Happy Birthday, Philip Glass

I can’t make it to Carnegie Hall tonight for the big birthday unveiling of your Ninth Symphony, unfortunately, so I’ll just be sitting here at my desk in your hometown of Baltimore listening to some Glass greatest hits. (You can download a bunch for free at Amazon). The post below is from last Spring, but the images still make for a nice birthday card. Happy birthday, Philip Glass.

The word of the day is synesthesia. It refers, technically, to a neurological condition in which two or more physical senses are merged, such that they become mismatched. You experience something via your eyes or nose or ears, and your brain receives it through another sense. You hear a taste, or see a smell, and so forth.

I’ll borrow this quote from the above referenced research paper:

Until very recent years, it was supposed by philosophers that there was a typical human mind which all individual minds were like. . . Lately however, a mass of revelations have poured in which make us see how false a view this is.

-William James, 1890

It’s also a word that art is quite fond of as a sort of conceptual grouping for visual art becoming sound, or sound becoming visual art. As such, Tatiana Plakhova, graphic arts baller that does work for such folks at Wired and Playboy, created these fractal-like images from the music of Philip Glass, snaring that idea of minimalism becoming complexity nicely. Enjoy.

MUSIC PORTRAITS by Tatiana Plakhova from Tatiana Plakhova on Vimeo.

VIOLIN from Tatiana Plakhova on Vimeo.

Reach this writer at michaelb@motherboard.tv.

via Brain Pickings