Ramble, rant or reminisce, this is an artist’s opportunity to pen their own Clash article.
This issue, Sky Larkin notes the analytical relationship between science and music.
Under Observation; Science And Music
“I found myself deep within an unfamiliar concrete labyrinth, listening to the room creaking under the weight of the sub-bass directed at me. All the while, dancers body-popped their way through the stages of evolution. As ‘Tomorrow, In A Year’ (The Knife’s opera based on the life and work of Charles Darwin) unfolded in the Barbican Theatre, I realised that this is what high school should’ve been like.
Though I took part in music at school, I wasn’t tempted to study it for GCSE or A-level. The prescribed way of teaching it felt robotic, repetitious, cold, uncreative, scientific. My parents are both scientists, but growing up, I gravitated towards art.
Weird Science
Science coursework (compulsory) was completed against my bratty teenage will during lunchtime detentions. It wasn’t until I studied the physical properties of artist’s materials at Uni that science began to appeal. I discovered Earthworks artists like Robert Smithson who worked directly with the land, keeping the scientific processes of nature in mind. His sculpture Spiral Jetty (1970) is a huge coil of rock that juts into a salt lake in Utah, its shape mimicking the whorls of the pink salt crystals that now encrust it.
Smithson’s outlook seems to have been fueled by the same kind of acknowledgement of the unknown that propels scientific investigation; “Religion is getting so rational that I moved into science because it seems to be the only thing left that’s religious.” He has been a huge influence on me (I first encountered The Golden Spike in his writings) and I formed Sky Larkin whilst jumped up on the discovery of these creative/scientific intersections.
Although I’ve never had (or would want) a formula for making a song, songwriting as investigation, not just recollection, seems like a neat mindset to me. Edward de Bono, of off ‘lateral thinking’ (and, erm, Marmite for the Middle East), said that “focusing on things that are normally taken for granted is a powerful source of creativity”.
Found Sounds
Focusing on the sonic qualities of everyday objects was the origin of many new noises for the BBC’s Radiophonic Workshop (1958-1998). The electronic music pioneers generated “original sound treatment” for programmes using just tape machines, wave oscillators and found sounds from items such as a bottle in B-flat, a fire extinguisher in D-sharp and a green metal lampshade. Delia Derbyshire, who previously studied both Mathematics and Music, created the Doctor Who theme-tune at the workshop. She herself supposed that she had been “experimenting in psycho-acoustics”. David Cain made Radio Sheffield’s radiophonic jingle with a material nod to the steel city’s heritage; he recorded and manipulated the clattering vibrations of genuine Sheffield cutlery.
However, the world’s first metalhead was Pythagoras. His investigations into the relationship between mass and sound pitch that first identified ‘perfect’ musical intervals were inspired by noting the variation in a blacksmith’s clangs. The title of our new album, ‘Kaleide’ is roughly hewn from the word Kaleidoscope (‘observer of beautiful forms’) and reflects how science, music and art have collided and fused in my life.”
