Durational aesthetics: a common expanded field of sculpture and music

Abstract

My thesis, ‘Durational aesthetics: a common expanded field of sculpture and music’ concerns the practical application of music in my sculpture practice, and the application of sculptural thought in my music-related work. I survey this topic both through examples of other artist’s artworks, and through critical reflection on the making of my own sculptures for the Kuvan Kevät 2022 degree exhibition.

My works were presented under the shared title “One more thing before I go”, a reflection of events in my personal life at the time of the making of the work. My aim in these artworks was to express musical thought through sculpture, and to preserve something of my connection to my Grandmother in the UK, who was very poorly at the time that I was making these works.

In my written thesis, I explore the particular ways in which I attempted to express musical ideas through sculpture, initially in the form of time, immateriality, impression and light. I reflect on my lack of consideration for colour, and then move on to the more literary aspects of my working process. Here, I reflect upon possible sculptural applications of music notation, the ‘reading instruction’ (which I borrow from the Finnish ‘lukuohje’), and finally, poetry.

In the last third of the thesis, I reflect on the work of three artists in particular who pioneered the common expanded fields of music and visual art, and to whom my personal ways of thinking around (what I term) ’music-sculpture’ is indebted: Rolf Julius, Alvin Lucier, and Peter Roehr. I discuss the concealment of sounds and objects, repetition and minimalism, and the utility of what I have come to term ‘provisional music’: a kind of musical material that may be used as an interstitial material in sculpture, to support or uphold sculptural materials or structures.

I follow this with a brief reflection on a singular listening experience that began this process of artistic research for me – an event which took place during my MA studies at the Theatre Academy some time in 2013.

In my final conclusion, I list the ways in which I have found that music and sculpture may interact in my work. Far from being conclusive, I accept that I still haven’t reached a conclusion, and that I expect to follow these lines of inquiry long into the future.