Re-composing anime : drawing on the aesthetic qualities of anime to inform a folio of musical compositions

Abstract

This portfolio of compositions and written exegesis explores the way aesthetic characteristics of Japanese anime can inform contemporary musical composition. As a highly nuanced medium, anime presents as a collection of visual traits that depict the world from a unique perspective. These visual depictions of concepts, characters, locations, narratives, gestures and emotions are the creative impetus for me as a composer. My music responds to, rearticulates, explores, is informed by and influenced by anime. By watching anime and engaging with literature that analyses anime, my music explores anime from a number of perspectives. The musical gestures and choices I have made throughout the compositional process range from different forms of image-painting, story-painting and word-painting to more conceptual acknowledgements of the specific way anime depicts complex psychological issues such as sanity and sexuality. My music artistically expresses anime in a way no other form of research could. It also looks at anime as both an extension of Japanese art traditions and aesthetics as well as a 20th century technological development that exists in a global setting. To frame my approach to the compositions in the portfolio, I explore the complex relationship between music and representation. The concept that opens up this discussion is 'ekphrasis', the process by which one art form remediates another. When attached to music a continuum is created where the degree of representation can be gauged from suggestive programmatic music to a fully ekphrastic musical depiction of an existing artwork such as a painting, poem, sculpture or anime. The interplay between art-forms and the mutability of expression through verbal, visual and auraliterations are at the core of my process as a composer. As an artist I am influenced by my own medium, music, but also in the way that other media articulate complex concepts. These articulations can be used by me and by other artists to inform the way we practice/create. In the instance of this folio, anime and music communicate abstractly and both are enhanced by the process.

Date of Award	2014
Original language	English