger, and Norman McLaren, the non-objective films of Jordan Belson and Harry Smith, the computer animation of John Whitney, Larry Cuba, and others, and the art of non-linear media, including CD-ROMs and the web. However, the emphasis in this class will be on the aesthetic background to this history, and what implications this thinking has on the current technological possibilities.
The course will be in a seminar format with the emphasis on in-class discussion, analysis of art and video, student presentations, and creative projects.
Prerequisite
In this course, students will use POV-RAY computer graphics language to produce projects. (If you are already familiar with an alternative language, such as OpenGL, you are free to use that, of course.) Though the POV-RAY language is unrelated to conventional computer languages, some familiarity with coding is helpful when learning it. Therefore, the only prerequisite for this course is some familiarity with computer programming, such as you would find in HMC CS 5. If you are in doubt about your ability in this area, please come and talk with me.
Texts
A bound hardcopy manual for POV-RAY will be available for purchase from the Humanities and Social Sciences Department office for the cost of copying. Though the electronic documentation comes with the POV-RAY download, I encourage you to buy a hardcopy because it will likely save you a lot of time in the long run. Please do not exploit the resources of Academic Computing by printing it out yourself. (Single-sided printing will waste paper and the result will be too large to bind.) Other texts on reserve at Sprague Library will be assigned for specific presentations.
Office hours
At this time my office hours are Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday from 10:30 until 11:30. Please feel free to stop by at any of those times. It is possible that some of these times may change as my semester schedule develops. You may want to check the schedule on my door or contact me to confirm. If you cannot make it at those times, I would be happy to arrange an appointment at another time. I also welcome your email (alves@hmc.edu).
Internet resources
Discussions, questions, and updates on assignments between classes will be made through the class electronic mailing list: Mus-127s-L. This is an especially efficient method of asking routine but important software questions among others. If you are a preregistered HMC student, you are already subscribed. Otherwise, you will need to send email to listkeeper@hmc.edu with the following message:
subscribe mus-127s-l
(The subject line should be blank.) You can get more information about the mailing list by sending the message "help" (without quotes) to the same address or by going to the mailing list web gateway. To distribute your message to this list, send mail to mus-127s-l@hmc.edu. Keep in mind that your message will be distributed to the entire class, not just me. Please use this resource freely, though, as there may be others in the class who are wondering the same thing as you or who would benefit from your tips.
The Iotacenter is an organization which preserves and promotes art of this type. At their web site (http://www.iotacenter.org/) you will find a page of links to artists and other resources, various articles, an on-line store, and other materials. There are also addresses for joining their email list of announcements and a discussion list. I encourage you to join the discussion list, which you can also do by sending a message to iotacenter-subscribe@yahoogroups.com or going to the yahoo groups home page at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/iotacenter/. There is also an yahoo groups list for POV-RAY.
Course Assignments
Evaluation
| Presentation | 10% |
| Paper | 10% |
| Short assignments | 25% |
| Presentations exam | 10% |
| Midterm project | 15% |
| Final project | 25% |
| Class participation | 5% |
Short assignments
There will be several short assignments during the course of the semester. These will include about three short assignments using POV-RAY. This computer graphics language is freeware and available for many different platforms. POV-RAY itself, tutorials, and other resources are available at http://www.povray.org/. Short assignments are generally assigned one week before they are due.
Projects
There will be one midterm and one final project. These are usually in the form of computer animations composed with POV-RAY, though you are free to use other computer graphics software for these projects. Alternative projects, such as term papers, may be done instead, depending on the proposal. These projects may require a proposal and an in-class presentation of interim progress, and a portion of the final grade may depend on a timely completion of both. At the end of the semester (the exact date to be determined), there will be a public screening of final projects. Final projects are due at that time. There will be no other final exam. Artistic projects will be evaluated on 1) creative insight, 2) effort, 3) creative application of principles discussed in class. I understand that students will have varying backgrounds and abilities in computer programming, art, and music, and these will also be taken into account.
Presentations
A major part of this class will consist of presentations by students. These presentations must be more than a simple recited equivalent of a term paper. They should include interactive components, clear points, and visual aids. They will be delivered in teams generally of three students each, and the correspondence between the different topics must be coordinated. A written component will also be turned in, preferably in HTML format. Completed papers will be posted for students to study after your presentation.
Topics for the presentations will be distributed early in the semester. If you would like to request a particular topic, either one listed or not, you may do so during the first two class meetings, and I will try to accomodate your interests. Detailed information about your topic and my expectations will be available two weeks before a presentation. Presenters will meet with me one week before their presentation to discuss progress and direction.
Presentations will be graded in part by your fellow students. Your conscientious participation in the peer evaluation process is very important and will be reflected in your class participation grade.
Presenters will also provide a list of major points for the other students to study. Towards the end of the semester, there will be a short exam based on these questions, so it is important that students take notes and study presenters' papers posted on the class web site. It is also important that presenters make their points clearly and succinctly.
Tips on oral presentations are available here.
Late assignments
Presentations cannot normally be made up. Other assignments will be penalized two letter grades per week late. Extensions are granted normally only for presenters (see below).
Schedule
Subject to revision, according to class progress.
