Holsopple exhibits combined media project

Photo by Matt Styer

Jerry Holsopple presents his “Visual Music 8/8 Project” to students at the art gallery opening on Monday, March 8. The project consists of several sets of large photographic prints and music created through the use of visual elements.

An exciting and unique art exhibit is now in EMU’s art gallery. Jerry Holsopple, assistant professor of communications, creates visual music in his exhibit "The Visual Music 8/8 Project" by combining music, portraits, and video.

The project is unique because of its many aspects and stages. Holsopple wanted his visuals to inspire the same types of emotion and connections that come from hearing music.

"The Visual Music 8/8 Project" has three parts: 64 portraits, eight visual compositions, and eight musical compositions. The still portraits are made up of several different musicians playing instruments. These musicians are Anna and John Peekstok, Mel Lee, Keith Whiddan, Geoffrey Hoebell, Terry Blankenship and Sara Pharis. The stringed instruments, which are works of art in themselves, were all created by Stefan Sobell and range from a mandolin to a cittern to a bouzouki. The eighth set of portraits depicts Sobell creating the instruments. Each set of eight portraits were chosen from hundreds of possibilities.

Sets of pictures focus around a stringed instrument, maintaining a musical theme. The pictures themselves create a musical movement by their fluid nature. Color contrast is created with black and white; lines are blurred, and some parts are in focus while others are out of focus. Also, many pictures have different images inside the main image. For example, pictures overlap, or an artist is reflected in her mandolin.

The second part of the project is eight visual compositions. The sets of portraits were transformed into a short movie using Adobe After Effects. Adobe allows position changes, opacity, rotation, different scales, lighting, and camera changes. Because of their repetitive and fluid nature, the movies act like music. The flowing compositions show different aspects of the portraits by zooming in and out of a certain part of the original work. The first four videos were created by Holsopple. The other four were individually created by Chad Van Pelt, Craig Litwiller, Shawn Hunter, and Tim Bowman. The two-four minute animated segments are displayed on a television screen at the exhibit.

Finally, the visual compositions were decoded using extensive pre-decided rules. These rules create actual musical notation. The music for each visual was transformed into MIDI sound files . The tracks are repetitive and building. At the exhibit, these musical compositions play on a CD player. Eventually, Holsopple wants to record the music using the pictured instruments.

The amazing aspects of this exhibit work together to create visual music. Each piece ties in music in its own way. When combined, the pieces create a one-of-a-kind masterpiece. The exhibit lasts until April 2, 2004, and can also be experienced on the EMU website.