(English Summary):
With the research for this thesis I hope to find an answer on the question; What is it that
causes amplification between image and sound in modern musicvisualization?
To answer this question I will examine the relationship and interaction between sound
and image, but also the influence both can have on the other media.
I will analyze a series of musicvisualizations from the past 50 years by studying their
synergetic effect. After that I will formulate a personal theory about what causes
amplification between image and sound in modern musicvisualization, by using my own
analysis, experience and existing theories.
This new found theory I will try to, successfully, apply to my graduation project ‘Wagner’s
Wesendonck Lieder’, a project in which a classical singer and I find a suitable, synergetic
and innovative solution to combine classical music with modern visuals.
The conclusions of my thesis are that sound and image have a very big influence on
each others interpretation. In the words of Marcel Chion in his book ‘Audio-Vision’ ; we
do not hear the same thing if we also see at the same time and vice versa.
Sound and image are easily compared in terminology, but are in fact very different. To
use the description of Walter Ong; ‘Sight isolates, sound incorporates’, which means that
people use sight to dissect incoming visual information on clues, patterns and systems to
make sense of their surroundings. Sonic information however, even though we rapidly
filter all incoming information from what is irrelevant, is processed to be harmonic.
I have used parts of Nicholas Cook’s and Walter Goodwin’s theories to formulate my
own:
There are only two kinds of interaction between sound and image:
- interactions that cause a feeling of synergy of both media
- interactions that do not cause a feeling of synergy of both media
The first one is an interaction of amplification
The second one can be divided into interactions of translation and interactions of
disjunction.
What I was mainly interested in is just the interaction of amplification, or the synergetic
interaction.
The synergetic interaction contains a full spectrum of values varying from interactions
between sound and image that have a more harmonic value, to interactions that have a
more competitive value. Interactions that have a more harmonic value tend to have more
similar characteristics between sound and image. Interactions that have a more
competitive value tend to have less similar characteristics and more contrasting
characteristics between sound and image.
To be too harmonic leads to translation, which is not synergetic.
To be too competitive leads to disjunction, which is also un-synergetic.
To end this summary I have to conclude that I have not come up with a fool-proof
solution to which extend similar characteristics between sound and image have to be
combined to create perfect synergy, which I found out also lacked in other theories.
What I did find out is that the variation between a harmonic and a competitive
interaction leads to amplification of the effects of both, greater than the
musicvisualization being fully harmonic or completely competitive.