Dear YASMIN colleagues
In connection with our synaesthesia in YASMIN last month I would like to
bring this
tribute to Bulat Galeyev to your attention. Bulat was a good friend and
colleague of the
art science technology community
roger malina
*
*Obituary: Bulat Maxmudovich Galeyev (2 Oct. 1940 - 5 Jan. 2009)*
* *
*It was 14 years ago, when I, a musicologist from Germany, was in the home
stretch of my dissertation about the relationship between single tones and
single colours, a topic in the context of colorlight music, visualization of
music and synthesis of the arts. At this time, I did research in California,
where Bill Moritz (an important researcher and collector on this field, who
died in 2004) was of big help to me and gave me the advice to contact a
researcher in Russia, Bulat Galeyev. Bill showed me some of Galeyev's
articles in Leonardo, and some of the Russian books he had gotten from him.
I myself had some of Galeyev's articles, published in German, English and
Russian, in my archive, but was not very familiar with his ideas. I only
knew that there was an institute in Kazan, which was named Prometheus after
Alexander Scriabin's composition for orchestra and light (1910). This
composition was the first in history where colored light projection was
added to the music of a symphony orchestra. Its first performance with
colored light projection in the USSR was in Kazan in 1962, exactly 50 years
after Scriabin had visited the city during a guest performance. It is to
this first performance that the institute Prometheus, organized at that
time, owes its name. In it, the only one of its kind in the world, research
was done about synesthesia, the unity of senses and the synthesis of art,
all in the tradition of Scriabin. And Galeyev was its main researcher and
its director.*
* *
*So, in November 1995, I wrote a letter to him with the target of an
exchange of ideas. He answered immediately with a parcel of books and
articles and wrote: "I see very clearly that our future contacts will be
very fruitful." So it was. Since this time we were in contact, exchanging
hundreds of letters; Galeyev steadily sent me his new articles and books,
and I sent him German material he needed. He was very interested in getting
scientific exchange. But his problem was that nearly no one outside of
Russia engaged in this special topic could read Russian (including me), and
Galeyev's English was very bad. So he had to translate some of his articles
for publication in English, but this method was not possible for most of his
articles (in April 1996, he described the number as c. 350) and especially
with his numerous books, which are nearly unknown outside of Russia even
today.*
* *
*Galeyev invited me to his conference Electronic, music, light in October
1996 (the first, Light and music, had taken place in his institute in 1967,
followed by many since this), but my daughter was just born, I needed money
for the publication of my dissertation, and there was no possibility from
the institute to pay at least the costs for the flight. This was Galeyev's
second problem during his lifetime: there was not enough money to invite
scientists to Kazan for an intensive exchange of ideas. So our first meeting
had to wait until he was at a conference outside of Russia. This happened at
the conference about electronic art Ostranenie in November 1997, at the
Bauhaus in Dessau, Germany, where Galeyev gave a lecture about the history
of performances of Scriabin's Prometheus.*
* *
*His third problem was the complicated situation of working and making a
living in Russia, especially during the late 90s. He had problems paying his
staff at the institute, problems with electricity, which he needed for email
and fax, and problems getting medicine for the arthritis of his wife, Irina
Vanechkina, a researcher on synesthesia too, especially in the field of
pedagogy (children drawing music). But I admired his dry humour with this,
when he wrote in 1998: "It's not a proper country, it's 'Titanic'."*
* *
*In 2000, I had the opportunity to visit his institute during the conference
Prometheus 2000. On the destiny of light-music at the border of the
centuries. We were only a small group of researchers from outside of Russia.
When Galeyev invited us to his private flat and offered an unforgettable
impressive dinner, I went along his numerous shelves and was surprised that
he had copies or photocopies of all the important books and also unpublished
dissertations, even from Germany. And there were Russian translations of
them too. His knowledge about research in Germany was much better than my
knowledge of research in Russia.*
* *
*During the last 15 years, research about synesthesia became very popular
all over the world. This new euphoria on this topic was initiated by
neurologists, who defined it as an involuntary and constant connection
between senses. For example: someone listens to music and always sees colors
and forms, and this connection is constant during his lifetime. Galeyev did
not agree with this definition. For him, synesthesia was a cultural
phenomenon, which cannot be explained using physiological and psychological
approaches. For him, it was more a nonverbal kind of thinking than a pure
neurological process. This thesis was developed in Germany during the 20s
and early 30s by the famous psychologist Albert Wellek, who, similar to
Galeyev, published numerous articles about this. At the conference in 2000,
I gave a lecture about Wellek and his importance for synesthesia. During the
discussion, Galeyev said: "I would offer him a job at my institute."
Standing in this tradition, Galeyev's ideas today are often treated as
backwards. But, looking at recent conferences about synesthesia wordwide,
Galeyev's all-embracing concept of synesthesia, the idea of an artistic
unity of the senses, is not only still fascinating, but it had become clear
that it cannot be understood only by neurological research. And his idea,
that synesthesia is peculiar to all of us, although to different extents,
strangely enough meets with the newest neurological research.*
* *
*In November 2008, I again was at a conference at his institute: Synesthesia:
Commonwealth of senses and synthesis of arts. Galeyev was very ill and could
attend only parts of his own conference. Two months later, he died. For my
own research in the field of synesthesia and synthesis of the arts, I
already miss such a helpful, enthusiastic researcher and collector like him.
I still have some emails full of information, which I need for new articles.
As he wrote: "There are only few of us on the planet 'crazy' in this
problem." Now he is dead and 'we' are one less. *
* *
*I hope that the important work of his institute will be continued. Today in
artistic contexts, we are steadily confronted with combinations of seeing
and hearing in contemporary art like sound art, sound sculptures,
Gesamtkunstwerke, music videos, even in film music. But we still have no
tool to analyze them in a thorough way. In this, the Prometheus Institute
did lots of research, especially collecting and analyzing Russian sources
from 1742 up to today, organizing conferences and publishing the results in
books and articles. And we have the tradition of combining music with color
and form for a more complete and intensive kind of perception, as Scriabin
did; a tradition which was used by many important musicians and visual
artists all over the world during the 20th century. In this, the Prometheus
Institute did lots of artistic experiences and developed visual and
multimedia objects and films which are unique in the world. *
* *
*A representative selection of Galeyev's writings, with a complete
bibliography of all his books, articles, reports and reviews (as was
published in Russian, in Kazan, as a nearly 600-page book in 2002, as Bulat
Galeyev. Art of the space age: selected works), but translated in English
and published in the western world, would help not only for an overview of
the enormous scientific output of this important researcher and collector,
but also for an international dissemination of his ideas, because his
importance to the scientific and artistic development of a synthesis of the
arts is under-appreciated outside of Russia. This would be what Bulat
Galeyev had always wished.*
* *
*Jörg Jewanski*
*
*
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