P4 Reflections 

On the development of the method

Reflections, discussions, and conclusion

In the following, I will sum up from the previous pages, which will lead me to a conclusion of this exposition. The previous pages have been more concrete descriptions of the project's practical, methodological, and epistemological dimensions. On this page, I would like to identify what the project might contribute to the field, its conclusions and perspectives, and what it has given me as a performer as well as the significance the project has for my future artistic and exploratory practice.

In this part of the text, I alternate between two formats:

- Reflections and discussions, in which I examine the realizations that the project has produced,

- Notes, which are more sensual/fragmentary texts written during the work.

I hope this mix of more analytical/structured text and more intuitive/fragmented text will give the reader a nuanced impression of the project and its potential. I have divided the text into five main parts: 

- From starting point to ideas and thoughts along the way

- Discoveries and success criteria

- More about methods, terms, and concepts

- Problems, doubts, self-criticism and questions

- Rounding up

Starting point

I wrote this note at the beginning of the project:

“My hands find almost by themselves notes, patterns, rhythms, sounds, sounds, shapes, themes on the grand piano when I am in the state of experiencing the other work. I sense that I am reflecting and immersing myself and the music in it and that it offers me new possibilities and yet resonates deeply within me; and if I manage to remain clear and somehow calm in this state, there is also a natural delicate delineation and inspiring direction for where the music can move. 

I can try to start at the imaginary end of the project and maybe go back from there or figure out how to get there. Or where it might lead to instead... 

What is my result? 

Concert at Moma, Louisiana, Carnegie Hall (suitable for big dreams and as Etta Cameron said in a talk before one of our duo concerts, "it's Carnegie Hall every time we play"), with a big orchestra. Grand piano, synth, drums, double bass, percussion, string quartet, trumpet, trombone, saxophone/clarinet, guitar/banjo/mandolin, electronica, vocals. I am in the middle of an exhibition, with sculptures and paintings around. The audience is lying and sitting around, deeply absorbed in the overall experience. They look at the paintings and get drawn into them and the music simultaneously. The music is moving, rhythmic, trance-inducing, raw, beautiful, and puts the paintings in relief, while having a simultaneously obvious and imperceptible connection with them. The patterns and colors of the paintings are echoed in the music, reflecting back and forth between the audience and the musicians. It is as if the music extracts and presents archetypal aesthetic rules found in the paintings, which resonate deeply in both audience and musicians.“

Beginning to find the method through improvising

As I began to research the processes of painters drawing inspiration from music and composers/improvisers drawing inspiration from paintings, I wondered if there was a difference in how these two processes are perceived because they do not seem like simple mirror images of one another. I struggled to find improvisers/composers whose practice is based in painting to the same degree that the reverse is found, with some painters having found profound inspiration from music for significant periods of their career (for example, Klee, Kandinsky, Mondrian, Matisse, Hockney). I looked at painters who are also accomplished musicians like Paul Klee, but Klee didn’t engage himself in writing music. When looking for music inspired by paintings, the literature suggests a number of famous isolated examples rather than detailed descriptions of composers' deeply developed practices, methods, or extended explorations.

My preliminary conclusion was that my research could identify a consistent aesthetic premise and elements across artistic domains, with the goal of opening up a space of possibility where the arts can talk to one another and create multi-sensory art experiences.

Early in my project, I observed myself improvising to paintings and became interested in analyzing what was happening. I looked for ways of getting behind the processes and searched for possible theories that might exist for these processes, as well as possible alternative methods for them, in order to expand and develop my original ideas and practice of translating between domains.

When I reread my notes, I experience a repeating direction towards improvising to an image as a center of gravity and a fundamental approach for developing the method.

I have dedicated much of my practice to developing, practicing, and performing my improvisation skills. When analyzing this improvisation, I find two main perspectives. Firstly, there is improvising from the moment – sensing, listening, listening inwards, reacting to the sound of the other musicians, and, to some extent my perception of the audience's energies, as co-creators. Secondly, there is the approach of staying in a compositional idea track, an analytical and conscious approach to musical elements such as form, motives, direction, features, dynamic curves, harmonic structures, melodic and rhythmic material, what happened before, and where the music could be going. 

I find a combination of the two to be the most interesting; when the improvisation relates both to the inherent structure and what has happened before. The music within the same piece might be going on one axis, which could be called a time axis; and at the same time on another axis, which could be called a space axis. 

