Tag 'press'

To get a sense of the kind of wonderful things he's inspired, check out reports from this year's Gathering for Gardner, such as this article by Bob Crease in The Wall Street Journal, or more recently, this one by Alex Bellos in The New Scientist. The building of the balloon snub dodecahedron mentioned in that article is shown at right, and the print version of contains a rather large picture of myself holding a balloon octahedron in front of my face.

You can read the full article, in Greek. Here is my interview, in English:

SK: Judging from the content of your site,you seem to love both noise and melody equally? Why do you think these extremes inspire you?

VH: The difference between music and noise is all in how you listen. So much music has become noise, background in restaurants and stores. It makes me worry we've forgotten how to really listen. But when we do listen, even noise is fascinating. There is so much sound around you at this very moment—notice it!

SK: What was the initial idea to set the paper instruments on fire?

VH: It seemed obvious. Flaming instruments have been done before, but to me it is heartbreaking to burn something as beautiful and difficult to make as a piano. The idea fascinated me, but I couldn't do it. But the paper instruments, while I'd spent many hours crafting some of them, are easier to destroy. Maybe because I created them in the first place.

SK: I 've seen some experimental musicians to set fire to their pianos but the nature of a burning paperwind(?) is much more impressive since breath and air consequently are so crucial for both fire and sound to exist.What do you think?

VH: Yes, that was one of the most beautiful things about it! Our breath was translated into not only sound, but also light. I think we all felt like dragons. So many people have made visual representation of music, but this was more than a representation—the fire was dancing with us.

SK: How was the experience during the playing? (emotions,the alteration of the sound during burning,injuries maybe)?

VH: We were improvising, and improvising is a wonderful thing. When you improvise, you are discovering together. One person discovers a rhythm, the next discovers a melody that fits the rhythm, and so on. But with fire, we were also discovering new ways to use our instruments, ways to manipulate the flame, and ways to play with light. This was a part of improvisation I had never experienced before. We had to adapt to the changes we each made in the music, and to what the flame did to the instruments. Fire is a great metaphor. We shared the flame, passed it to each other, supported each other's inner fire.

SK: In the relevant text of the video you are writing about the music's dependency on the ephemeral.Could you develop your thoughts on this statement?

VH: There are such beautiful moments in music, that climax which you wait for through the entire piece. But you can't take a snapshot of that moment and hang it on a wall to admire at your leisure. As soon as you try to isolate it, it becomes meaningless. You need the music leading up to it, and you can only stay there for so long before you have to move on. Even in dance, another art form strongly embedded in time, we can enjoy a still image. Music cannot be caught—it is there one moment, and then it is gone.

SK: "You are the last person who will ever play that burning instrument." This is definitely one of the strongest lyrics I've ever heard even though it's not supposed to be one. What do you think about the human condition are we just one-use burning instruments in a way?

VH: I'm not sure which is more ephemeral: music or humans. If we are just one-use burning instruments, who is playing us? I am quite certain that, more than I play music, music plays me. I'm sure many other composers feel the same.

Vi Hart, a Stony Brook University senior music major, has been wild about Harry since she was about the same age as the adolescent wizard in J.K. Rowling's first novel, “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.” Hart will conduct the premiere of the “Harry Potter Septet” she composed for string quartet, violin, piano and two female voices. It's based on all seven Rowling books in the series.

The book that launched a thousand marketing schemes has now spawned a classical chamber piece, composed by a Stony Brook music major with a flair for mathematical wizardry. The Harry Potter Septet [is] an ambitious but accessible composition for string quartet, piano, and two female voices... It's the work of multi-talented senior Vi Hart, whose obsession with J.K. Rowling's adolescent sorcerer dates back to the sixth grade.

“I'm a composer and I've been composing for as long as I can remember. I got inspired last year by none other than the Harry Potter series. The project started off as a cute idea and then I just ran with it. It took about 14 months. But I completed a septet—originally 2 hours of music, which I've cut down to one and one-half hours.”

“I think there's definitely a connection [between music and mathematics]. Maybe I'm biased because those are the two things I know how to do, so they're the only things I know how to see connections between. They're similar in that sense of discovery, having things fit together. When I'm composing a piece, I often feel that I know what has to come next and what makes sense. Certain notes work and other notes don't work. If you can figure it all out and put it together, you end up with a beautiful piece. Mathematics is often the same way where you're on this trip of discovery. Certain things work, certain things don't. And when you're done, you have something beautiful, elegant.”