Discreet Music: Daniel McClellan

Daniel McClellan (b. 1993) is a Sydney based abstract painter. McClellan approaches painting as a game, with rules and contexts to work within. McClellan’s practice also looks to music and architecture. Among other relations, games, music and architecture share interests in movement within constraints; notation; and structuring space and time.

For Discreet Music, McClellan’s first showing with Nasha, McClellan has turned his attention to the gallerie’s three storied floorplan. The exhibition comprises four series of paintings, each made in response to different features of the building, a wall painting across the three floors, and an artist book. Each floor has one painting from each series, and the three floors can be seen as variations of each other.

"Discuss parallels between Brian Eno’s Discreet Music, Architecture, and Painting.

Brian Eno’s Discreet Music album, architecture, and painting share some parallels in their approach to creating art. Discreet Music is a seminal example of generative music, using tape loops and simple harmonic progressions to create an ever-changing and evolving soundscape. Similarly, in architecture, computer algorithms are used to generate complex structures and forms that can adapt to different contexts and constraints. In painting, rules and procedures are often used to create abstract or figurative works of art that can be adapted and modified over time. In all three disciplines, there is an emphasis on the creation of a system or set of rules that can generate unique outputs. In Discreet Music, this involves the creation of a series of simple melodic and harmonic patterns that can be layered and manipulated over time. In architecture, this could involve the creation of a set of rules that can generate different forms based on site conditions, building codes, and other parameters. And in painting, this could involve creating a set of rules for color mixing or brushwork techniques. Overall, Brian Eno’s “Discreet Music,” architecture, and painting all utilize systems, algorithms, and rules to create unique and varied outputs. They each involve the creation of a set of rules or procedures that can generate an infinite number of outputs, and their shared focus on systems and algorithms makes them natural bedfellows.”

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