Light and air everywhere - only towards evening some clouds have appeared. I would never have imagined that I would be waiting for clouds here, to have some relief from the glaring sun! A second day of warmth and already some signs of green surround the birches. The spring is gaining momentum now. The melting snow runs down the slopes, only the path to the shore where I put my camera tripod this morning is still covered in snow. Funny feeling walking in deep snow wearing rubber boots, shorts and a T-shirt, and feeling hot. The water erodes the snow from below, the sun from above; sometimes the crust breaks and I fall deep into the snow, although I have created a small path of footsteps to follow.
This morning at ten o'clock, rather late, I started a test series with images of Malla, to be taken every second hour, which will continue until ten at night. This means I have been going back and forth to the shore, taking short walks, reading something, wandering around, unable to concentrate on anything fully. Right now I am looking at my watch, it is soon time to go down again.
These two images show the changes taking place in the landscape within two hours. They are snapshots with my phone, and their framing differs from the video image, of course, not even the horizon is stable, but perhaps you can get the idea.
I wonder what would happen if music was added to these images? Would it turn them into mere illustration or background to the music, or perhaps the opposite, would the music turn into some sort of accompaniment only? The idea of nature images and music sounds like kitsch, or some travel advertisement. Why am I even thinking of it? Because the prompt I received this afternoon was a piece of amazing experimental string music, with lots of strong contrasts, thundering echoes and small twinkling sounds and plenty of silence. A music that makes you see images of ice floes breaking or branches suddenly cracking and falling, all kinds of dynamic events in the landscape, large and small. The problem is, when you listen you can imagine them, or perhaps something else, whatever fills your mind, and the images are stronger because you create them in your mind by yourself while listening.
To combine real images and music is really complicated, almost impossible but seductive. Sound can transform any image, by adding an extra layer; it functions as a voice-over even without words, or like a lens or window through which the images are seen, providing a mood or character, a guideline for interpretation. For a person attuned to listening, the images probably become some form of tapestry, like the ever-shifting ornaments shown by media players. Our senses work in a synesthetic fashion; seeing, hearing, touching all work in combination. Reality is a multisensory affair, but work which combines sound and images immediately has to meet the challenges of all cinematic conventions, where sound emotionally explains the images. Maybe I am simply afraid, since the world of music is unfamiliar to me, like a foreign language I do not understand or speak, that I can only listen to in awe.