Xite-1 and Mondrian

[Roland Kuit]

October 12, 2013
Mondriaanhuis
monads and beyond research
Live lab research between color, space and sound
modular environmental research
Roland Kuit: Sonic Core Xite-1
monads, additive stacked sinus tones, granular synthesis and fractal Noise.
14.00-17.00 hours
Kortegracht 11, Amersfoort, the Netherlands

November 15, 2013
Mondriaanhuis
monads and beyond concert
Roland Kuit: Sonic Core Xite-1 / Modular IV
Karin Schomaker: photography / visuals
Kortegracht 11, Amersfoort, the Netherlands

https://soundcloud.com/roland-kuit/mond ... nes-test-1

[Mr Arkadin]

Man, you know how to press the right buttons with me. Mondrian is my absolute favourite painter. I wonder if I can slip in a trip to Holland?

[Roland Kuit]

The mondriaahuis is the house of birth of Piet Mondrian.
Connected to the front house they build a very nice little museum.
Very old Mondrians in the front house and more abstract works, and from different artists too, in the larger museum space.
Here is a picture with a Mondrian at the MOMA, NY:

[Roland Kuit]

Test for crossings in Mondrian's paintings.
https://soundcloud.com/roland-kuit/crossings-for-pm

[hubird]

Actually there's a strong link between Mondriaan's art work and his musical taste over the time.

Befor WWI he loved classic music, especially Beethoven, but after 1912, when he develloped his 'neoplasticisme' painting style, he tried to express the expression of real modern life, which he musically found in the new jazz music of that time, which broke with 'the old harmony'.
Interesting is also his interest in the new 'industrial' music machines, enormous mechanical installations producing 'mechanical' music.
He probably loved the radical way to find new musical principles, just like he was trying to find for his art.

But later, during the 30ties, it's the pre-war jazz which he loved most, and when he moved to New York he was flabbergasted by the new Boogywoogy music.
His paintings 'Fox-Trot B, Broadway Boogy Woogy and Victory Boogy Woogy are direct references to his musical preferences of the time.

He loved dancing on this music, and an well known anecdote tells he once said to his dancing partner 'let's sit down, I hear melody' when the band changed from a boogy woogy song to something else.

His putting rythm befor melody reflected his striving for real life expression rather than esoteric abstractism.
His art work looks 'abstract', but abstractism as such was not his aim but the result of this pursuit for real life expression.

His often used broken black lines divided in a well balanced pattern on a two dimensional surface is actually a search for the perfect rythm in the positioning of the many elements on the painting surface.

Seen like this way 'melody' was 'bourgois', comparable with the classic configurative painting style of the past.
He hated melody at the end of his life in 1944.

So, this leaves us with the hypothetical but interesting question about what he would have thought about the post war experiments instigated by the Musique Concrète group and the later followers as so nicely presented by Ronald in the thread about electronic music pioneers.

Mondriann would have loved the radical breaking with the (any) musical conventions, but I seriously wonder if he had loved the (inherent) esoteric character of this new approach.
It is miles away from 'real life', as there's no bigger contrast between this music and dancing on hot rythms in a real life sweated bar with real people celebrating life.


This is not a try to down talk the benefits of the post WWII electronic avant garde pioneers, which benefits are clear to everyone.
I'm just trying to think over musical devellopments and their sociological dimensions.
Early jazz and later devellopments like Boogy Woogy and especially the later hotboiling Bebob, which Mondriaan alas had to have missed, explicitly were the real life dance styles of the 30ties 40ties and 50ties.

Popmusic and Rock in general brought back rythm in popular music, although quite simple and also melodically again. Jazz and free jazz develloped to more or even very esoteric styles of listening music, compared to Bebob.

Modern electronic dance music isn't really complicated in respect to rythm, but at least it breaks radically with the old conventions of pop and rock, or music in general, and melody is almost absent in quite some dance styles.

Sociologically-musically spoken, it's the 'real life' character of dance music which made it so popular, even while it's based on 'mechanical' movement patterns of pure oscillators, LFO's filters and other elementary sources of sound modulating automatisms.
I still find this amazing.

Not sure if today's Planetz is open for these kind of discussions, although the very active scene of modular adepts would suggest this
cheerZ.

[Roland Kuit]

I'm open for discussions like these.
Piet Mondrian liked Boogie-Woogie. That was the new music in his scope.
I think this music did not match his art. His art was further than this popular music was.
I think he did not hear Luigi Russolo.
Later on composers like Webern, and electronic, Karel Goeyvearts were matching and influenced by PM's art using 12 tone music, serialism.
Karel Goeyveart's dodecaphony matched well in his pure form and aesthetics.
And now, in this time, I'm trying to find a new language to match PM's aesthetics.
This was made as a starter for doing research in the Mondriaanhuis.
Who knows where it ends? Fun to do!

