Artists searching for new borders to cross
Fusing cultures viewed as a key to innovation
A landscape designer drew her inspiration from music, and a music composer drew on cultures -- Jewish, Arab and Christian -- that have often been in conflict.
Boston's crossover artists reveled yesterday in how they have been breaking through traditional boundaries -- between peoples and between disciplines.
"There is something we all as artists might call border crossing . . . " Julie Taymor, director of "The Lion King" stage production, told about 300 people gathered at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston for the second day of the Ideas 2004 symposium, organized by The Boston Globe.
That cross-disciplinary urge, also explored by biologists and technologists in another conference session yesterday, is pervasive in the arts. Taymor, who directs theater, film, and opera, said she is working on a movie musical based on Thomas Mann's novella, "The Transposed Heads," with a score combining salsa, Punjabi, and heavy metal sounds, and a version of the opera "Grendel," based on the epic poem "Beowolf," in which the humans speak in Old English and the monster in modern English. "I want the audience to identify with the monster," Taymor explained.
Taymor, who was raised in Newton and began her drama career in Boston Children's Theatre, was only one of the presenters who stressed the theme of cross-pollination in the arts.
Tod Machover, professor of music and media at the MIT Media Lab, described creating "active music," with people who aren't necessarily musicians.
His "Toy Symphony" involved creating electronic toy instruments that allowed children to make music together. One instrument, a "music shaper," lets you control the shape and texture of sound by squeezing it. "Beat bugs" are rhythm instruments with antennae that let you change the pitch and color of the beats. Machover has also created a musical steering wheel and he's experimenting with the use of music to help "bring back" the personalities of Alzheimer's patients.
Wellesley landscape designer Julie Moir Messervy has also ventured into musical collaboration, even though she isn't a musician. Six years ago, she began collaborating with cellist Yo-Yo Ma to develop the Toronto Music Garden on that city's waterfront.
"I was inspired by Yo-Yo's inspiration from Bach, who was inspired by ancient dancers . . . " Messervy said. "Form follows feeling. In my work, I have to make a place that feels right for the people I'm creating it for. I have to find the inward garden of my client."
Sarah Sze, a New York artist who grew up on Beacon Hill, spoke of her gravity-defying sculptures, which have been on display from Paris to San Francisco to Boston's Museum of Fine Arts. One uses 36 aluminum ladders in flowing and tower-like formations, while another appears in five parts, each anchored by a piece of a sliced-up Jeep Cherokee. The piece at the MFA, where she spent much time as a child, was titled "The Letting Go," a stripped-down sculptural ecosystem featuring a long string, plants and flower petals, a glass of water, and a piece of paper. Sze said her sculptures respond to their place, and are influenced by everything from architecture to drama to literature. "My work is about the interdisciplinary," Sze said. "I try to steal work from other mediums all the time."
Continuing the crossover theme, Osvaldo N. Golijov, associate professor of music at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, said his chamber music and contemporary classical work draws from a variety of sources, including his Jewish and Latin American heritage, and often mixes sounds, such as Jewish, Arab, and Christian music. "I was looking for inspiration in Spain because of the rich mix of cultures," Golijov said. Golijov's composition "La Pasion Segun San Marcos," which had its US premiere at the Boston Symphony in 2001, is heavily influenced by Afro-Caribbean music.
"In the arts, sometimes innovation is unpredictable," Golijov said. "Just think of jazz or rap . . . You have to have your eyes open."
Globe correspondent Scott Kirsner contributed to this report. Robert Weisman can be reached at weisman@globe.com.