Short assignments may not appear in the schedule below, but will be assigned at least one week in advance. Presenters will have an automatic one week extension on any assignments due the week of their presentation.
| Date | Topic | Assignment due |
| 1/25 | Introduction to the course
Types of correspondences | |
| 2/1 | Proportion in art and nature | |
| 2/8 | The nature of color, color in art, "Lumia" artists | |
| 2/15 | Composition in art, the nature of abstraction | Presentation group 1 |
| 2/22 | Modernist, Islamic, and other traditions of abstraction | Presentation group 2 |
| 3/1 | Early abstract film | Presentation group 3 |
| 3/8 | The art of John Whitney | Presentation group 4
Midterm project proposal |
| 3/15 | John Whitney (continued), others | Midterm interim version |
| 3/22 | Spring break | |
| 3/29 | Caesar Chavez day | |
| 4/5 | Presentation of midterm projects | Midterm due |
| 4/12 | Animated music: Oskar Fischinger and Norman McLaren | Presentation group 5
Final project proposal |
| 4/19 | The art of the "inner eye": Belson, Tan, James Whitney | Presentation group 6
Final project storyboard |
| 4/26 | Free radicals: Len Lye and Harry Smith | Presentation group 7
Final project interim version |
| 5/3 | | Presentations exam |
| 5/8 8:30 PM | Final project screening
Galileo MacAlister Auditorium |
HMC Academic Computing's Policy on Appropriate Use of Computing and Network Resources applies to all students enrolled in this course. All students enrolled in this course are bound by the Harvey Mudd College Honor Code in regards to activities related to this class, even non-HMC students.
Bibliography
Many of the following items will be primary sources for presentations. In that case, they are on reserve at Sprague library. There is also a good annotated bibliography by Fred Callopy at rhythmiclight.com.
- Albers, Josef. Interaction of Color. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1963.
- Barrett, Cyril. Op Art. New York: The Viking Press, 1970.
- Critchlow, Keith. Islamic Patterns: An Analytical and Cosmological Approach. London: Thames and Hudson, 1976.
- Cuba, Larry, ed. Kinetica-2: A Centennial Tribute to Oskar Fischinger. Los Angeles: iotaCenter, 2000.
- Cutler, May Ebbitt. "Unique genius of Norman McLaren," Canadian Art v 22 (May 1965) 8-17.
- Eisenstein, Sergei. The Film Sense. Trans. and ed. by Jay Leyda. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1947.
- Gerstner, Karl. The Forms of Color: The Interaction of Visual Elements. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986.
- Haller, Robert A. First Light. New York: Anthology Film Archives, 1998.
- Horak, Jan Christopher. "Discovering pure cinema: avant-garde film in the '20s," Afterimage v 8 (Summer 1980), p. 4.
- Hughes, F. J. Harmonies of Tones and Colours Developed by Evolution. London: Marcus Ward & Co., 1883.
- Paola Igliori, ed. American magus Harry Smith: A modern alchemist. New York: Inanout Press, 1996.
- Jones, Tom Douglas. The Art of Light and Color. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Co., 1972.
- Kandinsky, Wassily. Concerning the Spiritual in Art. Hilla Rebay and Howard Dearstyne, trans. New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation for the Museum of Non-objective painting, 1947. Rpt. New York: Dover Publ., 1979.
- Kandinsky, Wassily. Point and Line to Plane. Hilla Rebay, trans. New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation for the Museum of Non-objective painting, 1910/1946.
- Klein, Adrian Bernard. Coloured Light: An Art Medium. London: The Technical Press, 1937.
- Macdonald, H. "Lighting the Fire: Skryabin and Color," The Musical Times, cxxiv (1983), 600.
- Malina , Frank J. ed. Kinetic art, Theory and practice. New York: Dover Publication, 1974.
- Maryon, Edward. Marcotone: The Science of Tone-Color. Boston: C. C. Birchard & Co., 1924.
- Mondrian, Piet. The New Art -- The New Life: The Collected Writings of Piet Mondrian. Harry Holtzman and Martin S. James, ed. Boston: G. K. Hall & Co. 1987.
- Moritz, William. "Films of Oskar Fischinger," Film Culture no58/60 (1974). 37-188.
- O'Konor, Louise. Viking Eggeling (1880-1925): Artist and Filmmaker, Life and Work. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1971.
- Overheim, R. Daniel and David L. Wagner. Light and Color. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1982.
- Pellegrino, Ronald. The Electronic Arts of Light and Sound. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1983.
- Richter, Hans. Hans Richter. Neuchatel: Editions du Griffon, 1965.
- Rimington, A. Wallace. Colour-Music: The Art of Mobile Colour. New York: F. A. Stokes, 1911.
- Russet, Robert and Cecile Starr. Experimental Animation: Origins of a New Art. New York: Da Capo Press, 1988.
- Wees, William C. Light Moving in Time: Studies in the visual aesthetics of avant-garde film. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.
- Whitney, John. Digital Harmony: On the Complementarity of Music and Visual Art. Peterborough, NH: Byte Books, 1980.
- Youngblood, Gene. Expanded Cinema. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1970.
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Updated on January 18, 2002, by Bill Alves (alves@hmc.edu).