(P. Lichty/J. Weigel) Print, 17”x11, 2003
A point of interest is that of sensory perception and the arts. This is probably due to distorted vision that I have had most of my life. Regarding the linkage of art to the human sensoria, can art exist outside of the range of the human senses? A precedent for this could be said to exist in terms of IBM researchers having made small sculptures using individual atoms. However, an interesting possibility arises when a human attempts to create an artwork that exists outside the range of their sensory perception.
In Sonata for Cats and Dogs, I worked with composer Jay Weigel, where he transposed one of his latest compositions using a simple principle. Given that the note Reference A is 440 Hz, and that an octave is a doubling of the frequency each time, to take Reference A up six octaves would place it at over 28 Khz, which is outside the human range of audibility, but well within the feline and canine hearing range.
Although this metaphor of musical
transposition to extrasensory ranges might better serve to describe an
interspecies communication to other highly developed beings such as dolphins
and other cetaceans, there are typically few living nearby at any time
where I live in Baton Rouge. Therefore, the only beings who live nearby
are our three cats, and they represent the test subjects. At this time,
I am considering the form of instrument I might use to actually play this
work.