In my conversations with jazz pianist/composer Richie Beirach, he spoke about improvising as emotionally both being immersed in, or up close, and at the same at a certain distance from the feeling of the music and sound with an overview perspective; he called the two for the subjective and objective approaches. In our conversation about improvisation and interplay approaches, pianist Rachel Z described a slightly different explanation of a similar approach. She referred to jazz musician Herbie Hancock, who had described his experience when playing in a band as flying a helicopter above the music and looking down on what it needs while remaining present with the rest of the band. 

Similarly, my process of improvising and composing has been typically first intuitive, then analytical, and then back to intuitive. With a recurring reflection and awareness of which translation elements were relevant. The Transformative Reflections and the focus of developing this method have led me to experiment with the other way around, where the analysis begins the creative process, which is then followed by a creating phase, and then back to the analysis. This has developed my improvisational palette, flexibility, and compositional approaches. This other way around is exemplified on the P3 Music and Media with my notes on the Christen Købke drawing Lime Tree.

Reflections on Klee and Kandinsky in my practice

Early in the project, I found passages from Klee's Pedagogical Sketchbook (Klee 1983) and Kandinsky's Point and Line to Plane (Kandinsky 1979), which inspired me as I began to codify the relationship between lines and figures in the visual and in music. From my field notes:

“Reading and analyzing Point and Line to Plane, I sense a slightly closer connection between lines in the painting/drawings/figures/what I see, and lines in the music. I played some lines on the piano and had a more precise sense that the harmonies/sounds also give a strong coloring. Of course, it is by no means something new that the sounds control the (melody) lines, but here, there was something about a discovery of the importance of finding the corresponding underlying sounds to the lines I see. I can also look at if the lines provide temporality and chords/sounds are static.

In any case, there is a possibility or method for systematics, thematization, schematization, and perhaps especially inspiration in these perspectives, which are not so far from Klee's pedagogical sketchbook... I will probably create a slightly more sketched and open version than Kandinsky’s strict and personal model.”

Also, from my notes, where I come closer to a perception of polyads in relation to surfaces in the painting: 

“Klee also shows lines with direction in the basic plane, vertical, horizontal, and diagonal, and how they are in dramatic contrast, or moderate contrast, and harmonious or disharmonious. This could perhaps be translated into tetrads as the basic plane. Which notes are in the tetrad might then represent what type of contrast or harmony/disharmony they are. Perhaps played repeated, as an accompaniment, e.g., C-Eb-F-Bb (relatively neutral and non-gendered, also an F7sus4 from the fifth) repeated, which can then be changed to, e.g., B-Eb-F-Bb, which is a more both contrasting and disharmonic version. 

This is something I will look for in the paintings I work with, and perhaps rather than defining lines for polyads here in advance, I will take the principle with me and also let an experience of the painting be co-determining. 

Here is a note on Kandinsky, which brought me closer to a perspective on improvisation versus composition in a painting, where he sees that the upper part is represented by improvisation and the lower part by composition. 

Kandinsky talks about above and below the basic plane, and that above is lighter and freer the higher up (restraint is reduced to its minimum), and below is heavier and more restricted the lower down (restraint attains its maximum). 

This brings me back to my Tal R sketches, where there is improvisation vs. composition in the upper and lower halves of the image. Discover with my eyes and play what I hear. Important as part of this is to react spontaneously, and to react by listening to the silence behind the notes (as pianist/composer Butch Lacy has talked about in several of our conversations on music), and to go back and forth between this and analyzing and observing. 

Discoveries, success criteria, and transition          

What does the space in which both the painting and the music are located mean? More than trying to copy from one domain to the other, more than "just" creating a lot of music? When I re-read my notes, I found this early articulation of the 5. Category:

My method is to select and work with elements and parameters in each painting and use them for the translations. This results, in a catalog of corresponding elements. These can vary from painting to painting. The sensuality of the red color is a beautiful image of transformative destruction or creative destruction. Destruction for the sake of transformation and creation, not destruction for the sake of destruction.

I must transcend my limitations. Inspired by Matisse, I get the courage to go part of the way. 

The intuitive category is rooted in my exploration and practice of of the concept of 'playing only what you hear'. Different ways I have worked with it are 

1) Lee Konitz 5 minutes play what you hear exercise. 

