Photographs For Music

 

Northwest Indiana Factories from Navy Pier - 11/3/2012

When I was working on the Music For Photographs album, I curated a collection of iconic photos and then wrote original music for them. Photographs For Music is the reverse of that--where I’m pairing my original music with my photos taken on certain days (for example 11/3/2012), which also puts them in the Songday series. I’m also embedding a short video within them that relate to them directly or peripherally, and connected with a QR code. This is an interesting way to re-contextualize preexisting content. 

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Urban Biota. Music finished on 3/28/2014 from Music For Places II as a "score" for a photograph by Gregory Crewdson.

Instillation. Uses a Meatyard photo of his wife and child at the piano wearing the usual masks. I used the Instillation track which was an alt-mix of Imitation Man (Dome City)--just the piano track. I think it works nicely. This one was hard to do because the still has to be “instilled” for the duration of the music. Music gives the still a sense of motion, as if it was a still from a film.

Departure (11/6/2010 photograph).  I like doing these because you can time-shift. The music (The Scandal--a song about a boat) was written 8 years after I took the photo, about one of my favorite books, W.G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn, a book full of desultory meanderings through time. 

Shrine (9/21/2009 photo) Music: "Road Heat" (a slowed-down slide guitar), other audio: a Turkish military ensemble recorded at Millennium Park in Chicago on 9/21/2009, a binaural field recording taken on Michigan Avenue in downtown Chicago in the summer of 2010. Embedded video: "Language of the Wood"