Return to: ATA Film & Video Festival 2008: Program 2

In Search of a Mystic Bar-Tone

Applying the color / sound / note theory of Alexander Scriabin to the ubiquitous bar & tone, I scan three to seven chord notes looking for transcendence hidden within the siren song of broadcast technologies.

Questions with Mack McFarland

Elizabeth Wing: Can you describe the theories of Alexander Scriabin for us?

Mack McFarland: There are two theories of Scriabin's that come into significant play for the work, In Search of a Mystic Bar-Tone. The first is in the title, Mystic Bar-Tone. The reference here is to Scriabin's Mystic Chord, or Promethean chord. A six note sequence that is meant to open up the listener to Transcendental knowledge. He would later expand on this. Developing a 13 note chord for the Prefatory Action for his never realized multi media opera know as the Mysterium. The other theory in play is Scriabin's note to color system. Scriabin said he suffered from synesthesia, a sensory phenomenon in which stimulating in one sense triggers an involuntary reaction in another. Scriabin reported seeing colors when he heard sounds. This reoccurring experience lead him to create the clavier à lumières (keyboard with lights) which played colored lights during his Prometheus symphony. It is this system of color to musical note that I have used in the video.

EW: Would you mind further discussing your interests in synesthesia, Goethean Science, and the 11th dimension?

MM: I am unsure when I first became aware of synesthesia, but I have consciously been exploring it in my work for the past three years. Part of my interest in the synethetic experience comes from the idea that our senses are inherently separate. There are many cross overs, be it the puckered mouth after the bitter lemon, or even the sensation of nausea from shakey camera work. I feel that synesthesia is something we have all experienced and that through greater exploitation of our sense, be that 5 or 11, we will come to a better understanding of the world, or at least find new questions.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe came into my life when I heard the miss quote of, Colour is the suffering of light. "Colours are the deeds of light, its deeds and sufferings." is the proper quote. We need more poet scientist like Goethe today. Someone who can write something as profound as his version of Faust and then turn around and take on the numerologist Newton's seven colors that make up light.

As for the 11th dimension; in the scientific method sense, I still struggle to comprehend it fully. I use is as a synonym for, in my own head, head space, the back of my mind, daydreaming, these kind of things.

Mack McFarland is an interdisciplinary artist who splits his time between his home in Portland, Oregon and the 11th dimension. He works in many mediums, with a particular focus on video and drawing. Characterized by humor, mysticism, chance, repetition, and the multi-sensory, his work invites the viewer to experience the intersection of the aesthetic and the cognitive. McFarland has been exhibited nationally and internationally. In 2006, he created a work for the Portland Institute for Contemporary Arts' Time-Based Art Festival, and recently finished a three-month-long project for the Northwest Biennial at the Tacoma Art Museum, which Sheila Farr of the Seattle Times called "startling, nutty, and
technologically relevant."

Last updated 09/15/2008.