Traveling through time and space, you come across this hypnotic portal. What is it? Where does it go? Do you stay transfixed by it's spellbinding beauty, or do you proceed into the unknown? Boldness be my friend!
I've always been fascinated by the idea and concept of other worlds, and Ralph McQuarrie's work in conceptualizing the world os STAR WARS is breathtaking! I don't consider myself to be much of a "conceptual" artist, but I was inspired by the writings of Carl Sagan as well as the film adaptation of one of his most acclaimed novels–CONTACT–to try my hand at creating a portal to another world...dimension...universe.
Simple and rudimentary, I imagined light traveling along shafts of dark matter. Reaching. Searching. Inviting. Peaking your curiosity and begging you to investigate more. My visual composition was based on Fibonacci's spiral...more popularly known as "The Golden Ratio" which is a mathematical representation of something that occurs all throughout nature and human evolution that is "pleasing" to the human eye. Thus the title of the piece "The Golden Spiral".
For the music, I had another challenge. What does space sound like when there is no sound in space? Obviously, I don't have to be literal. Hans Zimmer did a great score for INTERSTELLAR and Alan Silvestri's score for CONTACT is among my favorites. And of course, there's John Williams' blockbuster score for STAR WARS and Jerry Goldsmith's brilliant scores for STAR TREK. The question for me...do I write a theme, or do I stay in the realm of the ambient. I opted for the later. I wanted a drone sound that undulated like the pulsing shafts of light, but I also wanted a hint of a musical theme that matched the visual "siren's song" that I created, so I put in an alternating perfect fourth.
All in...I'm really happy with how this turned out, and I hope you enjoy it as well! You can find the artwork exclusively on Foundation's NFT platform: The Golden Spiral