art
-
Music’s Complex Problem
Édouard Vuillard, Morning Concert (1937-38) Why do we turn to music when there are so many other artistic, physical, social, trivial, and spiritual pursuits claiming our attention? One reason is that music is a multimodal experience that is already meaningfully integrated into our lives. Music is everywhere as a tacit shared language, a perpetual underscore… Continue reading
-
Stolen Moments Are Open-Ended
The brief moments in which many musical projects begin feel stolen because they are as if outside of time, free from routine, surprising, and rich in delight. They’re powerful because they’re witness to something new happening. But how does this unfold? As usual there’s no plan, I’m just exploring—clicking on sounds, moving audio around, or… Continue reading
-
Resonant Thoughts: Riccardo Falcinelli’s “Chromorama: How Colour Has Changed Our Way of Seeing” (2025)
“Conventions change to reflect wider changes in the culture, but what is worth underlining here is how the ideas that we have about things have always been constructed starting from the concrete uses of the things themselves” (104). “This is how our collective imagination is constructed: an idea appears, takes shape, is liked, begins to… Continue reading
-
Aftertouch
Johannes Vermeer, A Young Woman seated at a Virginal (c. 1670-72) In MIDI parlance, aftertouch refers to MIDI data that’s transmitted when a key or pad on an electronic controller is held down after the initial attack to control parameters such as volume, vibrato depth, or filter brightness. One of the first synthesizers to incorporate… Continue reading
-
Resonant Thoughts: Martin Gayford’s “Spring Cannot Be Cancelled: David Hockney in Normandy” (2021)
“Each time I do a still life, I get very excited and realize that there are a thousand things here I can see! Which of them shall I choose? The more I look and think about it, the more I see. These simple little things are unbelievably rich. A lot of people have forgotten that.… Continue reading
-
Art Is Artisanal
AI’s incursion into art-making raises the question, What defines the artist’s skill set? Artists are artisans and art is artisanal. Building on this, consider six qualities of art’s artisanal-ness and how AI fails to achieve them. Art-making is by hand. Playing music, writing, painting, dancing, cooking—art contains and expresses traces of the body that made… Continue reading
-
Resonant Thoughts: “The World According to David Hockney” (2024)
“New ideas often seem to go against common sense” (57). “You can’t have art without play. Even a scientist has a sense of play. And that allows for surprises, the unexpected” (69). “Painters must, to a certain extent, analyze their work afterwards. I’m sure the Cubists didn’t plan it, they didn’t down and say, ‘Well,… Continue reading
brettworks 