Karlton E. Hester (composer & synthesizers) [Listen on Headphones to capture full spectrum full spectrum…] Through sound vibrations, spontaneous & premeditative composers have always explored innovative ways to investigate creative correspondences shared by science, the arts & natural world. This is an astrophysics, dance, music and digital media collaboration motivated by a problem introduced by Greg Laughlin (astrophysicist) to Ted Warburton (choreographer) and Karlton Hester (composer). “Three-Body Problem” TEAM was a collaborative team – comprised of an astrophysicist, choreographer, composer, and digital artist (Drew Detweiler) – who created a series of precisely choreographed music and dance performances to impart an emotional and visceral illustration of how nonlinear systems can display sensitive dependence on initial conditions. PROBLEM 1. In Newton’s Universal Law of Gravitation particles attract each according to their (m1=3, m2=4, and m3=5). 2. They are initially located at the apexes of a right triangle with sides 3, 4, and 5 situated so that the corresponding masses and sides are opposite. 3. The particles are free to move in the plane of the triangle and are at rest initially. COLLABORATION: We seek a new solution, one artistically motivated and aesthetically rigorous. The question, “What makes a proof elegant?” – have almost always been explored from the perspective of only one discipline at a time. QUESTION: How can dance, jazz, and new digital technology help us understand non-linear dynamics in a way that lifts mathematical calculations off the page and brings them to life?
Hesterian Musicism
Karlton E. Hester
(Musical Director)
Hesterian Musicism is the creative process through which compositional and performance styles merge to give rise to aesthetic environments where other musicians, kinetic and visual artists, and poets can meet to produce new art forms through imaginative effort. Its philosophical basis involves an intrinsic freedom of expression, focused and disciplined spontaneity, and a structural basis that explores the creative components of diverse sources from the whole earth.
Contemporary TransAfrican Experiments create ways in which to search for universal musical concepts that can be examined for their inherent capabilities as commonage. Such examinations might inspire solutions to our differences in world society. Learning a variety of ways to achieve abstract balance, aesthetic satisfaction, harmony, contrast, and effective modes of artistic expression, may produce means to communicate more clearly with others in our global community.
Collaboration, therefore, is an important aspect of Hesterian Musicism on all levels of engagement. Inspiration, source materials, thematic resources, timbral imprints, and spiritual influence can be derived from multidisciplinary aspects from any region of the world, and can involve any combination of artistic traditions. It is the individual skill and imagination, through which artistic components are explored and developed, which demonstrate that past traditions are stepping stones to future creations (not ends in themselves). We hope such synergetic experimentation reveals that art and artists with diverse perspectives on the process of creative evolution, aesthetic values, style, etc., can find common modes of expression. Modes of compatibility and cooperation can enhance ecumenical elements of aural, visual, and oral language (and modes of interdisciplinary artistic collaboration), elevating art above the stylistic or technical limitations of aesthetic manifestations that are too often the focal points of socio-cultural discussion.