[Mr Arkadin]

I agree with Roland about Jazz not fitting Mondrian particuclarly. For my tastes I think Mondrian's art has more affinity to early Glass and Reich. Jazz is about freeform and improvisation - Mondrian's art is about distilling everything down into pure lines and primary colour only blocks. The paintings inspired by Boogie Woogie are my least favourite works by him as it happens. I prefer the Dutch and London (i.e. European) paintings to his New York ones. It's probably no coincidence I'm not a huge Jazz fan.

Not sure what you mean by "Not sure if today's Planetz is open for these kind of discussions". Quite an unnecessary and derogatory comment. I get you don't like some people on here (hey, it's the world there are going to be people you don't agree with) but that does not negate any artistic view they may have. I think it's a real shame you put that comment in there.

[hubird]

Don't worry, it's nothing serious. I was just wondering if there's interest in such general questions, after my post in the pioneers thread got no reaction.

[Roland Kuit]

1/ I was in shock when I heard about Dick Raaijmakers. I knew him personally.
2/ I reacted on your post in the Pioneer topic.
3/ My music has nothing to do with the style you mentioned.

[Mr Arkadin]

Don't worry, it's nothing serious. I was just wondering if there's interest in such general questions, after my post in the pioneers thread got no reaction.

Odd, because I remember distinctly responding (if you are talking about the Kid Baltan post). Maybe you required more responses?

[Roland Kuit]

@ Hubird, I have placed Dick Raaijmakers - Ballad 'Erlkönig' in the pioneers topic.

I know I have to be careful with PM, he's looking over my shoulder:

[hubird]

Ronald, you already mentioned him on page 1 in the pioneersthread
I had checked that already when I posted the memorial post.

Not that I want him having mentioned so urgently, I don't mind, I'm not specially involved.
I just thought it would be interesting for the thread as such, especially while most of the pioneers passed away already.

Nice pic, hehe:-)

Mr Arkadin, I'm not sure where your personal comment on me came from.
But at least it looks like you've missed a big post by me on the end of page 3 of the pioneers thread, partly with similar content.
This post got no reply, and because there's some similarity with my former long post in this thread I thought let's try to get some extra attention.
Maybe that clears up

(note: no problem with personal comment on me either, for that matter).

cheerz.

[Roland Kuit]

Hubird, that piece was excellent, nothing to add a.t.m.
But for me it's ok to discus music there, sure.
And DR on page 1 makes sense(to me).

[Mr Arkadin]

It's Roland, not Ronald btw hubird. I think Roland's too polite to correct you.

And yes I saw you long post immediately after my initial response. Like Roland I had nothing to add, unless you wanted me to say, "Good post" or something to acknowledge I had read it. There's lots of posts in that thread and I am making a note of all the names for further investigation. I don't think Roland expects lots of responses in that thread. To be honest it would clutter up a great resource, which is what's now starting to happen in this thread.

[hubird]

Sorry RoLand, for miscalling your name

Don't misunderstand me btw, It's not a critic to remember RD was already mentioned, it just looked you forgot.
Thought it was the same quote from Wiki.

[hubird]

Don't worry, it's nothing serious. I was just wondering if there's interest in such general questions, after my post in the pioneers thread got no reaction.

Odd, because I remember distinctly responding (if you are talking about the Kid Baltan post). Maybe you required more responses?

That's where my remark came from, Mr Arkadin.
Your post wasn't referring to that specific long post, which had kind of the same theme I tried to put in this thread.

I don't see why I'm 'cluttering' this thread also, which hasn't an overview character at all.

[Roland Kuit]

Hubird, glad to see you've got my name right. Thanks Mr. Arkadin!
When I came back from NY, it was your post informing me about Dick.
I really had to focus on other things to snap out of this.
I like to talk about my ideas regarding PM's work.
As a painter he is very interesting because he did it all in 1 life.
You can really see the line in thinking by putting his paintings chronology.
I don't make sounds/composition for a specific Piet Mondrian Painting.
I like his deconstruction of reality and want to deconstruct it further, like Karin will do with the visuals.
By PM's deconstruction, reality is Macro exposed. You could name him the Godfather of pixels
I see his rhythm, but not as a 4 to the floor beat. More as a time-grid.
I'm talking about his later abstract paintings.
All his colours, will be represented by........Noise!
In the patch I've build 4 fractal noise engines and as a tribute to Karel Goeyveart,
every engine will be converted to additive synthesis.
With this process, a enormous amount of nuances can be created.
After this, the sound has to be pixelated. I use Granular FB for this.
This is just one line of thoughts in this matter.

[garyb]

[hubird]

Thanks Roland, that's really interesting!
I knew there was more to say to the relationship between paintings and sound.

I don't see his rhythm as a 4 on the floor beat either (would be a gotspe, given if it would mean something anyway).
Boogy Woogy is a 4/4 as well, and PM loved dancing on a streight beat, so that's not the point.

Pixels and noise, sound and noise, I often thought about the resemblance.
I like noise in photographs, it's like the noise in authentic (not necessarily old) recordings.

Talking about noise, this looks also as noise, but in Makro view it is a collection of all (!) profile pictures of Facebook members together in one picture.
If you are a FB member, you're in it

[Roland Kuit]

Yes, I'm part of the pixel noise