SILENCE, NOISE AND THE CONTINUUM : 

Investigating the spatial dimension of silence and noise

(Nicoleta Chatzopoulou, Prof. Panagiotis Parthenios)

A presentation during the conference Continuum 2016 From Xenakis to the present : The continuum in music and architecture.  University of Cyprus, Nicosia, June 13-14, 2016

As the title suggests, this presentation examines the concepts of silence and noise through the idea of a continuum.  Examples of works and quotes by leading artists and thinkers of the 20th and 21st century have been chosen to contribute to the question of what silence and noise are.  An excerpt of the work Continuum II for solo viola, written for Xina Hawkins in 2015 by N. Chatzopoulou,  is used to analyse how these concepts are dealt with in composing an original piece of music.  Finally, commenting on  Kandinsky’s work we attempt a first formalisation of silence (point), tone (line), group of lines (chord) and noise (cloud of points).

References

John Cage, score of 4’33 and other quotes

Robert Rauschenberg, White Painting

Andreas Embirikos , Endochora

Alex Ross, quotes from essay on Scelsi

Wassily Kandinsky, Point and Line to Plane

Hubble & NASA images of galaxies and deep view of the universe