Something a little different (for me at least) today... Watching Kubrick's 2001: A space Odyssey recently I was struck by the soundscape of the film, and how much music substitutes for dialogue in providing the mood and emotional context - never so much as in the charged, almost ominous passages by György Ligeti heralding the monolith and during the journey through the gate. Looking further into his work, I cam across the 1973 tone poem "Clocks and Clouds"; based on the premise of the philosopher Karl Popper, that the world is poised between two opposing processes; “Clocks” are the ordered systems that can be measured and “Clouds” are irregular systems, disorderly, and unpredictable. This piece of music is intense, and a challenging listen in places, but it undeniably elicits a strong response in whomever hears it (not always positive; one of the people I was with said it made them feel queasy!). My reacton was altogether more positive, and it inspired this work. Ligeti himself drew associations between the piece and Salvador Dali's seminal "The Persistence of Memory" (you know.. the one with the melting clocks). I have adopted a different approach here, using a fractal background (adapted from a freebie wallpaper) as a bridge between the "clocks" and "clouds". Chaos theory shows us how seemingly simple sets of ordered rules can result in hugely complex and unpredictable natural phenomena; something I'm sure Ligeti would have appreciated had the science existed at the time. In my attempt to capture and distill the complexity of the music in a sort of "visual tone poem", I have made extensive use of Photoshop, which isnt something i do much of usually; the only rendered element here is the face. #music #fractal #ligeti #tone poem