LO 7 – Sara Frankel

caption: Artist Nicholas Rougeux captures the conversation of music with his circular, intricate images that are in relation to the score itself.

Artist Nicholas Rougeux has been working on the project of visualizing music. He does so by scoring single instrument pieces in one color, and larger orchestrations with more colors; different parts associated with specific colors. He also correlates the position of a note on the staff with the radius of its position from the center of the circle; so lower notes on a musical staff will have a smaller radii than a higher note. Overall, its the visualization of an entire piece within a circle, its an “Off the Staff” experience. In other words, its taking a book of dots on lines and visualizing it to bring another perspective and meaning to what we hear in complex classical music. I admire this project as one gets a great sense of the voicing of a piece and the relationship between each voice. As a musician, this is a really important aspect of my career in the sense that it is the conversation with musicians around me and to the audience that matters the most. This is what the artist is ultimately trying to achieve, to break down the relationship and conversation of music that can sometimes be hard to know where to even start when you listen to it firsthand.

(link to their website: https://www.c82.net/offthestaff/ )