II. Methodology: Language and Abstract Systems
In order to transform a musical expression into animation, whether abstract or character driven, an explicit common system needed to be formed, in order to let different forms of expression and communication freely translate between one another. These cover the language of the visual, sound, and performance.
a. Saussure and Structuralism
b. Chomsky and Universalism
c. Arnold Shoenberg and Twelve Tone Music
d. Wassily Kandinsky and Abstract Arts
Conclusion
In 1878 a Swiss linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) established a basis for the theory of what is known today as structuralism. In his only book, Mémoire sur le système primitif des voyelles dans les langues indo-européennes (Memoir on the Original Vowel System in the Indo-European Languages, 1879), Saussure discovered that there is a common underlying system for combining sounds that is shared between the Indo-European languages. He rejected the then prevailing historical and comparative focus of linguistics, where the focus has been placed on the similarity of words between languages. He then proposed the study of language in term of structure. Saussure made a distinction between actual speech or spoken language, and the knowledge underlying speech that speakers share about what is grammatical. Speech, he said, represents instances of grammar, and the linguist's task is to find the underlying rules of a particular language from examples found in speech. This finding has become a basis for a branch of linguistic study that is to be known as structuralism.
Saussure proposed that structuralist view is applicable to all systems of meaning. From a structuralist view, any form of successful communication must have an underlying system that discerns between differentiable distinctions and conventions. As a result, any form of communication can be studied in terms of its formal structure.
Once linguists began to study language as a set of abstract rules that somehow account for speech, other scholars began to take an interest in the field. They drew analogies between language and other forms of human behavior, based on the belief that a shared structure underlies many aspects of a culture. Anthropologists, for example, became interested in a structuralist approach to the interpretation of kinship systems and analysis of myth and religion. American linguist Leonard Bloomfield promoted structuralism in the United States.
As linguistics developed in the 20th century, the notion became prevalent that language is more than speech—specifically, that it is an abstract system of interrelationships shared by members of a speech community. Structural linguistics led linguists to look at the rules and the patterns of behavior shared by such communities. Whereas structural linguists saw the basis of language in the social structure, other linguists looked at language as a mental process.
The 1957 publication of Syntactic Structures by American linguist Noam Chomsky initiated what many view as a scientific revolution in linguistics. Chomsky sought a theory that would account for both linguistic structure and for the creativity of language—the fact that we can create entirely original sentences and understand sentences never before uttered. (Longyear/Eastman). He proposed that all people have an innate ability to acquire language. The task of the linguist, he claimed, is to describe this universal human ability, known as language competence, with a grammar from which the grammars of all languages could be derived. The linguist would develop this grammar by looking at the rules children use in hearing and speaking their first language. He termed the resulting model, or grammar, a transformational-generative grammar, referring to the transformations (or rules) that generate (or account for) language. Certain rules, Chomsky asserted, are shared by all languages and form part of a universal grammar, while others are language specific and associated with particular speech communities.
Noam Chomsky is responsible for introducing 20th century linguists to generative and transformational grammars. The unique thing about his approach is that it is focused on creative aspect of language. He saw language as rule-governed creativity, in explaining how people could create and understand expressions that have never been created before. Furthermore, this notion can be extended to natural language, music, the visual arts, and other vehicles of expression (Holtzman, 112).
c. Arnold Shoenberg and Twelve-Tone Music
Arnold Schoenberg
(1874-1951) is an Austrian-born composer. His musical style
progressed from late 19th-century romanticism to the twelve-tone technique.
His early tonal works are reminiscent of the music of the German composer
Johannes Brahms, but before long he assimilated the chromaticism of the
German composer Richard Wagner. Beginning about 1907 these traits became
even more pronounced in his expressionist works, in which tonality was
abandoned and musical form became compressed.
In about 1920 Schoenberg began to formulate his twelve-tone technique and to draw on classical musical forms to structure his compositions. All his styles, however, are distilled in his most massive attainment, Moses und Aron. Schoenberg occasionally returned to tonal composition, but in the majority of his works of the 1930s and '40s he attempted to synthesize the twelve-tone technique with the formal principles he had employed during his expressionist period. This synthesis can be heard in his one-movement Piano Concerto (1942) and in the monumental String Trio.
Through Schoenberg and his students, the twelve-tone method became a dominating force in mid-20th century composition and exerted a profound influence on the course of Western music.
d. Wassily Kandinsky and Abstract Arts
Kandinsky, Wassily. Composition VIII
Russian
painter, Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) was one of the most influential
artists of his generation. As one of the first explorers of the principles
of nonrepresentational or "pure" abstraction, Kandinsky can
be considered an artist who paved the way for abstract expressionism,
the dominant school of painting since World War II.
After World War I, Kandinsky's abstractions became increasingly geometric in form, as he abandoned his earlier fluid style in favor of sharply etched outlines and clear patterns. Composition VIII No. 260 (1923, Guggenheim Museum, New York City), for instance, is composed solely of lines, circles, arcs, and other simple geometric forms. In very late works such as Circle and Square (1943, private collection), he refines this style into a more elegant, complex mode that resulted in beautifully balanced, jewel-like pictures.
For Kandinsky, "a composition is nothing other than an exact law-abiding organization of the vital forces, which … are shut up within the elements." (Holtzman, 83) His ultimate aim was to define a grammar for language of visual harmonies and dissonances. Influenced by the abstract nature of music of Schoenberg, he sought to develop a similar foundation for visual arts, while still retains the emotional expressiveness. Kandinsky was regarded as the first to conceive of a visual language in abstract terms. Just as much as music is an abstract system realized in sound, visual arts is an abstract system realized in visual form.
Abstract Systems in Visual Art and Music
The impact of Saussure's work is that how we come to view the language
as a formal system. All forms of communication, all vehicles for communicating
ideas, are viewed as languages. By the first half of 20th century, the
study of languages had arrived at structuralism. Saussure's view of language
as a system of relationships between abstract elements has dominated linguistics.
Language is looked at in term of units with positions in a system.
Around the same time, similar views in term of abstract structure began to emerge in other forms of communication and expression. Schoenberg developed twelve tones system of music, which later led to the forming of serialism movement. Kandinsky developed a new foundation for visual languages; he saw visual languages in terms of abstract units with positions in a system. Today, abstraction is taken for granted as part of visual arts vocabulary.
Music has long been understood in abstract terms. Tonality is a structured system of relationship between notes that are treated as abstract elements. With Schoenberg's introduction of the twelve tones system, the abstract nature in music takes even more explicit form. By the second half of 20th century, some composers arrived at total serialism. Every element of music; note, duration, dynamic, and attack are subject to organization by formal process. As a result, music is now often viewed in terms of abstract units with positions in a system.
By 1950s, linguists viewed language in abstract terms, artists had developed abstract visual languages, and music was seen as a very formal abstract system. It was also in the 1950s that another breakthrough was made: the development of computers. Being a manipulator of abstract structures, the computer now opens new avenues for exploring creative processes and developing new vehicle of expressions.