Embodied Light
March 4, 2019

How can music transport us into new spaces? This question was the starting point of Embodied Light, an ongoing investigation into the connection between music and architecture, with a focus on the Bahá'í House of Worship in Santiago, Chile.

 

You can find the project, including a piece of choral music written for performance in the House of Worship, at bennmcgregor.com/embodiedlight.

I still think about that question—how can music transport us into new spaces? However, my line of thought has evolved beyond physical spaces, since certain songs or pieces of music can also remind us of particular memories, moments, or people in our lives. So the same music can mean different things to different people. For example, the piece Rhapsody in Blue might remind one person of how their grandmother used to play it on the piano at home. At the same time, a child who grew up watching Disney's Fantasia 2000 (or Woody Allen's Manhattan) might think of bustling New York City. The inherently abstract nature of music means that we can each have our own specific, personal associations attached to it. Yet it's ultimately a common language of emotion—one that we can all understand. Music has this unique capacity to bring us together, across our differences.

I'm going to keep writing about this idea and sharing some of the related literature that I've come across, in the hopes of working towards a real product that draws on this thinking.