2) The state of mind/self-limitation/exercise of hearing the notes before playing them, both when playing/performing and practicing 

3) Playing what I hear from a rhythmic point of view, where the flow and articulation are the primary focus.

In the examples, my goal is also to try not to predetermine what I want to hear but to get into a state where I let music happen by itself. If no sound appears in my mind, I am not playing anything. 

In this project, I have experimented with a daily practice slow looking and deep listening as mentioned on the P2 Method. 

In my practice, I have worked with imaginary music, starting in New York in 1998, after having (mis)understood the artistic practice of Lawrence Weiner as being text descriptions of artworks in detail. 

From this misconception, I made a concept of fantasimusik, the Danish wording of imaginary music, where the music creator imagines and describes a composition or improvisation, without actually playing it. Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard has worked extensively and in-depth with similar ideas in his practice and his KUV project, Music for The Inner Ear (Løkkegaard 2020). 

I have used the idea of imaginary music as an idea generator in this project, with a practice of repeatedly creating contemplations with painting reflected to imagined music staying in the mind. The process was looking at a painting and listening for what sounds it inspired in my imagination only. Letting the music emerge as if it did it by itself, and following where it seems to want to flow is a value in my philosophy of improvisation and composition. Paying attention to the pre-reflective and then combining it with analysis and reflection. 

From notes:

I find that I now envision the paintings when I play and improvise. The sound and vision are connected and intertwined as I wander/float/fly around in the paintings. 

I experience that my improvisations take on a different character. It is, to a greater extent, the framework/conceptualization I have set for the composition that gradually directs the improvisation. The compositional line and consistency may well be overpowered or detoured by the impulses and communication of the moment. In my practice and in my values, one is not necessarily better than the other, but it is a valuable distinction. It is a value for me that my creative response is based on and constantly relates to the source materials' gravitational core, and less to traditions, even though the result may well hit some of the same curves and shapes. This value is also expressed in Jacob Anderskov's artistic KUV project Sonic Complexion reference "to paraphrase Irit Rogoff, too much inherited knowledge and too little working from condition" (Anderskov 2022).

I have gained a different perspective on form in improvisation, with more space and more relationships between textures, ideas, and lines, from a more overviewing perspective. When optimal, together with a completely present in the sound perspective. 

The objectivity and subjectivity or aerial perspective of both Beirach, Hancock/Rachel Z, and Kruse's the `up close´ and `a certain distance´ also correspond with what I see as the producer/composer-point-of-view. This has led me to a new kind of balance in the relationship between the sensing/intuitive and the analytical. Between the overview and presence.

Concerts

Later in the project, I played a solo piano and piano duo concert based on Matisse's painting The Red Studio at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (September 2022), as well as a series of solo piano and piano-bass-drums trio concerts at The National Gallery of Denmark and Fondation Danoise in Paris. The MoMA concert was an important, if not a turning point in my explorations, where I experienced my practice deepened and focused to a heightened level. It thus became natural to center the exposition around my work with this painting as well as describing the method through it. 

In our conversation, Danish trumpeter and music creator Palle Mikkelborg asked the question, "When does the concert actually start?" I relate this to my experience of a specific extra automatic and partly subconscious energy, focus filtering, and selection before, during, and after a concert performance, which is productive and essential for its development. This seemed heightened in the prestigious museums where I held Transformative Reflections projects and talks. With regard to the interdisciplinary connections, my performances surrounded by this level of quality and quantity of artworks naturally amplified the inter-disciplinary reflections on context.

Problems, doubts, self-criticism, and questions

During the process, I have had doubts about several aspects of the method, whether it is possible to achieve my goals with the idea, which in itself has sometimes felt rather diffuse. 

A recurring challenge and doubt has been whether it is too narrow and old-fashioned with the delimitation to only painting rather than more contemporary visual forms of expression. As well as whether it is too narrow with the delimitation to jazz trio rather than more instrumentation options, both acoustic and electronic. There are several moments in the experiences and analyses of the paintings where I have thought that colors would be quite obvious to transfer to instrumentation and the different timbres that aspect gives. However, I have chosen to stay at the starting point, which is an instrumentation I am experienced in, and my experience is that this has provided an opportunity for a deepening of the processes.

After exploring the material, it still seems relevant to look at what art from earlier periods can tell us about the present. I explored this in my interview with Dorthe Aagesen's perspectives on The Red Studio (Aagesen 2021). 

