John Luther Adams - Nature, Vision and Music

Noise does not mean noisiness. Instead, noise can serve as music, especially if it has a connection to nature. Natural noises thus, are musical creations and should be viewed as such, as they can serve as the basis to create music with a typical characteristic of actually sounding like music. That is the main idea of John Luther Adams approach towards experimenting with natural sounds and visual input likewise. For him music can be the representation of a place, as he tries to transfer visual input into music. 

Every sound can have a visual representation, the sound of water waves can be visually tansformed into wave-lines, while the sound of water drops can be visually transformed into dots which appear on a screen, expand for a short time and then transfer into the background. John Luther Adams reserached on this topic and he analyzed natural sounds on specific devices. Their shape, meaning their amplitude, frequency range and maybe even their duration can be seen on those special scientific devices. 

In that sense, these technological visual representations on the scientific instruments could be viewed like music sheets, as they, in a different form, represent the sounds produced by an instrument or by nature. 

He then created The Place in which he presents sounds and their visual representation on speifically designed instruments/screens and people can actually come to visit The Place. The excerpt from "Summer Solstice  24 hours" shows the change of colour a sun creates  on the sky from its rise to its dawn on the glass panel. Although there is no sound to this video, it still represents this real geographical phenomena which in reality can also not be heard by the bare ears. Hence, it would not make sense to play a sound correlating with the visual representation as that sound would not be true.

His songs are created to be visually represented as he is also a componist who composes music which serves the purpose to be experienced. He also follows the idea of minimalism, and the three characteristics, harmony, melody and rhythm can be also illustrated in music individually. He takes great influence in nature and Alaska is the place which influenced him the most. In the video "John Luther Adams - become ocean" the director explains that the componist created the piece, which would be played, and divided it into three parts. Each part was dedicated to a specific instrument like the strings. To also visually represent that, the director pointed at all three groups, which in their visual representation of the piece they were about to play, also took up a specific space in the room. Although this is a banal discovery, this still illustrates John Luther Adams idea behind his music. So while this might be accidental, I still put meaning into the arrangement. He then went on and explained that there would be coloured lights, representing a group each, which serve the purpose to make the composing an experience. It should not only be heard but it should also be seen and felt and thus do something with the audience. 
His idea of visual representation is similiar to Rothenberg's idea of sound also being visually illustrated on technical devices but they both handle this idea very differently. While Rothenberg focuses less on that representation, for him it only proved that nature can create music and harmonize with him, John Luther Adams focuses on that exact visual representation as an addition to heard music.