Music Mosaic: Pink Floyd, "Any Colour You Like"

Artist Statement

When the assignment was announced in class to make a mosaic based off an instrumental piece of music, I immediately knew where I would find my song: Pink Floyd’s album The Dark Side of the Moon.   This is because every time I listen to the album I cannot help but visualize every note I hear.  It is the ultimate aesthetic experience.  Time and time again I have plugged in my headphones, shut my eyes, and let the images begin to dance in my head.  Colorful shapes would be generated randomly until they would start to form correlation with each other. 

To capture this experience in my own piece of art, I decided to use light photography (where a camera is set with a slow shutter speed to capture images drawn with lights).  With the camera set to time lapse, and the song playing in the background, I painted whatever movement came to mind.  Afterwards, I had a set of 300 images where I would eventually find the perfect 11 to tell the story of “Any Colour You Like.”

With the first beat of the song, the crash symbol, a blue dot appears.  It is like an exploding star.  As the song progresses, this dot does what dots do best.  It forms a line.  The line becomes a shape: a square.  These first two images reveal that colored dots are very much alive as they have infinite potential to become whatever they want to.  With the first guitar riff the dots decide to follow the descending scale painting a majestic sky of falling stars.  Then a new riff goes up the scale to come full circle.  Thus a red dot decides to circle the blue.   The colorful dots continue dancing as they please until finally they collide.  A chord is struck.  After the explosion, everything falls into a synchronized chaos.  The two colors have multiplied themselves into a plethora of life.  Finally, the tempo slows, and there is a calm once again.  The colors settle down to form something significant: the classic Pink Floyd Prism.

In class we discussed Freytag’s plot structure diagram and Murphey’s law as two different approaches to the creative process.  Oftentimes art is inspired with an inciting moment like in a storyline.  Something generates an idea which motivates the artist with creativity until the work is finished.  Other times art is inspired by the notion that “anything that can happen will happen”.  Perhaps some of the works of abstractionism can be an example of this, such as Picasso’s Guernica, where artists aim to create a mood rather than a statement.  I feel like for this music mosaic, I have incorporated both methods.  It was the creative spark that led me to represent the song through light photography.  Yet, as I painted I was definitely inspired by the notion that “anything that can happen will happen”.  Both artistic approaches were essential.