I’m taking a class on sound art this semester (taught by Jenny Johnson, who will be lecturing in our class in a few weeks!), which counts towards my minor in music. My concentration for the minor is focused on electronic and computer music engineering. If anything it makes for a stark and interesting contrast with my coursework for my major in East Asian Studies.
During the class’ first meeting this past week, we found out that the final project for the class would take the form of an installation piece to be displayed somewhere on campus. I haven’t had much experience in visual art, so the prospect of creating a sculpture piece that is visually stimulating as it is aurally stimulating proved to be somewhat daunting. With this, however, I also began to realize the many possibilities for this multisensory, multidimensional, and multidisciplinary project.
Professor Conway’s lecture last week highlighted an interesting contrast between interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary work. In many ways, an interdisciplinary approach to any given project or problem can be somewhat intellectually inefficient, as it forces the artist/scientist/musician/what-have-you to consciously maintain two or more different modes of thinking at the same time as s/he attempts to interlock these modes of thinking, even though they might not be all that compatible. Multidisciplinary work, on the other hand, acknowledges the potential for clashing between the disciplines, but nonetheless capitalizes on the merits of “wearing multiple hats” and employing different modes of thinking without forcing them to work in tandem.
As this is my last semester at Wellesley, I’m currently toying with the idea of creating a sound art installation that also demonstrates the knowledge I’ve gained from being an East Asian Studies major. In embarking on this project, it’s tempting to take on an “interdisciplinary approach,” if only because the word “interdisciplinary” itself is just so attractive in that buzzword-worthy, liberal-artsy-idealism kind of way. However, one must come to terms with the fact that electronic music and ancient Chinese literature really have very little to do with each other, and it seems somewhat impractical to try to fuse these two incompatible fields all for the sake of being “interdisciplinary.” In working on this sound art project, I anticipate that there will be times where I will be in East Asian Studies mode, and other times when I’ll be in electronic-computer-music-engineering mode, and that these two modes will rarely, if ever, overlap. Nevertheless, the ability to implement both modes of thinking in the same project will, I think, result in an end product that demonstrates both fields in a distinct yet harmonious manner.