White Night at Pierre Peeters Gallery
It is the tension between a positive and negative emotional
experience created by a pianist's sleight of hand that is explored
in Shannon Novak's Semitone Shift.
12 March, 6:00pm - midnight
Group, Habitat Courtyard, 251 Parnell Road
ppg.net.nz
Shannon Novak is devoted to using geometric forms to represent
his deep and abiding interest in the link between sound, colour,
form, time and emotion. Novak's exploration began when the artist
became a pianist at an early age taking his cues from both
classical and modern schools of music and later composing and
performing his own musical works. The years spent as a pianist,
mirrors the years spent as a visual artist, but it has only been of
recent times that these two paths have crossed resulting in unique
and compelling studies into how they relate.
His latest exhibition, Semitone Shift, explores how the
emotional content of sound changes as a pianist moves from one note
to another. When a pianist moves from one note to another in a
twelve note scale, they move or shift one semitone upward or
downward. When playing a major triad made of three notes, shifting
the middle note in the triad downward one semitone changes the
major triad into a minor triad. It is a subtle change that has a
profound effect on the emotional experience for the listener; the
major triad evokes more positive emotions whilst the minor triad
elicits largely negative emotions.
The use of colour and form build on Novak's recent work that
explored the musical note as a multi-dimensional entity. The
interaction between curves and straight lines represent the more
measurable aspect of the musical note; its pitch, loudness, and
duration. Colours represent the more immeasurable content of the
musical note - its emotional content as inherited from the pianist
who performs in a positive or negative emotional state.
A piano CD composed and performed by Novak is available as a
complement to each work.
Image credit: Shannon Novak E Flat Major and C Sharp Minor, Mezzo Piano,
quaver 2010