On Tuesday (8/19) at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation website, Michael Atkin reports on a music festival at Hobart’s Museum of Old and New Art in Tasmania. “Synaesthesia used every nook and cranny of the MONA museum to explore how the senses could be affected by melding music and light.… Brian Ritchie, the artistic co-director and bass player from rock band Violent Femmes, said the aim was to turn the conventional classical music experience on its head. ‘The place is subterranean and disorienting by design, so when you add in lights and music into that equation we just think that we’re getting people in a fairly vulnerable position and that’s a good time to give them some new ideas.’… Violinist Richard Tognetti from the Australian Chamber Orchestra was one of the headline performers, playing alongside the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra and sound and visual artist Robin Fox…. Tognetti [performed] selections of Bach from within a cage, with his every stroke projected in green spirals by Mr. Fox. ‘It’s a bit like bringing a heartbeat to life as a visual pattern,’ Mr Fox said.… While some people see vivid colours while he plays, Mr. Tognetti is not one of them. ‘I’d go nuts, I go nuts even trying to think about it,’ he said.”
Posted August 19, 2014
