Following his land art project "The Colorfield Performance" in the year 2000 which took place at the Dutch shoal island Schiermonnikoog artist Dirk Hakze has planed a new series of projects. These so called panorama projects will be realized at the beaches of several Dutch as well as German North Sea islands und are titled "The Colors of Music". The artist intends with his concept to combine modern classical music with painting. Five of these projects have been realized in the meantime at the North Sea islands of Ameland, Terschelling, Borkum, Vlieland and Texel.

From 19 August until 25 September 2004, the sixth project is about to be realized at the beach of Norderney island in Germany. A panoramic presentation of 57 panels forming an open circle will be placed at the beach. This invites visitors to enter the circle so that from the inner side the panels appear as a coherent art work. The circle measures a diameter of 26 meters.

The music selected by Dirk Hakze for this project is a collection of different pieces of music for flute with titles such as "Toward the sea", "I hear the water dreaming" of the Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu (1930-1996). Takemitsu has mixed western type of music preferably french with traditional Japanese music. Takemitsu had a preference for the sound of the flute which in his opinion can meet best nature´s expression. The traverse flute as well as the Shakuhachi, a Japanese bamboo flute, are preferably used in his compositions. From nature Takemitsu perceived his strongest inspiration. Especially the sea was seen as a source of spirituality. Dreams and movements of the air were other motifs which inspired him in his compositions. The soloists in these music pieces of Takemitsu are Patrick Gallois, flute, Göran Söllscher, guitar, Fabrice Pierre, harp, and Pierre Henri Xuereb, viola, accompanied by the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Andrew Davis.

At Norderney island Dirk Hakze performs a melting of painting and music, but he also derives the inspiration for his performances from the landscape around, the often fast changing weather conditions and the nature in a whole. In the beginning, landscape shaped lines which are influenced by the rythm of the music are placed in light colors on the white panels. This expressive way of painting is the basis for the visual transformation of the music. Also the noise of the environment has an influence on the developmental process of the panorama.

Visitors to the art performance are able to follow the whole developmental process of the panorama by observing the artist during the painting procedure. The music which Dirk Hakze uses as the acoustical underlying for the paintings is comprehensible since there are head-sets available at the performance site. The volume of the earphones is pre-set in order to be able to perceive the noise of the surroundings as well.

Although the 57 panels form the panorama to an entity, each of them is an individual art piece and can be acquired apart.

Dirk Hakze's interest in the combination of music and painting started after visiting the art exhibition "Vom Klang der Bilder / The sounds of painting" in Stuttgart, Germany in 1986. The influence of music became apparent in Dirk Hakze's art work thereafter: He started painting performances. Together with other artists, he created paintings on stage during big jazz, blues or pop concerts. Amongst others, he was part of concerts of James Brown, Miles Davis, Carlos Santana, John Lee Hooker, Van Morrison, Curtis Mayfield and King Sunny Adé. Apart from his land art projects Dirk Hakze has in recent years been working on various big urban projects and public commissions. In this respect he has somewhat specialized on the painting of public buildings, murals and the set up of monuments.

"The Colors of Music" is sponsored by the spa administration of Norderney island as well as several companies.

Arts and music

To understand what music and arts have to do with each other, there are two main aspects in which both disciplines are fundamentally different: First of all paintings have to be viewed, they are made for the eyes, whereas music needs to be listened to by using the ears. Eyes and ears seem to exclude each other. A painting can be viewed best without the interference from any noise around while, music is best and most intensively be listened with closed eyes.

A second difference among both disciplines is that music is performed in a certain period of time and faded away when finished. Sounds and harmonies join to a musical structure receiving its meaning through the course of time. In contrast a painting has a rather statical nature: colors and figures give their impression without any change and motion, placed on the panel without any further influence by time.

Thanks to the tendences in the early romantic period questions were raised during the beginning of the 19th century such as whether all the disciplines in arts despite of their specific distinctiveness might have something in common or, whether arts would be able to express more than just illustrating objects visible in reality or even thoughts which have generally been defined already. In early romantic period the arts were demanded to get through to the deepest personal feelings of the individuals. Particularely those issues not defined yet as well as feelings which are not easily to be described even when they have a strong impact to anybody became of importance for illustrations in painting during the romantic period.

Many artists representing the romantic period were in their ideas as well as ideals remarkably ahead of their time and extraordinary close to issues of nowadays interest. In their opinion any discipline in arts would have the fundamentally same impact wheresoever and therefore they aimed at the unification of music and painting, of sounds and colors. Different to our views today artists as well as theorists like Tieck, Goethe, Novalis or Runge discussed the necessity of a unification of any kind of art under the predominance of music. However their ideas never became reality.

A real teamwork of different disciplines in art came up for the first time ever in the beginning of the 20th century when abstract, non-visualizing paintings emerged in the arts. Russian painter Kandinsky who felt himself close to the atonal compositions of Arnold Schönberg took first steps into this direction. Almost at the same time Italian futurists established manifests in which they stepped over the borderlines of the different disciplines in art through incorporation of sounds and pictures of every-day life into their paintings. During World War I the whole avantgarde movement stepped over to this interdisciplinary terrain. Famous examples among many others are Picasso, Malevitch and Francis Picabia. Today such overstepping is especially found in the combination of electronic music using video sequences, film and lighting.