While completing work with Spotify shuffle on, I came across the song above entitled “Aurora” by Jacoo. As the song continued it began to remind me of the work created by South African artist Marcus Neustetter, commonly known in the African Cosmos for his work entitled “Chasing Light” in which he projected the sounds of the aurora borealis as a piece of art through shining lasers through vibrated water. The picture is as follows:
For most people, it does not seem that there is a clear connection between this song and Neustetter’s work other than the word “aurora” in the title; however, it soon hit me that both Neustetter and Jacoo have similar goals in creating this art.
Neustetter takes a more scientific approach by using the sound waves generated by the actual aurora borealis in order to project in a sense what he visualized the Northern Lights to be in his own perception.
It seems that Jacoo had the same objective in his mind, except he wanted to give his audience more space for imagination. Through this song, Jacoo has projected his perception of the aurora as this song that audience listen too. By listening to the song, Jacoo is trying to give the audience the stimulation of his own product in order for them to be able to visualize their own individual perceptions of the aurora borealis.
Whereas Neustetter has tried to portray the aurora visually, Jacoo has done the same through sound. Although appealing to different senses, the significance of the art is similar. That being said, Neustetter’s piece is also accompanied by the sound which he captured when he couldn’t see the lights. In a sense, the sounds that Neustetter captured are what the northern lights literally “sound” like in strictly scientific terms. However, it is interesting to compare this scientific sound with the interpretation that Jacoo provides with his creative interpretation.
An interesting idea to pursue from this post would be to match the video captured by Neustetter to the soundtrack of this song and see how the two overlap and how they are able to complement each other.
The Modern Day African Cosmos 