It is possible to theorize about art in many ways, as philosophers and artists have for centuries, trying to answer questions like "What makes a 'work' a 'work of art?'" and "What characteristic(s) of a 'work of art' cause it to appeal per se to an observer?". Nowhere are such questions more difficult than in the case of music-- often called the "most abstract" of the arts (for, to echo Plato's way of asking, "What do the sounds of music signify?") or when the questions are simple, and therefore, fundamental.
There is one theory, however, which captures one essence of the answer by turning the question "What is art?" on its head. Though it perhaps satisfies the craving for an answer without necessarily providing one, this theory nevertheless is the closest of all to a solution to age-old questions. Put simply, this theory states that a "work of art" succeeds, not by having or representing meaning, but by generating meaning. The more possible meanings a given work generates, then, the more it succeeds as a "work of art." By capturing a broad range of possible meanings, or interpretations, the work of art is enriched in its capacity of expression, and becomes significant in a way that cannot be easily stated in words, or at least in a few words.
I was particularly reminded of this theory while reflecting on the work en route by János Négyesy and Robert Willey, performed in the Recital Hall of the Mandeville Center for the Arts at UCSD on the evening of February 28, 1995. Described as "A multimedia journey for the Electronic Violin System," en route combined elements of live musical performance on the electronic violin, a stage setting including large-screen projection of real-time video processing and synthesis, a costumed dancer, a costumed vocal quartet seated behind a variably-transparent Mylar screen, an acoustic violinist playing from atop an invisible tower, and more electronically processed and generated sounds than can be easily described in words, or at least in a few words. These elements did not simply co-exist. Rather they were interwoven in an architectonic fashion characteristic of contrapuntal music, creating a kind of mobile hanging in a "temporal space" of about 50 minutes.
The elements assumed different roles at different moments throughout the piece. The electronic violin, played in semi-improvisatory manner characteristic of Négyesy's earlier multimedia works, providing essential mortar by which the elements are held inexorably in concptual proximity. The video screen combining reactive-synthetic images with processed-live images of the performers, primarily the electronic violinist and the vocalists. The dancer, starting independently and serenely, gradually interacting more closely and episodically with other elements, until dervishing herself into a frenzy against and beyond the aloof commentary of the vocal quartet, crashing through a portion of stage scenery in shocking transmogrification from life-gone-awry to lifeless reminiscence at center stage. The singers, shifting from mock-Medieval style to sustained vocalic clusters reminiscent of Ligeti, provide episodic and non-improvisatory counterpoint to more-or-less continuous embrace of the electronic violin. And, somewhere near the Golden Section towards the end, a solo acoustic violin solo played from "on high" with tender brilliance and sweetness, reflecting both answer and question, yet elevated from the search for linkage.
The overall impression of en route was one of space, of dimension, of multiple dimension, of multiply orthogonal dimensions of time reflected not only in the spatial placement of the stage elements, but in their behaviors as well. It is the fundamental characteristic of multiplicity that has always made polyphonic music both attractive and more difficult to apprehend than the more straightforward form of homophony. If one loses one's bearing in a homophonic work, it is always possible to land securely on the firmament of harmonic accompaniment that acts like earth beneath melodic sky. Casual listening therefore often succeeds with homophony, which probably accounts for its popularity throughout ages. But if one loses one's bearings in a contrapuntal work, one falls indefinitely through a conceptual space pushed out in various dimensions without necessary boundary, and such sky-diving is not to everyone's taste.
en route creates just such a space through which an observer can travel, can reflect, can even fall. In this sense it captures a vastness of possible interpretation that gives it a quality characteristic of only the finest works of art--the quality of generating meanings so effectively that it invites, indeed justifies, repeated visits. And if, as I suspect, en route has achieved true orthogonality in the dimensionality of its ambiguously spatio-temporal conceptual space, such repeated visits will lead to different answers each time, depending on the observer's own past and present, and potential futures.
--F. Richard Moore
http://willshare.com/robert//creative/reviews/enroute.html