works sited
"repeat & fade"
Miles Ake
August 1st - August 31st, 2009
"Doobedood'ndoo doobedood'ndoobe doobedood'ndoo
Oh, doobedood'ndoobe
doobedood'ndoobe doobedood'ndoo
Oh, doobedood'ndoo doobedood'ndoobe doobedoobedoo
I love you, yes I do
Doobedood'ndoo"
- As sung by Diana Ross, written by Dennis Lussier
Inspired by the Art & Music department's rich collection of music scores - as well as the structure and aesthetic implications of the score itself - Miles Ake has created an installation of sound and drawing for the second display of Central Library's Works Sited series. Ake's installation "repeat & fade" produces a distinct relationship between the two mediums by generating a range of visual and linguistic similarities and intersections.
Emulating the moment when a song fades out, Ake has drawn a 3-ft. long graphite gradient from dark to light with an excerpt from the sheet music of Diana Ross' "Doobedood'ndoo" screen-printed behind it. Here the gradient and the score cross-fade, and one is made visible by the other's disappearance. Playing with the inability of musical notation to accurately represent the emotions of a song, Ake has deliberately chosen lyrics that are nonsensical. As transcribed sounds the 'words' perform but do not articulate meaning. Ake's drawing is not so much a precise visualization of sound but rather a subtle metaphor for the progression of time as embodied in a song. Unlike written sheet music, which preserves a song for an infinite number of future performances, Ake's translation of the Motown score emphasizes that a song is but an ephemeral moment - a few notes passing in time.
In a separate case across the hall, a 45-second looped excerpt from the same song also fades in and out in three-minute intervals. The tape player is hidden and there is nothing visual on display. Similar to the difficulty of depicting emotion in the fixed language of staff notation, the case remains empty and is unable to contain the staccato sounds of Diana Ross' singing.
Miles Ake is an interdisciplinary artist. He received his BFA from UCLA in 2007 and currently lives and works in Los Angeles.
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