This project is a composition meant to add to the experience of watching Robert Ryman's painting, "Monitor". Robert Ryman's painting technique was developed to create works that express nothing other than their medium, paint. Similarly, this composition attempts to express nothing other than its medium, sound. Similar to Ryman's work, which interacts with ambient light, the listener's environment plays an important role when listening to this composition.
While all sounds express sound itself, most sounds express something other than sound as well. The sound of a violin is inseparable from the violin, even if produced by something other than a violin. Similarly, the sound of rain is inseparable from concepts like weather and water. The only sounds that come close to expressing only sound, are white noise and sines.
White noise is a sound that contains all frequencies in the audible spectrum. It is created by utterly unpredictable pressure waves travelling through the air. The noisy nature of its sound, however, does not lend itself very well for this composition; introducing movement causes the sound to become figurative of wind or the sea.
Sines are, in a way, the opposite of white noise. A sine wave, which takes its name from the mathematical representation of the pressure it causes in the air, produces a sound that contains exactly one frequency. There are no pure sine waves in nature; all natural sounds contain some combination of multiple frequencies. The abstract nature of the sine wave is why it was chosen as the main sound source in this composition.
Robert Ryman's Monitor can be viewed at Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.