A core question still remains: does the music created with the help of the TR method become something other than what I would have made prior to this research?

My claim here outlined in the Concrete category, is that removing myself from the aesthetic choices after the system is created, has taken me to radically different places, especially evident in the Clockwise Concrete piece. But also, the whole Transformative Reflections method applied as a recurring prism on one painting, and the multiple and iteratively developed angles, perspectives, aesthetic analyses, and reflections on creating, based on it, seems to have deepened, distilled, and changed my compositional and improvisational practices.            

One of my critical sparring partners through the project, Jens Skou Olsen, had the following comment after my first presentation of the project as a work-in-progress at RMC on 22.10.2022: 

Translation: the concept of translation could be an obstacle because translation is about correlation, which means that one must correspond to the other. It might be interesting to challenge that concept and use other concepts; here, I am thinking, for example, of reinterpretation rather than translation in that it becomes an opposition, and opposition constitutes a dynamic tension, which in turn enables new syntheses and new experiences.....

....Susanne Langer is an American philosopher who has worked on the influence of art on consciousness. She works with some domains of intentionality, where I think that when you use the intuitive, there is something more intuitive than intuition! You can go further out. Here I am thinking of the concept of anintentionality. Not just a pre-reflexive state, as you mentioned, but an anintentionality. So, just like anesthesia anesthetizes, an anintentional state is a state that doesn't relate to intentionality at all. David Carr has written a book in which he uses these concepts. 

I use the pre-reflexive state in my intuitive category and in the idea of pre-art, which could be called a Langerian anintentionality, not just a pre-reflexive, but almost non-reflexive intention. This also corresponds to Bill Frisell's description of the inspiration from Richter (Frisell 2018). 

My method maps some branching points, with possibilities to make some choices, and suggests another possibility to explore rather than just doing. 

Ethical considerations

In my interview with adjunct professor Jason Moran, he says about translating paintings to music: 

"what would the artist think? You want them to like it... Will they be Happy that you spend the time with the work? (Moran 2018)

This points to my considerations about whether I can allow myself to associate an existing work with the music I have written without getting the artist's permission. 

I choose a position where I create Transformative Reflections without, in the process, thinking about the recipient and the associated artist will like. Afterward, there are inevitable considerations about whether, for example, Matisse would have liked it. He died almost 70 years ago and, therefore, cannot speak directly, and I can not check with him whether he would like me to associate myself with his work. 

The same goes for Duchamp, while Vibeke Tøjner, Mie Olise, Tal R, and Evren Tekinoktay have agreed to me working with their art and have lent me works for that purpose.  Without them knowing the result, the considerations are similar, but I still have the possibility of asking if they are okay with publishing the music with reference to their work. 

When it comes to Matisse, I met his grandson and his wife, who are the trustees of the Matisse estate. They expressed enthusiasm about my music for the painting, which they heard as part of the exhibition The Red Studio at SMK. Although it had not been a success criterion for me beforehand, I experienced relief that the music was met in this way, even though another success criterion could also have been to achieve resistance and a different kind of debate. 

Another question I asked myself when working with Matisse was:

Should I have worked more outside the classic Western canon of art? 

In the earlier stages of the project, I experimented with a variety of paintings, but there were a number of good reasons for focusing on the painting The Red Studio as explained in the Why Matisse The Red Studio paragraph

I intend to explore a globally and culturally more diverse selection in the future, with an awareness of the risk of what Dylan Robinson describes as Hungry Listening (Robinson 2020) and appropriating incorporations of inspiration.

Is the method applicable to any painting? I found that individual paintings tend to gravitate towards specific method categories, and I will not claim that the method will work for all paintings. However, the interpretation aspect of the method does correspond with the general possibility of interpreting a vast range of paintings, even though personal preferences might play into choices of artwork to transformatively reflect.

Can I call the music jazz? How do I relate to African American Music, in relation to "composition and improvisation-based music" or "Scandinavian Jazz"?

This is an important discussion that falls outside the scope of this project; I have chosen to use the term jazz in a very broad sense, as music based in African-American music and culture generally, with influences fromEuropean Classical music, New Classical music, Scandinavian folklore music, European folklore music, African and South American folklore and contemporary music, Indian classical and traditional music, electronic music, contemporary pop- and subculture music from a vast range of genres and cultures. 

