It all started when my friend David Tames decided he was going to go into the Dynamic Media Institute’s grad program.. and started the Media Tech Tonic group.. which was sorta an off shoot of the Boston Media Makers.. Media Tech Tonics some how became a part of the Dynamic Media Institute program.. and via becoming active in the Media Tech Tonic thing, I started to feel sorta a part of the DMI community, to one degree or another..
What I loved about the DMI community was many fold.. but one of the biggest things was that it started stirring in me the desire to be apart of a community of artists.. people challenging them selves, seeking in that way.. all the stuff that.. I suppose you’re somewhat forced into by being in such a graduate program…
Of course the other thing was just the sorta thing you’d find DMI folks working on. Basically this it’s what is conventionally known as DIY projects.. things like physical computing.. and DMI was so close to the Studio Of Interrelated Media program.. which was my major in my Mass Art days.. or what you do in DMI is stuff that you could have done in SIM, and even did do in SIM! There’s a difference in thrust of course.. DMI being more design orientated.. being a graduate program..
I’ve been thinking of going back to college for years, I’m a drop out don’t cha know.. trouble is I’m somewhat of a fully formed artist at this point.. and as such I don’t really see how anything undergraduate-e would really feed me.. or be of much value.
I don’t know what the chances of being able to get into any sorta graduate program would be for someone who didn’t bother to finish there under grad.. especially if the programs I tend to be interested in are the ones that are hard to get into.. I feel like.. if you see me for who I really am it’s sorta a no brainer.. you see where I’m at and it’s totally there..
The other issue I confront is not really being sure if college is right for me. There are certain ways that knowledge gets organized in relationship to majors and focuses and whatevers.. or at least this was my issue as an under graduate.. which mean “you study this” and that’s what you have to focus on and you don’t get to focus on whatever seems sorta right to you.. and if you are, as I say, a fully developed artist.. you have this powerful sorta inner voice.. sense of direction.. sense of what’s right for you, what you need to get where you want to go.. and you wonder if the college experience might not be more of an obstacle then a helper.
As a sorta extension to that train of thought.. there is the whole issue that I was never exactly a good student… and I wonder if I would be a good student and.. if I were to enter into some sorta graduate type program.. I’d really want to go all out as far as getting everything out of the program I possibly could.
My Visit to DMI
I got word of a DMI social hour… Turns out it was sorta for new people coming to the program to sorta get orientated and meet some of the other folks there.. or that seemed to be the main thing.. and folks who had been there giving advice on how to survive the program.. followed by informal meeting folks, which was where I got into conversations about what this class was all about that I was thinking of taking.
Shortly after this, those of us that didn’t have a class to head to, headed out to a bar.. which is sorta where the real stuff starts happening. Over the course of this I had the sorta amazing feeling of actually contributing to the conversations / helping folks in the DMI community think out what they where doing.
I often experience my brain as if there was this big library of stuff.. on all the ranging subjects I’ve studied.. and sometimes it feels like you can throw nearly any subject at me, and I have all this stuff on it.. so I can say “well for this subject, these are the things I would look at,” which range from youtube videos, podcasts, blogs, films, major works of different philosophers… whatever.
So suddenly it’s as if the library in my brain has all this value, that I can then use to contribute to what other people are trying to do, what they are interested in. And it’s just awesome to me to.. check out what someone’s trying to do, what they are struggling with, what they are thinking about.. and sorta jump into all that and help them think stuff out.. I don’t know.. I guess it’s just the idea of being part of a community in that way that I super love… and really really want to be a part of.
On the Subject of the Class
It’s not even, at this point, totally clear that I can become a part of the class.. or how it would work. It’s a graduate class that may not be easily open to undergraduates.. but one way or another, I can probably become a part of it.
The other issue is the expense of the class.. If you’re taking it for graduate credit it’s $1800.. which is way more then I can really spend.. But, even if it were on the high end of what I’m willing to spend, say for undergraduate credit.. I wonder how much this could be a door into the Mass Art Community and world.. and what of the privileges that go a long with that.. well what are they, and might that be a part of where the real value is?
The truth is I can pretty much teach myself anything, I don’t need the formal structure of classes to learn stuff.. and I don’t necessarily even need an instructor. I already push myself so super hard that I don’t feel a need to have some external force to push me.. I’m just crazy self motivated, self directed, so for me the value is.. in the question of how else this can all help me… much of which I take as being a part of a community of people doing, to one degree or another, similar things.. and that with a community of folks doing that.. I could learn from people instead of just books.. which might be a good deal more efficient… and stuff like that.
