Composers of music for art may be well advised to understand something of the distinction between media and content in art.
This understanding can lead to an expansion of creative choices and to greater impact in the final audiovisual presentation.
In 1964 an MIT Professor by the name of Marshal McLuhan published Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man.
The first chapter of that book is titled "The Medium is the Message.
" McLuhan defines a medium as an extension of the human being.
A medium is that which serves to achieve the human intention.
The medium is the container that delivers the goods.
The goods themselves are the content of the medium.
If internet is the medium, then the internet website is a form of media content.
The website in turn can be understood as a medium whose content might be articles, images or embedded audio.
McLuhan challenges us to look at media separately, apart from content, and to recognize that every medium has personal and social consequences.
Consider the revolutionary impact of the transcontinental rail freight system.
Towns that grew up along the tracks evolved and interconnected in ways that towns remote from the rail system did not.
That experience of evolution and interconnection was not related to the particular freight or passengers that might constitute the content of the rail system medium.
Rather, the social impact of extended rail systems was the continuous two-way transmission of information that was afforded by the routine and frequent stops of the train.
Consider the raw materials of visual artwork.
The traditional canvas is a medium.
It is a container.
It is the means by which another medium, paint, is held in place to permit the formation of an image, be it abstract or realistic.
Steel could be the medium.
A vinyl record could be the medium.
Each of these media have or had social consequences.
Along with those consequences are associated feelings and emotions.
Steel led to skyscrapers which in turn led to a very different office experience for millions of workers.
Sound recording on vinyl created portability and intimacy in the experience of listening to music.
On an emotional level, we brought the artist into our homes along with the record album.
In the same way that music can speak to emotion, feeling and sentiment described in the content of visual art, so can it resonate with the medium itself.
For example, a sculpture roughed out of a tree stump creates an association with nature even if the subject of the sculpture is a soda bottle.
Creating nature references in the music might serve to emphasize an inherent tension between organic and inorganic in the sculpture.
In other instances, the music may introduce a sense of irony.
Consider the emotional associations to vinyl recordings discussed earlier.
How do we feel about that retired vinyl being used as the canvas for a painting? There could be a sense of loss.
There could be a sense even of guilt, of having desecrated something sacred.
Imagine music that brings out some of these feelings while looking at content that is lighthearted or whimsical! The music has pushed us into considering a disturbing irony and our experience of the artwork is richer as a result.
By considering art media apart from art content, the composer of music for art may discover emotional or other elements that can be expressed musically.
Emphasizing these elements may create tensions which deepen the experience of the artwork.