"There is always something more-- the shimmer of the screen, the flow of the fabric, the glimmer of the eye, the mood of the stage, the tonality of the work-- that can not be captured semiotically or hermeneutically."- Williams, p. 166 Why I [Still] Want My MTV
As Williams notes, disregarding the stereotypes involving an aesthetic value in music video and television, it is important to attempt understanding the superfluity of the experience and how one's knowing of the world can around them can be interpreted in different senses of expression. One enters the journey of the enigmous encounter with these visuals and sounds as their bodies perceive and express various undertones. It is important to avoid a knowing of television as aesthetic or a fine art form because it simply is not. IN this sense, television can make the use of its elements aesthetic, but the thing itself is not an aesthetic fine art form. There is, however a dimension that is aesthetic. It is all a matter of revealing access to this dimension of television.
"Breathing life into aesthetic formations and capturing the worldly flow is an aisthetic dimension of experience that is rarely discussed, but whose explication would shed light on the superfluity, meaningfulness, and resonance that artistic production has in people's lives." Williams, p. 169 Why I [Still] Want My MTV
As Williams shows here, the potential of finding the meanings of these "things" comes from the aesthetic dimension. Thus, a rebirth for the bodily perception is in flux. One may see the body crossing through aesthesis as the their vision becomes merely a "seeing." Only through our flow of awareness do we come across senses of texture, color, shades and rhythm. As in musit video, all of these senses are brought together in the act of synthesis and the defining that is created in exeperiencing the act. Thus, aisthesis is not only created through perception, but through expression. For example, the meaning of a thing being what it is cannot serve without exploring a possibility for other meanings behind it.
"Musical-luminous unfolding" takes place as music and the act of dancing to it fluxate through birthing cycles. The song, video, or dance do not become one simplistic, solidified thing of being. "Thinking it constitutes a nonmetaphysical, nonotological thought- a bodily cosmic thinking. It reveals, in the contours of "musical visuality." This third dimension gives understanding to the importance of synesthetic experience and the accuracy of embodiment in interpreting the style of music video. Identifying the video as a representation of "something," one must penetrate the video's unfolding, take away the sensual depth reflected in visuals and sounds. Musical visuality serves as the intercourse between sound and vision, music and sights in music video. Hence, this binding of sight, sound, dance, and music evolve narrative, realism, etc. as logos. This creates a synesthetic (inter)communication between all.
Synesthesia can briefly be defined as "the crossing or overlapping of sense modalities." Williams' explanation of the word depicts an interest in the very experience. It is also defined as "the experience of an associated sensation when another sense is stimulated." So it's all just a bunch of conglomerated senses. However, the experience is much more sensual when one takes part in it. For example, the lines and shapes of green used within the movie The Matrix depict a feeling and sound. Simply seeing the design upon the dvd cover communicates the sound of the film's score in the background. We have all had sense-gasms in that sense. For example, a certain smell or a certain sound or color can remind us of someone. Good times and bad times are remembered. The smell of a perfume may remind one of an ex-lover. The particular sweet smell of oats in horse feed can take you back to the farm you once grew up on.
Synesthesia relates to sights and sounds in knowing that when one hears the song on the radio, they may be reminded of the music video they have not seen in ages. It happened to me just recently as I recently heard R.E.M's "Losing My Religion" on a local radio station. Every time I hear that song, it takes me back to the house I grew up in as I watched the strange visual collage of old man with angel wings and the tripped out man dancing by himself. The band claims this is not about religion and loss of faith, although the video is full of religious imagery. Some Catholic groups protested the video. It was the first to show lead singer Michael Stipe dancing. The director hung out with the band to get ideas, and when he saw Stipe's spastic dance style, he thought it would look great in the video. The fact that I thoroughly enjoyed this simply because the mandolin was visually and musically pleasurable. I often wondered who the man in the corner playing the small stringed instrument was. I grew up in the 90's which was a peak time for music video. Thus, it is in itself a phenomenal experience as I am reminded of times as a child. Not to mention, I've recently been on a constant 90's kick. It's wonderful to know how these music-visual effects acutal "affect" a person's reminescence of a time or place.
Therefore, the music video discovers a disregarded, currently living way of perception within its expressive dimension. The significance of the visual itself is thus a known style that permisses the music video to undergo visual perception while it is apparent to "bodily perception" that it is only a visual experience. Thus, visuals become the importance in that which we perceive through a music video. The beauty of phenomenology is that it enlightens us to learn that which our ideologies fail to teach from our day to day experiences.
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