Is there a major difference between visual and auditory art?

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SubatomicAl1en
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Is there a major difference between visual and auditory art?

Post by SubatomicAl1en »

Visual art tends to be easier to express thought in my opinion. When you listen to songs, the information passed through is mainly expressed by lyrics instead of the melody. When you listen to lyric-less music, what it expresses is more emotion than information. I want to know if that is the case for most of you. I'm also curious about how music can express without emotion.
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Sy Borg
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Re: Is there a major difference between visual and auditory art?

Post by Sy Borg »

As one who has dabbled in both music and visual arts for many years, I find music the more impactful art form, although I admit I may be biased. These days I usually play instrumental music, which I like because I listen to music for a musical, rather than a literary or oratory, experience. For me, lyrical songs are often repetitive and musically dull, relying on the message to retain interest, as has been the case from Bob Dylan to Ice T.

As for visual art, if you are in the presence of an extreme painting you can at least close your eyes or turn away. When you are in a small room with a death metal band turned up to eleven, all you can do is move away. Yes, visual art is more ephemeral, because vision itself more an indication of the physicality of the observed entity. Sound, on the other hand, is more intrinsically physical.

Both visual art and music, though, can be highly emotional. Not sure I could split them.

As an occasional maker of music and still images, I am acutely conscious that today what I do is dated. Multimedia has an impact with which less expansive art forms cannot compete. Yet, multimedia content tends to cheapen both visual and aural aesthetics. That is, its graphics are less grand than that of great art and its musical choices tend to be base. However, the overal package carries the additional power of the literary - again usually cheapened) - which takes people on especially graphic and powerful subjective journeys. Games are doing a similar job with the young.
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Re: Is there a major difference between visual and auditory art?

Post by Terrapin Station »

First, are you considering non-representational visual art?

The way that music "expresses" something to me is that I connect with it _aesthetically_, in response to its formal/structural properties. Certain aural structures connect with me more than others, but it's purely a set of aesthetic feelings. It's not literally anything like natural language communication for me, and it's not anything like non-aesthetic emotions.

That's also a big chunk of how things like visual art and films work for me. A lot of it is a response to formal properties, where certain formal properties produce positive aesthetic reactions in me. However, for representational visual art and films (which is the vast majority of films, of course), I do also care about the semantic representational content (moreso for films, less so for visual art, though I still care about it to an extent with visual art).

I don't care about all about semantic content when it comes to music, unless it's something like comedy music or someone like Laurie Anderson or Ken Nordine.
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Re: Is there a major difference between visual and auditory art?

Post by Sy Borg »

If you mean, am I considering abstract art? Sure. Both visual and aural. There is no reason to exclude it or, really, to even define it. All art represents something, so it just depends on the degree of abstraction and whether the piece needs to break the fourth wall to be understood, eg. dada.
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Re: Is there a major difference between visual and auditory art?

Post by Terrapin Station »

Greta wrote: January 7th, 2020, 8:41 pm If you mean, am I considering abstract art? Sure. Both visual and aural. There is no reason to exclude it or, really, to even define it. All art represents something, so it just depends on the degree of abstraction and whether the piece needs to break the fourth wall to be understood, eg. dada.
"All art represents something" is not true. Some people approach art purely formally. It's not like all abstract art is abstract expressionism.
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Re: Is there a major difference between visual and auditory art?

Post by Terrapin Station »

As I mentioned, I'm more or less a formalist when it comes to music.

I'm a bit of a formalist when it comes to other arts, too, but with films, novels, and a bit less so with representational visual art, I do care a bit about the semantic content. There's some semantic content with films and novels that I don't like at all, regardless of formal properties. With visual art, there's no semantic content that I dislike in principle--formal qualities override that for me, but some semantic content in visual art will lead to me liking the work more than I would otherwise, especially surreal or absurdist content.

But with music, except for some very rare cases, I'm pretty much exclusively a formalist.
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Re: Is there a major difference between visual and auditory art?

Post by Sy Borg »

I'm fine with formalism. As I say, I love instrumentals because they don't overtly saying anything. However, in any form of expression one cannot help saying things inadvertently due to our conditioning.
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Re: Is there a major difference between visual and auditory art?

Post by Terrapin Station »

Greta wrote: January 8th, 2020, 10:24 pm I'm fine with formalism. As I say, I love instrumentals because they don't overtly saying anything. However, in any form of expression one cannot help saying things inadvertently due to our conditioning.
I have no idea what you're claiming there, exactly. Are you claiming that when I listen to music I "can not help" but assign semantic content to it? (And where the music is "communicating" this to me?)
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Re: Is there a major difference between visual and auditory art?

Post by Terrapin Station »

I would also ask about when I create music. (Which is what I do for a living, by the way.) Do you think I can't help but "say things" in the music I create? How would I not know this? And if I'm creating it and someone like me is listening to it, where does the "saying things" enter the picture?
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Re: Is there a major difference between visual and auditory art?

Post by Sy Borg »

Terrapin Station wrote: January 9th, 2020, 9:23 am I would also ask about when I create music. (Which is what I do for a living, by the way.) Do you think I can't help but "say things" in the music I create? How would I not know this? And if I'm creating it and someone like me is listening to it, where does the "saying things" enter the picture?
You cannot help but to "say things" in your music. Everything we do, from how we pick our noses to how we play instruments, expresses something of ourselves. You cannot escape this.
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Re: Is there a major difference between visual and auditory art?

Post by Terrapin Station »

Greta wrote: January 9th, 2020, 5:13 pm
Terrapin Station wrote: January 9th, 2020, 9:23 am I would also ask about when I create music. (Which is what I do for a living, by the way.) Do you think I can't help but "say things" in the music I create? How would I not know this? And if I'm creating it and someone like me is listening to it, where does the "saying things" enter the picture?
You cannot help but to "say things" in your music. Everything we do, from how we pick our noses to how we play instruments, expresses something of ourselves. You cannot escape this.
Do you just mean that someone could read natural language content into anything whatsoever? Or are you not even talking about natural languages/natural language semantics (meaning)?
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Re: Is there a major difference between visual and auditory art?

Post by Sy Borg »

You can't help being you. It will shine through in everything you do.

Whatever, that's not on topic and is applies to both visual and auditory art. As I said earlier, static art and music without visuals are being pushed ever further to the periphery by multimedia. People now want more senses engaged and less likely to be satisfied by, say, turning off the lights and listening to music.
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Re: Is there a major difference between visual and auditory art?

Post by Terrapin Station »

Greta wrote: January 9th, 2020, 6:45 pm You can't help being you. It will shine through in everything you do.

Whatever, that's not on topic and is applies to both visual and auditory art. As I said earlier, static art and music without visuals are being pushed ever further to the periphery by multimedia. People now want more senses engaged and less likely to be satisfied by, say, turning off the lights and listening to music.
How does "you can't help being you" amount to "saying something" where initially you were talking about representation? (And why won't you answer the questions I was asking?)
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Re: Is there a major difference between visual and auditory art?

Post by Sy Borg »

I have explained myself clearly enough and don't need to labour the point. You either understand what was said or you don't.
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Re: Is there a major difference between visual and auditory art?

Post by Terrapin Station »

Greta wrote: January 10th, 2020, 6:33 am I have explained myself clearly enough and don't need to labour the point. You either understand what was said or you don't.
But you didn't even directly answer simple questions I was asking.
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