As I look at this incredible wood engraving, I can’t help but think ‘What jazz musician inspired this artist?’  What song, what record, what style of jazz was this artist’s favorite to listen to while he created the masterpiece that we see?  I know music is an art form that is inspirational in the lives of nearly everyone on this planet: allowing us to dream, create, or escape.  But what if there was no jazz, what if it was replaced by some other genre of music in this artist’s life? Would he have decided to create something drastically different?

Jazz by Charles F. Quest

Of course I’ve always listened to different types of music to enhance everyday activities.  But it was not until college, when I took a class on the history of rhythm & blues, (taught by world-renowned instructor Portia Maultsby), that I really started to educate myself on music.  I became enamored with why the music was created and what effects it had on shaping people’s lives. Discovering this led me on a path to my many different music-related jobs: record store owner, promoter, DJ and musician. I am proud to call Indianapolis home and delight in showing off its rich music scene.

While Indianapolis is not the birthplace of jazz, the contributions from this city are second to none (JJ Johnson,Russell Webster, Pookie Johnson, Jimmie Coe, David Young, David Baker, Wes Montgomery, Freddie Hubbard, the list goes on…)   The importance of future generations knowing and and sharing this will allow jazz to influence other artists of all mediums.  That’s where local events like Indy Jazz Fest (OK, get ready for a shameless plug) come in.

And because we’re right smack dab in the middle of Jazz Fest week (yes, week), I’ll give you the rundown. Even in this economy, Indy Jazz Fest has grown bigger, faster, and stronger than its predecessors: it lasts eight days, includes 180+ local, regional and national artists and is being run by current jazz musicians, educators and enthusiasts.

I can’t emphasize enough how important I believe art and music programs in schools are, and the new education program- a partnership with the Indianapolis Jazz Foundation- will make a true impact on jazz’s future. (You can also catch performances by Ben Davis , Fort Wayne Snider and IPS All Star Band at Jazz Fest.)

I don’t ever want to think about a world without jazz, let alone Indy without jazz. And hopefully with events likes this, Indianapolis can be the one to produce the next Miles Davis to inspire the future Pablo Picasso.

So, it’s not to hard to believe that I’m pretty interested and excited to have the original typescript of Kerouac’s On The Road coming to the IMA for an exhibition… (see On the Road Again with Jack Kerouac and Robert Frank )

I’m also kind of an info-dork.  I love graphs and charts or all sorts.  Anyone else who is equally geeked up on crazy ways to view information should really check out the Information Aesthetics Blog. It’s a really great set of creative and artistic ways of representing information. But, I digress…

One day, perusing this blog, I happened to stumble upon the work of Stefanie Posavec. She must be a genius because her work is so beautiful and insightful! What really caught my eye was some work she has done in visualizing the textual structure of none other than Kerouac’s On The Road!

Spreading out link leaves of a Ginkgo tree, this beautiful example of infovis at its finest shows all sorts of interesting details about Kerouac’s novel.  Each branch of the tree represents chapters, paragraphs, even the sentences and words used in the novel. 

Each is colored by what topic it relates to like light blue for “Travel” and green for “Bop and Jazz Music”.  By doing this it’s really easy to see for example that Kerouac talks about “Work and Survival” almost solely in chapters 11 and 13.  I love the simplicity and insight that she achieves here, and with such a beautiful aesthetic!  If all graphs and charts were this engaging we would have paid more attention in school!

The article on the NotCot Blog has a number of examples of her work with On The Road that cover the arrangement of topics as above, as well as visualizations of sentence length and even Kerouac’s use of punctuation and italics!  Definitely worth a look see!