Artist Books & Music – An Inter-penetration

Over the years I have had the opportunities to collaborate with Gunnar Kaldewey in various Artist Book projects, which I enjoyed a great deal. Composers don’t have many chances to get their hands “dirty”, and I really like the physical aspect of making prints.

Artist Books and music have one thing in common – they are both art forms that require time to manifest themselves, to unfold gradually. You need time to listen to music, time to turn the pages of a book. I often conceive my music visually, by drawing pictures, plotting out charts of proportions. Music notation is a graphic representation of music. Therefore, it seems natural to me to participate in book making, even though I am not trained as a visual artist. To combine the visual with the aural aspect in a book is a way to enrich both art forms, as they share the common ground of human expression.

Bun-Ching Lam