Years ago, I sang with a choir called the Schola Polyphonica, under the direction of Maxwell Fernie, in New Zealand. On the rare occasions when we performed, an emotional sense of engagement and connection arose between the singers and the audience, that I have rarely experienced elsewhere. Through rehearsing and performing the music, we were all changed, and somehow brought closer together.
Music seems to create that opportunity and experience, perhaps more than other art forms.
Having made a career shift back to architecture, I’m looking for the same thing. Architecture is not really a performance art (although we do perform in making client and internal presentations). How do we find the same kind of emotional connection to the work? Through the collaborative process? Through drawing?
I wish I knew.
Architecture is certainly very engaging, and the problems are fascinating. Perhaps this is why Zaha Hadid does oil paintings, and Steven Holl and Santiago Calatrava use watercolors – as a way of connecting body to image?
This is a great talk from Alain de Botton. It reflects an idea I’ve struggled with for many years: how to make use of and participate in the great religious ideas without subscribing to all the doctrinal mumbo-jumbo.
He insightfully shows the many virtues of religious practice, and suggests that rather than throwing out the baby with the bathwater, we should be learning from the best practices of religion: ritual, symbolism, organization, mutual support and more.
TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design—it’s a community and a conference, held in Monterey each year. Their tag line is “ideas worth spreading”, and they publish videos of many of the short (under 20 minute) talks from the conference each year. This one is about music, and shows some work from MIT’s Media Lab that makes music much more accessible to everyone.
We celebrate the richness of life through creativity—expression of beauty, pain, our reality.
Our task is to create better thoughts and feelings so people can be united. Unity is the result of letting go of the walls we build in our minds. Learning to say “yes!”—first to ourselves; then to each other.
I’m looking up at the trees, wondering why we love nature. Perhaps because it has no ego, no agenda. It doesn’t want to change us, and it doesn’t judge us. Yet nature is an elemental force of unimaginable power that can overtake us in a moment, through storm, or fire, or earthquake.
It seems that we find ourselves in difficulties when our egos clash. My ego and my view of yours. Because you are human, I can imagine you are as agenda-driven, as false, as critical as I can be. So I must fear and control you, as I try to protect my fragile identity, that slips in and out of focus.
Music is a good way to create communication and empathy, because it can operate without words, without external logic, and without judgement.
