Show to bridge audience, art

Graduate Student Chris Holley wants to break down the barrier he says separates artists and observers.

Holley produces what he calls relational art. He said relational art differs from traditional art, because the creative input comes from two directions as opposed to one. For example, a person looking at a painting doesn't add anything to it but stands watching passively.

He describes relational art as the interaction between the performer and the person who's observing, or listening. That is the actual art, he said.

He said he is interpreting this form of art through music.

Holley, a music student, will take the stage tonight at Keller Hall as part of "Music for Community Voices".

The show is put on by the Partnership Learning Through Art, Culture and Environment program, which Holley said is a new organization on campus. Its goal is to connect students with the surrounding community through relational art, he said.

Holley said he chose music as his artistic medium because music concerts are generally considered to be the realm of trained musicians. He said everyone has inherent musical capabilities, giving the example of a person singing along to a car stereo.

"I'm creating a soundscape environment," he said. "There's a lot of things rooted in harmony, rhythmic elements." However, he said there is no definable melody.

This lack of a melody, he said, helps audience members who may not be able to carry a tune. They are asked to hum along to the music, adding to its overall texture.

"I've made the sound environment so you can actually hum anything you want," he said. "It's either going to have a consonance with it or it's going to have a dissonance with it."

The harmonies present within the music, he said, allow humming along to work.

"I'm creating the melodic material as a blank," he said. "And I want (the audience) to fill that in, and that's where I'm getting this concept of relational art."

He said the closest music he could compare his art to is ambient trance, layer upon layer of sometimes disparate sounds that weave together to form a thicker sonic texture.

"One of the things I've studied over the past couple of years is techno music and all the genres in it," he said. "And that's been a heavy influence into this."

He admitted relational art has a kind of fleeting aspect to it, but said in the future, he plans on recording the performance and then transferring it to a more permanent medium.