When we are learning about composing there are a few things that you should keep in mind and some ideas that you should be thinking about. The idea of composing something, can almost be applied to practically anything that you do. For example, the way that you cook, how you dress yourself, even how you do your work, it is just simply the manner in which something is "made" or constructed.
Before I really thought about what exactly composing meant I really only thought about it in terms of music or art. Obviously there is a composer in a symphony or an orchestra and he waves his little wand and is the leader of the group, he makes every single instrument and performer come together to create a whole. He composes them. When it comes to art, and me having a background in visual art, I would relate the idea of composing to composition, or color pallet. When you're thinking about the way a painting should move your eye across the entire work, bringing your attention back to it original starting place, its all premeditated- you're composing the composition. The same could be said about the color pallet. How do you want the work to feel, does it want to be warm or cool? What emotions are you trying to evoke, stress, anger, joy, distraught, insightful? Each color can be linked with an emotion and each group of colors can start to narrow in a single emotion. Again you are composing the feeling of the painting. This is really the only capacity in which I thought about the term composing but what I learned it that it's really everything.
Through studying this idea of composing it has really opened up the scope of my understanding. We started off by realizing that composing is making. That simple. We had to think about what we did in our everyday life that was composed. Which made me think... literally almost everything we do is composed in one way or another with the exception of instinct. How we wake up in the morning we compose our thoughts for the day. Our entire morning rutine is composed and rarely broken by most people. How we dress and what we wear is composing our looks, the way that we walk and carry ourselves is composed. How we organize our day and our workload is composed even how we cook and eat our food is a type of composition. the list goes on and on.
Next it was brought to our attention that even the way we spoke, our language, is a form of composing and that all human beings are artist in that since. From the spoken language comes written language and that is composed as well (if you couldn't have guessed lol.) The writing process can be broken down into a formulaic set of step and aren't necessary to follow but are extremely helpful. First there is prewriting where you generate the idea. Then comes the drafting in which you begin to lay out and compose how it will all come together. Next is the revising, editing, and proof reading of the text just to make sure that everything is clear! Finally the final draft which is put out for others to judge your work.
We learned about composing in a design sense. Design is something that most lay-men do not understand but it is at the very core of every single thing that a given consumer is attracted to. When thinking about consumers in an entertainment sense, moreover theater, design is very very important. much like every other element without it the audience is lost and will not understand what the hell is going on. Everything that is visible on stage has a specific purpose and is carefully composed. The design from sets to lighting to sound to costuming it all works together to create this whole world that the performers interact with and project out to the audience. This is why I find design so fascinating, it is a type of illusion that people fall for and succumb to.
- Things I would like to learn more about
One of the things that struck my attention from a class early on was the idea of meta. What exactly does that mean and how the hell can I apply it to my art! I have never heard of a meta-painting or a meta-drawing, I've heard of meta-theater which is theater about theater. Meta-data is just the data about data, meta-physics is the physics of physics. This got me thinking.. what is a painting about painting and what is a drawing about drawing. Strip everything away from it and what are the actions you are doing? You are laying medium onto a work surface with a given utensil and a drawing is much the same whereas you are making a mark on a surface with a utensil.
I am interested in perusing this idea, making a painting only concentrating on the strokes that what they look like with a thick medium. Afterwards spaying it with a flat color and adding a complementary one direction spray to highlight the stroked giving it depth and dimension. I would also like to study how to represent the mark that creates a drawing. I am thinking of marks on different surfaces with different "mark-makers" and zooming in on them far far down to where is just looks like abstracted texture and then draw that exactly how it is. Then that would be a drawing about drawing.
Just in these past few weeks I have broadened my sense as a composer and what it actually means before we learned about it it was just a simple term just in a few applications that I rarely thought about. Now it is getting me to think about composing in every since of the word and how I can apply it to my work but also understand how it can apply to other people. I look forward to hearing more from the upcoming lectures.
