Cooper Stoulil

Printing the Song of Apollo

Creation is beautiful.  A blanket statement that I would argue timeless, or not of time at all.  So how then can you use a computer to print an instrument that can create something artistic, healing, beautiful, audible?

Music is healing, notably enough so that the field of music therapy has arisen in the last 100 years, tracing its origins to theories from Plato and Aristotle.  When looking at depression, studies have shown that playing and hearing music has a direct correlation with ones treatment and recovery.  A group published in The British Journal of Psychiatry 2011 conducted a study on individual music therapy for depression and showed how musical creation can improve the well-being of somebody suffering from depression or anxiety.  “Clients sometimes described their playing experience as cathartic, and this may have led to corrective emotional experiences in further processing. A rather unique property of music therapy is the fact that it includes the opportunity to be active and this seems to be a meaningful dimension for dealing with issues associated with depression” (Erkkilä 137).  In essence, by giving an instrument to someone dealing with these problems, you are giving them the ability to heal themselves.  Not in the way that medication would, where taking pills attacks the problem as a chemical imbalance, but through a much deeper and profound means to the individual, especially since the initial trauma is often emotional in nature.  “Playing music with others is just one way of finding happiness. The relationship between the musician and the instrument itself can also blossom into a loving one” (Döpp 10).  Hans-Jürgen Döpp is a former professor of psychoanalytical interpretation and history of erotic art at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt.  He has published over 18 books dealing with sexuality in culture and art.

Art as both an aesthetic and sound are constantly being reinvented.  Suzi Gablik, in her article The Nature of Beauty in Contemporary Art, pitches her views of what it means to be an artist in the modern day and how to live a more artful life.  Suzi, like many contemporary visionaries, feels that in the past few decades, a greater shift towards ‘soullessness’ has occurred in art.  “… in responding compassionately to whatever it [art] touches, it is helping to create a more beautiful world.  Artists whose work helps to heal our soulless attitudes toward the physical world have my full respect and attention because, for me, beauty is an activity rather than an entity, a consciousness of, and reverence for, the beauty of the world” (Gablik 4).  Suzi Gablik is the author of The Re-enchantment of Art and Has Modernism Failed?  Believing that art’s commitment to social change died in the 80’s.  She is a visual artist and professor of art history.  Imagine a world where accessibility to a musical instrument, or a tool to create art, was only a push of a button away.  Such access would empower anyone looking to explore self-expression and perhaps even sharing beyond that.

So what is sound?  A vibration, or the vibration that moves through things.  “Scientists say that sound requires a medium through which to travel. Here the word medium has nothing to do with middle, average, or psychics, but rather refers to some kind of substance, such as air, wood, or water” (Robertson 29).  In short, sound, being a wave, moves things.  For that reason alone it is my favorite practice of art.  To be exposed to the vibrations someone else has crafted and feel their intentions just as you would observe the brush stroke of a Monet.  Music is not only about listening, it is about feeling.  Even the act of listening, given anatomy, is the feeling of vibrations.  That is the kind of power I wish to see in the hands of humanity.   What more beautiful a tool than one we can feel and experience together as both an output and an input.  Robertson is the author of the Stop Faking it! series, designed to be accessible explanations of various types of physics.

In Stockholm, RickardDahlstrand is using 3D printers to produce music while printing.  The focus is in the sound, not the product, and he’s managed to produce songs such as Mozart’s Serenade No.3 and Rossini’s William Tell Overture, as well a few other recognized classics.  I love the approach of making the printer become the instrument while using printing as a bi-product.  The event was published through a website called arthackday.net.  “Art Hack Day ‘Hackers as Artists’ is dedicated to cracking open the process of art-making, with special reverence toward open-source technologies.”  In essence, using technology in a ‘hacked,’ or unintentional way to create.

Music is equally as cultural as it is cross cultured.  Historically, everything can be drawn back to early percussion in the Rift valley.  How fascinating a world we live in now that what once was separated by cultures, history and geography is now finding its way into iterations and culminations at the artists command.  This is an exciting time for music and how able through technology people can share ideas and creations.  Technology are the veins of distribution in which empower us to share, therefore, 3D printing is yet another facet lending itself to ease of creativity through the personal ability to download an instrument.  An instrument that can heal, which is exponentially more safe and potent than many therapeutic alternatives such as medication.  Through vibrations, we are connecting with something beautiful in an attempt to save our definition of art.  It should come as no surprise the immediacy to continue making our world a more beautiful place.     “Art, religion and knowledge are all conditions of Apollo [truth/healing], in which Dionysian [sensual/emotional] reality is defended against and channelled at the same time. We should approach the monstrous in life with the help of art – preferably music. This is what a summary of the book of tragedy could sound like” (Döpp 89).  I have no doubt that if someone held a flute that had just been printed, their life would be impacted for the better in a lasting way.