Placing Music Video: A new audiovisual modality

Abstract

Music, as Jacques Attali emphasises, “is a way of perceiving the world” (1985:4). Sarah Cohen also suggests that: “Individuals can use music as a cultural ‘map of meaning’, drawing upon it to locate themselves in different imaginary geographies… and to articulate both individual and collective identities” (1998: 286-287). Tia DeNora extends on this, pointing out that: “Music can be used as a device for the reflexive process of remembering/constructing who one is, a technology for spinning the apparently continuous tale of who one is” (DeNora 2000: 63). Music has served various integral social and cultural functions in human societies throughout history. It seems clear that as music has changed shape and form through the advent of various reproduction technologies, the ways in which we consume as well as produce music, and the shape and form of music-as-cultural map and music as way of perceiving the world, have also changed over time. In his book The Sight of Sound, Richard Leppert points out: “Precisely because musical sound is abstract, intangible, and ethereal – lost as soon as it is gained – the visual experience of its production is crucial… for locating and communicating the place of music and musical sound within society and culture” (1993: xx-xxi). This paper will focus on what Michel Chion describes as “a very influential new audiovisual form, the music video, which has opened the doors to infinite possibilities in representing relations between a voice and its source” (1999: 172). The paper argues that the contemporary articulation of music and images, built on “infinite possibilities in representing relations between a voice and its source”, has come to shape a persuasive new audiovisual modality for “locating and communicating the place of music and musical sound within society and culture”. In order to examine this new audiovisual modality, I will move away from a conventional approach based upon looking at music video in terms of its non-narrative structure, and instead propose a conceptual approach based on looking at music video in terms of its production of space. This line of discussion will be navigated not by providing close textual readings of various music videos, but rather by examining and theorising the music video as cultural/media form.

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