In the realm of jazz culture, there has historically been a significant oversight concerning gender diversity. 

As a product of this culture, when I consider the performative aspect of this project, it is an exciting perspective to look at how transformative reflections would unfold with a higher degree of gender diversity in the approach. This has not been a core part of the project's epistemological interest, but it is nevertheless an important issue regarding knowledge production and artistic results.

Concluding remarks

In short, my conclusion from my work with Transformative Reflections is that the interdisciplinary view the Transformative Reflections method works with has given me and generally provides, is an expanded frame of reflection and a more extensive and concretized universe of inspiration from painting to music. For the work with composition and improvisation, as well as for interdomain connections and experiences. 

The alternating perspectives, experiences, and processes between the specific and the general, the inner and the outer, the very close and the slightly distant, the intuitive/sensory and the analytical/reflective, and not least, the visual and the aural, provide an expansion of the spaces of possibility, and artistic perception.

Pre-art as an artistic phenomenon is recognized, mirrored, and discussed by peers and has perhaps been given a more explicit dimension, especially in the method's Element analytical and Idea analytical categories.

It would be challenging to measure whether I could have made a similar kind of music and artistic development without the connection to the chosen artworks. However, my own analysis as well as peer feedback indicate that a connection and communication have been created between the paintings I have worked with and the music I have created, which is not exclusively the human urge to form connections and correlations between phenomena. 

I refer to my notes: 

Listening back to sketches throughout the project and now finished albums, the following, stand out to me: 

The recurring improvisations with different perspectives, points of view, and concepts, especially in categories 1 and 2 and later also 5, have developed from small ideas to integrated and developed elements in some of the compositions. 

I experience a refinement and development of the perception of the visual translated into sound and also a structuring of the translation ideas and material over time, with the interaction and repetition between perception and analysis. 

I would say that the work with transformative reflections has deepened and expanded my musical artistic identity and framework of ideas. I have acquired new compositional and improvisational elements informed and inspired by the artists I have worked with.

I hope this will be the case for other composers and improvisers applying and further developing the Transformative Reflections method.

I will also mention the inter-aesthetic perspective, which flows throughout the project. It relates to the Artwork dialogue in the sense of reflecting values and ideas between the artworks. Just like the pre-art idea also has a connection to the same aesthetics, only before they are expressed or manifested. Transfers of elements in Transformative Reflections can be seen as aesthetic principles or values that are transposed and discussed orprocessed in the reflections in the other artwork.  

One last visit to my notes:

Whitney Museum visit, where I experienced almost all of Jasper John's works as faces. And gradually, also as a mirror, I looked in. 

The project's original idea was to reflect paintings into music, but there is an experience that the paintings change into portraits, maps, and mirrors I look into, reflecting both the world and me as a music creator. 

My experience is that this interdisciplinary society-reflecting mirror and my process of deepening the experiences of the works of art through music and vice versa has brought me closer to and refined my artistic and aesthetic identity and flow of ideas. I could say it brings me closer to the artistic pre-art source. 

Contributions

The project offers the following key contributions to the fields of artistic practice and research: 

- Extended art and music experiences contributing to the national and international art and music scene. The project's performances have introduced new hybrid experience spaces, notably at MoMA, the Met, The Getty, the Bruce Museum, and SMK. My work on describing the creative process and artistic research, when integrated into a performance in the exhibition or alongside a visual representation of the artworks, combined with music methodically created as creative interpretations based on them, represents a new position.

- Methodology and ideas for translations between domains. Hopefully, the method can be useful or inspiration for other similar translations and development in the areas in which it is used. 

-Teaching in artistic development work, especially in interdisciplinary areas, where the method can be applied.

-within artistic research, the project offers new perspectives on the transfer of ideas and artistic expression between domains. With this project's help, the perspectives can now be further tested and developed by other artists and researchers.

Summation

Summing up, the project offers approaches and techniques for enhanced communication and connection between works of art in different and identical domains. In this sense, this project is a continuation of the eternally evolving interdisciplinary gesamtkunstwerk all creators are developing, contributing to, and developing over time. 

Together, the five categories in the Transformative Reflections cultivate a dialogue that surrounds and flows through the connections between the artworks and future artworks. It is a transformative prism or kaleidoscope that keeps reflecting these works between each other with new, ever-changing perspectives and experiences.

Introduction - Method - Music and media - Reflections - Context - Events - Appendices - References