Music, Painting, Landscape and Me
We are thrilled to announce the publication of ‘Music, Painting, Landscape, and Me’ by Marc Yeats. The release date is 1st April 2024. In this book, Marc Yeats embarks on an introspective journey, weaving together the symbolic realms of music and painting through the written word. This endeavour expands upon the immediacy of engagement with his compositions and paintings and what these artworks tell us, offering further understanding and dialogue concerning their interrelation. Yeats’s transformation of his inquiries and insights into text emerges from a conviction that the foundational questions—the ‘whys’ and ‘hows’ of being an artist and his creative exploration—resonate far beyond the confines of his personal experience, reaching out to a wider community of artists and those intrigued by the mechanisms of artistic expression. Available now on Vision Edition.
My mate Marc Yeats is always doing amazing things, absolutely brilliantly, a joyful, passionate and insightful creator. Composing, painting and writing are just three of these things- wrapped up in this beautiful book just released for sale. Marc is one of the most original voices of our time, and this is a book that should be on the shelves of every library of every educational institution, just for starters!
Dr Sadie Harrison, composer.
Description
Music, Painting, Landscape and Me
We are thrilled to announce the publication of ‘Music, Painting, Landscape, and Me’ by Marc Yeats. The release date is 1st April 2024. In this book, Marc Yeats embarks on an introspective journey, weaving together the symbolic realms of music and painting through the written word. This endeavour expands upon the immediacy of engagement with his compositions and paintings and what these artworks tell us, offering further understanding and dialogue concerning their interrelation. Yeats’s transformation of his inquiries and insights into text emerges from a conviction that the foundational questions—the ‘whys’ and ‘hows’ of being an artist and his creative exploration—resonate far beyond the confines of his personal experience, reaching out to a wider community of artists and those intrigued by the mechanisms of artistic expression.
Available now on Vision Edition for £27.99 excluding p&p.
Music, Painting, Landscape and Me is a fascinating, detailed and honest journey into the endlessly curious, questioning and polymathic mind of landscape artist and composer Marc Yeats. Drawing on a diverse range of subjects – including quantum mechanics, metaphysics, philosophy, fuzzy logic, neuroscience and hermeneutics – this book offers the reader an extraordinary personal insight into the complex mechanisms of making art and music, and Yeats’ own intent, impulse, imagination and inspiration. Furthermore, it shines an important light on the ‘how and why’, not only of Yeats’ artistic practice, but that of creative individuals in general, and is an invaluable contribution to the understanding of the creative impulse and ‘what artists do all day’.
Wilson, writer & publicist, The Cross-Eyed Pianist
With the scope of its many bold threads, musings and provocations, this book initiates discussions on consciousness, the mind and the flaws of scientism, directly addressing the crises found in positivism and deconstructionism. Throughout the book, Yeats remains deeply honest; his attempts at openness are often disarming in a writing style that is inviting and accessible. Yeats’ thoughtful inquiries into various scientific fields as guidance for the creative artist regarding experience, communication, and perception are aptly positioned. Most importantly, this book presents a compelling contemporary analysis of the intricate relationships between visual and auditory elements in creative imaginings, navigating their apparent irreconcilable differences with sophistication.
Prof. Stephen Davismoon, composer, sound-designer, educator and author, Liverpool Hope University
This publication is a detailed and rigorous account of the intellectual journey of an artist trying to identify the chimera of meaning within his fields of endeavour – music composition and painting. Through an analysis of his process of practice, Marc Yeats unpicks the conceptual foundations of his aesthetic response to landscape through the lenses of philosophy and science, bringing in insights from new fields like neuro-aesthetics. Considering effects from fuzzy logic to quantum theory, he ultimately seems most comfortable with an understanding of places as embodied experiences, “compelling performative expressions” that drive a creative response. This book will be of interest to anybody concerned with contemporary art and music practices as research.
Dr. Alex Murdin, director of ruralrecreation.org.uk
The paintings and compositions of Marc Yeats can amply demonstrate their own unique qualities without a requirement for supplementary text. This book is in no sense a text designed to bolster such work’s credentials, but instead stems from the clear desire of an artist to share wider reflections upon his creative and cognitive activity with practitioners and others who should find it stimulating. The reader is taken on a creative and mental odyssey, conveying in a vivid manner thoughts, perceptions, sensations, actions, and much more, all in an interlinked stream of consciousness. Rarely can not only the act of creation, but also the wider processes surrounding and following such an act, have been conveyed in such a dynamic, compelling fashion, especially in the central chapters. Whilst the field of reference is large and diverse, little seems superfluous, concepts from hermeneutics to proprioception are always carefully explained and defined. Beyond being a text of practice-based research, this richly-illustrated book should be read as a type of art work in its own right.
Prof. Ian Pace, pianist, musicologist, composer and Professor of Music, Culture and Society at City, University of London
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE – THE LIST
Origins and Nature
The ‘Lived Experience’, Neuroscience and Ontology
Science: Truth and Objectivity
Metaphysics and More
Fuzzy Logic
Interpretation, Objectivity, Meaningfulness and the Artist’s Statement
Equivalency of Meaningfulness and Fuzzy Values
Transduction, Transmission, Meaningfulness and Autoethnography
Memory and Resonance
Affect
Titles, Intention, Indeterminacy and Superposition
Composer, Performer, Audience: Intentionality, Interpretation, Transmission,
Convention, Deterritorialisation and Meaningfulness
Polyphony for the Eye, Polyphony for the Ear
Polyphony, Assemblage and a ‘Sense of Place’
Flux, Jelly, Indeterminacy and Fuzzy Sets
Observation and Quantum Mechanics
Writing for Answers: Hermeneutics and the Perpetual Symbol
Hallucination
CHAPTER TWO – ‘MAPPING’
Introduction
The Berkshire Downs
The South Downs National Park and Lymington Marshes
The Suffolk Coastline
CHAPTER THREE – FOR THE LOVE OF CHALK AND OTHER MATTERS
The White Stuff
PK Coupling, Behaviour and Embodiment
Sensed Sound, PK Coupling and Proprioception
Expanded Proprioception
Performance: Embodiment and PK Coupling
PK Coupling: Possibilities and Assumptions
CHAPTER FOUR – STYLE, SPONTANEITY, SERENDIPITY AND MISTAKES
Style
Spontaneity
Serendipity and Mistakes
CHAPTER FIVE – AN ENVIRONMENT OF POSSIBILITIES
Introduction
Music Composition
Tempo Transformations
Pitch Transformations
Constructing Compositions
Making Paintings
Becoming
Technology, Photography, Prints and the Feedback Loop of Image Generation
Shared Making Processes 169
Gathering Thoughts: Functional Relationships
CHAPTER SIX – THE CONSOLIDATION
Introduction
Ontology and Being
Science or Ontology?
Symbolic Forms
Truth and Fact
Subjectivity and Truth
The Ultimate ‘Why?’
