The new musical style that Glass was evolving was eventually dubbed “minimalism.” Glass himself never liked the term and preferred to speak of himself as a composer of “music with repetitive structures.” Much of his early work was based on the extended reiteration of brief, elegant melodic fragments that wove in and out of an aural tapestry. Or, to put it another way, it immersed a listener in a sort of sonic weather that twists, turns, surrounds, develops.

O Superman (MoMA New York)

Let X = X

rotoreliefs

readymades

/Lux/

The music on Lux is a single, 75-minute composition divided into four segments that are just over 18 minutes in length or under 20. They were composed to accompany an exhibit ofEno's visual art in Turin. While the music on Lux adheres to his ambient principle of making music that is "rewarding attention but not being so strict as to demand it," and there is an elemental drift in all four parts of this work, that's not all there is. Aided once again by Abrahams on Moog guitar, and violins and violas by Neil Catchpole, Eno's electronic textures and drones are also accented by the piano's stray single notes or minimal chords, and skeletal use of bass and/or acoustic guitar. But that sense of drift, while inescapable, is actually more deliberate and tactile. Music swells in places, wanes in others. The sense of mood and suggestion of various shades of light can be altered in an almost startling fashion as displayed at 15:47 of "Lux 1," when the tonality of the piece drops as piano keys are played in the lower register to deliberately add a sense of something approaching drama. Here again, however,Eno's sense of creating space all around his droning themes just moves the idea along to the next place. As each section fades and disappears, the next emerges, quietly, unobtrusively, into another tonally and texturally different one that contains only the trace memory of what transpired previously. While each track exists in a self-contained sphere, it is seemingly continuous in its relationship to the others. The listener's role isn't so much to be absorbed in actively engaging the composition, but to be absorbed by it. That said, there is great reward in actually focusing on what "happens" in this quiet landscape, because Lux betrays the implication of vastness and musical adventure just underneath its dulcet tones and restrained palettes.

1833 "McLean's Optical Illusions; or, Magic Panorama" (early animations)

Film Before Film - Phenakistoscope, Zootrope, Praxinoscope

How to Make a Zoetrope

Motion Photographs

TateShots: Sol Lewitt

water glass

cocoons

sumi ink drawings

lantern house

shoes