Enter The Abyss - Disquiet0348 by morgulbee

Today’s art history lesson: In Western art history, the term “mise en abyme” refers to instances when a work of art includes one or more copies of itself. Mise en abyme is derived from French, meaning literally “placed into abyss”.

Mise en abyme appears in many forms of art. Think of William Shakespeare’s use of “play within a play” or various drawings by M. C. Escher. I even played with mise en abyme for the scavenger hunt a few years ago, for the word Funny Face. At the time, I didn’t know the technique by that name. I just thought it was a fun image to create.

Other terms related to mise en abyme include the Droste Effect and the mathematical and computing terms fractals and recursion.

For this week’s Disquiet Junto, the assignment was to take the concept of mise en abyme and apply it to a musical composition.

After sketching out a few ideas for what it might mean for music to include copies of itself, I decided I would build a piece around a simple 8-note musical phrase. That 8-note phrase is repeated over and over, faster and slower, higher and lower, longer and shorter, using classical orchestral instruments and modern synthesizer instruments. Other than the percussion track, which has its own repetitive phrase, all the instruments in this piece repeat that simple 8-note phrase.

The cover art is also an example of mise en abyme, and incorporates fractal art created by Barbara Lane.