Image and Inscription: Sonification as an Interpretive Methodology in Transmedial Biblical Study
This article explores the transformation of Scripture, through practice-led research, within the framework of biblical studies and hermeneutics, biblical painting, landscape studies, music, and film adaptations and scores portraying the story of Moses and the Israelites. It discusses a sound composi...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft
2022
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| In: |
Die Bibel in der Kunst
Year: 2022, Volume: 6, Pages: 1-16 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Bible. Exodus 19-34
/ Bible. Exodus 20,4
/ Oratorium
/ Transformation (motif)
/ Musik
/ Film
/ Painting
/ Landscape
/ Software
B Software / Bible. Exodus 19-34 / Bible. Exodus 20,4 / Oratorium / Transformation (motif) / Hermeneutics / Musik / Painting / Landscape |
| IxTheo Classification: | BH Judaism CA Christianity |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (kostenfrei) |
| Summary: | This article explores the transformation of Scripture, through practice-led research, within the framework of biblical studies and hermeneutics, biblical painting, landscape studies, music, and film adaptations and scores portraying the story of Moses and the Israelites. It discusses a sound composition by the author entitled Image and Inscription (2016). This is a sonic oratorio based upon Exod 19:1–34:45, and part of The Bible in Translation / Y Beibl Mewn Cyfieithiad album. The narrative relates the events surrounding the delivery of the Decalogue, principally. Initially, they sounded out as an ephemeral speech act, prior to becoming an inscribed text. Image and Inscription represents a suite of acoustic landscapes that summons the terrain, cataclysmic phenomena, loud noises, music, ritual, and figures featured in the narrative. The central text (or libretto) on which the artwork is based derives from the principal clause of the Second Commandment, forbidding graven images (Exod 20:4). Here, the clause – taken from the Welsh Bible (1588) and Authorized King James Version (1611) – is sonified in three ways: 1. Mechanically engraved on a metal matrix (the term ‘graven’ [Hebrew: pæsæl] means ‘to engrave’); the sound of the process was stretched, digitally, and modified through synthesizer filters in order to generate tonal characteristics apposite to the mood of the text’s context. 2. Recorded speech. The text, spoken in Welsh and English, was engraved on two 33-rpm vinyl records, and manipulated on record player decks. 3. Pictorial engravings depicting Moses on Mount Sinai – derived from 19th century Welsh and English pulpit bibles – were converted into a data-stream capable of being processed on sound software. In returning one of the Ten Commandments to the condition of sound (noise and speech), the composition reverses the process by which it first came into being, and evokes the acoustic character of the context of the Decalogue’s original reception. |
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| Contains: | Enthalten in: Die Bibel in der Kunst
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