Cloud Music

Copied Robert Watts, David Behrman, Bob Diamond, Cloud Music, 1974-1979, hybrid sound/video installation with custom electronics, dimensions variable, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment, 2013.64, © 1979, Robert Watts Estate, David Behrman, Bob Diamond

Artwork Details

Title
Cloud Music
Artists
Date
1974-1979
Location
Not on view
Dimensions
dimensions variable
Copyright
© 1979, Robert Watts Estate, David Behrman, Bob Diamond
Credit Line
Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment
Mediums
Mediums Description
hybrid sound/video installation with custom electronics
Classifications
Subjects
  • Landscape — weather — cloud
  • Performing arts — music
Object Number
2013.64
Linked Open Data
https://edan.si.edu/saam/id/object/2013.64

Artwork Description

Cloud Music is a synthesis of sound and image, the result of a collaboration between three artists: Robert Watts, David Berhman, and Bob Diamond. A closed-circuit video camera is directed through a window to the sky. A video analyzer and audio synthesizer read the image on a TV monitor, transforming the movement of clouds and changing light into an original score of music that transports the natural environment into the gallery for a new and immersive audio-visual experience. The result is an electronic score that fills the space with subtly shifting harmonics. Visitors listen to video as a nature-driven event unfolds in real-time. As sound is composed from light, Cloud Music is at once a conceptual homage to “chance” and a technological triumph that inspires a new means to experience the world.


Watch This!: Revelations in Media Art, 2015