Seeing the Music

I entered through a long, dark hallway watching the colourful images slowly wash over the screens as they looped through the sequence of portraits. It began with a black and white still of a man with his cats to an astute woman sitting erect, wearing a glittering dress who I felt like was staring through me. I heard music that sounded like I was about the enter a rave and thought about how uncomfortable this experience would be if that was the soundtrack for the next hour. The techno music made my muscles tense with each pulsating beat. The woman at the entrance told me that not only could my body tighten up at that staccato beat but paired with images that flashed just as fast I may get nauseous, but it was only an eight-minute sacrifice. I had paid a good price for this ticket and took a breath and entered.

I walked through the long hall seeing my reflection as well as the artistic scrawl creep across the mirror in front of me. The clicking of the folding chairs opening accented the orchestral song paired with the artists sketches of women’s faces. The woman’s hair on the screen was done up in a bun and the hum of the violin made me think that she was someone who might be preparing for a concert rather than coming home from it. 

The music was warm and entered my ears just as the images on the screens all around me covered my vision in all shades. There was a picture of a woman in a rose-coloured robe superimposed to make it look like she was the choir that was singing the song that accompanied her likeness. She moved up and down with the song and her head bent back as if she were preparing to sing the next note. The projection took me right into the choral music and I sank back into my spot on the floor. There were versions of the artist’s work on all the walls, reflected into those mirrors that I’d passed in the middle of the room and sometimes the patterns were also washing over the floor. The feeling encompassed all of my senses, even though there was nothing to taste or smell, I felt I like I could with the electricity of sensations creeping over my body.

I looked around the room and saw everyone immersed in the show. Their eyes were large and fixed on the projections on the wall and their attention reined in deeper by the notes that accompanied what their eyes were taking in. The screen went dark, and splashes of colour were painted across it. The serenade changed to something that could have been a Mozart symphony. The brush strokes that crossed the screen looked like a mosaic as a woman’s figure took shape. She was cloaked in a swirling mix of pinks, burgundies that faded to maroon and into purple. Her cloak looked like it was fur lined and her arched eyebrows gave her an indignant look.  Her rouged cheeks stood out as much her red pouting lips on her pale skin did. Her face then scrolled up on the center of the screen and disappeared as the song faded. 

The next song seemed to float into my ears as did the scene in front of me. The streets of Vienna appeared with the Parliament and the street in front of it was shown with the old-styled streetlamps lighting the way. The music went from something regal and punctuated then faded into a style that seemed less defined and flowed more into a swaying melody. A woman also floated and swayed across the screen who was wrapped in her red hair as if she were swimming along in a pool of water. She was either holding up a bouquet of flowers or they were entwined in her floating locks, but they stood out with their black center surrounded by white and various pinks, mauves and deep purples trimming the white. Her gaze locked on mine and she looked as if she wanted to tell me something with her lips parted and her eyes telling me to not go far. She was unclothed whereas the other women had all had intensely decorated robes, but this one floated nude with a sense of intimacy that drew the spectator in.

The music and the woman floated into my consciousness before the screen again changed into something with more of a drumline and intense darker figures before it softens into a pair of real-life models in various forms of embrace. The music was as soft and sensual as the loving acts on the screen then that well-known painting emerged from the real-life embrace to the painted lovers posed in the kiss. They are warming my gaze, wrapped in their gold cloaks, the woman leaning deep into the man’s grasp, eyes closed, as she feels the warmth of his kiss.

The sounds and sights of this show turn a little dark with intense, ominous music playing as a hunched, skeletal figure clutching something long and red in his boney hands in front of a pregnant figure who fades in and out in front of him. It’s currently that I notice the deep intake of breath from some spectators around me. I can hear some murmurs of their reviews of the spectacle before the screen is covered in various triangular shapes with an eye shape in the center that starts to move to the beat that begins to pound in my ears. This is the part that I heard while I walked through the hallway. The warning from the ticket taker pops back into my head and I settle down for the flashing scenes that are supposed to come. The woman wasn’t wrong the throbbing music paired with the flashing shapes on the screen create a similar feeling in my gut, I’ve made it this far, so I’ll grin and bear it.

At the end of the show, I take a deep breath hear many others do the same as they make their way out of the hall. It was a completely engrossing way to see the paintings that I’d seen so many flat reproductions of on walls and posters or in the books that I’d purchased in admiration of that painter. The immersive experience left my body feeling like the art had affected all of me and left me with a sense of stimulation and calm all at once.