Death is the Road to Awe - Audio Exploration - Abruzere

Film – The Fountain

Song – Clint Mansell – “Death is the Road to Awe”

Project 1 Audio/Film Exploration

This composition is made up of 2 different layers created while listening to an audio recording of Death is the Road to Awe, by Clint Mansell. After watching the movie, The Fountain, we began our discovery of interpretation by listening to this track used in the movie. After being given instructions on what material and drawing techniques to use, we listened to the song the entire way through during a first run and created the 1^st of the two layers. The medium used was charcoal sticks and paper, and we were required to use only rectilinear lines to make our interpretation. 

Literal Interpretation

This first iteration, I took from the music a very literal feeling of the instruments, primarily from the percussion instruments. As seen through the drawing, the song has a flow that is indicative of how the movie progresses through the storyline, starting out low and methodical, raising the volume and complexity, going to a more rhythmic pattern, followed by a slow build up along with the character discovery process, then finally hitting the climax of the film with a somber/relaxing decrescendo at the end.

Figurative Interpretation

The second layer of the composition was a more figurative approach to the music for me. This time, we repeated the song 2 times in order to be able to fully represent our thoughts and to be able to think differently about the song, incorporating the elements of the film in a different manner than the initial pass. In this layer, we used trace paper with a different color and my discovery was represented in two primary manners. The first was this offset grid of horizontal and vertical lines that show more of an open hallway or open space in to the main character’s mind. This represents the primary entry way in to the film and the openness the character must take in order to continue his journey. The second area I discovered was a series of horizontal and vertical lines that graphically look more like a tree, which was the focal point of the film that carried a multiplicity of meaning through the story.

Writing about Drawing Sound

Literal Layer

The literal drawing (the black and gray charcoal) follows instruments along a timeline that snakes back and forth and from top to bottom.  The drawing starts with just the black representing the piano and soon adds the gray as the violin.  For most of the song, the gray represents the violin and the black represents the tone of the bass.  For a time, the gray corresponds to the bells, and this can be observed in the short vertical dashes.  Toward the very end, the black and gray make large sweeping vertical rises that represent the unison crescendo of the song.

Figurative Layer

The figurative drawing (the green oil bar) is divided bilaterally, horizontally.  This main division relates to the Tommy and Izzy characters through time.  Time in this layer is represented vertically with the past being highest and the future being toward the bottom of the paper.  The paper is then divided into five segments vertically, which represent different time periods: unknown history, Spanish period, contemporary, future, and unknown future.  The horizontal bands represent periods of crisis or growth.  The different line types represent different ways of dealing with the crisis, or developmental state at which the individual is when dealing with the crisis.

Death is the Road to Awe

Literal Interpretation:

The first iteration of drawings based on the movie The Fountain is a rather literal diagrammatic representation of the instrumentation used in the song Death is the Road to Awe. This charcoal composition acts as a representation of the song outlined by the songs instrumentation. Different articulations of charcoal are used to represent each instrument as the varying instruments are introduced over the duration of the song. It is constructed with an orientation from left to right, from up to down, in correlation to the way in which music is properly read. At the beginning of the drawing, shorter dense lines represent the introductory piano. Whereas, the transition into bolder shaded lines represent the bass portion of the string quartet that is introduced next. As the song progresses the original orientation evolves to one that continues from left to right but now explores the limits of its verticality. The integration of an ascending vertical composition was used to represent the journey that Death is the Road to Awe takes the user through. Certain portions of this journey are repeated, intersected, and have moments of parallel meaning and this drawing is intended to show these types of paths.

Figurative Interpretation:

               In contrast to the first iteration, the second acts as a figurative interpretation of the song Death is the Road to Awe. The second drawing is created with a blue oilbar and is a figurative interpretation of the movie The Fountain, the significance of the song Death is the Road to Awe, and the relationship between the two. As the song Death is the Road to Awe played in the background the interpretation of The Fountain came to life through a vertical composition. Bold strokes of oil were orientated on the left side of the page to represent the character Tommy in the film. His idea of mortality was rigid and limited to his understanding of science. Quite opposite to the idea that his wife had developed. Her perception of death was quite fluid and light as death was fast approaching her. The light pen strokes are used on the right side of the page to represent her ethereal spirit. The centrally located core acts as the intersection of the two concepts and generates a middle ground at which the two exist. At the top of the page there are a few faint pen strokes that represent the afterlife or parallel universe that Izzi believes she will meet with death. At the bottom of the page bold short lines represent death as it is perceived by Tommy – a level of Earth that dead bodies are buried into. Again, the centrally located core helps to solidify the relationship between the two main characters, their understandings of death, and the common ground that the two of them meet at.