I’m, of course, already working on a major project.. could I get feed back on.. not just that part which is specific to this class, but the whole of what I’m trying to do?
The class it’s self is sorta like learning the development process for physical computing type stuff.. or I don’t know exactly the all of it.. but it’s exactly what I need for a range of projects / problems I have in front of me..
I don’t know how realistic my video ideas are, or what.. my feeling at this particular moment is.. probably the most important thing is simply to commit to them.. in a long term sorta way.
Ok, here’s the basic deal.. Video is like.. big these days on the internet.. you may have noticed? I’m basically looking at video as packaging for my music.. or as an extension of the experience of my music.. as a part of the art object. I’m really approaching video from a unique sorta aesthetic perspective… 99.9% of all video production today is produced inside of a certain set of conventions that don’t really get pushed all that much. Sure, there’s great video and film work made this way.. This isn’t a giant value judgement about that.. but its also not what I’m seeking to do.. What I’m seeking to do is approach video from a very ART perspective.
At the moment this means.. screwing around.. It’s a combination of exploring certain ideas as they come to you, and trying to learn the tools… At the moment the tool I’m working with is Apple’s Motion… which is a part of Final Cut Studio.. as an aside, its breaking news that a new version has just come out.. but we shant speak about that.
The project started on a sorta doodling branding adventure a few months back.. I was working in Photoshop and Illustrator.. trying to craft out a logo.. based on some sketches I had done.. This also included messing around with photography.. what follows is a part of that project.. as it looked at one moment in time…
Motion is a motion graphics / animation program.. and one of the things you can do is import photoshop files.. complete with there individual layers.. I did some funky things.. and placed the different layers at different places in space.. to basically turn something like the above image into a 3D image that I could fly the camera around.. and play with various.. well.. ideas.
I’ve been working steadily on this for the last 3 or 4 days; creating these various little psychedelic video clips. The resulting clips seems to be about some kind of exploration of identity and personal branding… or at least that’s what they made me think of.
The idea originally was to simply put out a sorta complicated screen cast of my DAW.. put it on Youtube.. so that I could sorta share what I do in a certain way.. and I figured if I did that.. I’d at least need some sorta titling / motion graphic sequences.. to sorta.. make it look serious.. I may still do this.. I don’t know.. but now I’m thinking of it more like music video elements.. to be sorta remixed together latter on.
There’s a whole sorta visual language.. set of icons.. symbols.. whatever.. that make up the visual identity I plan on making for myself. [editors note: Matt has been working on this language since at least college] It’s something you are much more inclined to read as Fine Art then.. well communications / graphic design.. Though as I elluded to earlier.. I am thinking about this from something of a design perspective.
My kinda goal is to try and produce something that looks like a million bucks.. something that makes you go “wow, that’s fucking cool.” Make something that would seem to have the sorta production values you could expect from the music video of a major label artist.. way back when they had big budgets…. But something totally different.
The hard fact of the matter is I’m early in on learning to do this stuff.. and a great distance from where my ambition is aiming.. and it is not totally clear that I’ll be able to realize these goals I’ve set for myself…
Well.. whatever.. I actually don’t think those kinds of production values are all that important.. I mean they are for my vision.. but I also think if you just do good story telling.. and put together a number of good pieces… I think you really can have something.. so that’s really kinda what its about.. but.. why not aim high?
I regard exploring new possibilities, as an artist.. stretching into new things.. as being one of the most important things you can do.. and it’s probably true in most other walks of life. Generally it’s a kind of oscillation.. between that area where you are really strong.. and the new areas you’re just starting to explore… It’s about integrating these two things.
In some of my newer directions.. I have some fear that what I’m doing might be nieve… The reason being because I am venturing into areas that are more conventional then my work normally is.. so that if you’re taking you’re first few steps on a very well trotted road, how excited can you be about what you find? I mean.. sure, you’re excited.. but maybe for everyone else its “Ho hum, I’ve seen that before.”
Still.. it is still me making the music.. still a product of my aesthetic thinking.. my aesthetic sensibilities.. still something that largely comes from within.. still my process.. etc. So whatever it is I’m doing.. it’s still inescapably me.. still has a certain.. I’m not sure what.
Ultimately.. where I see the future in the new stuff is finding ways for it to be more and more imprinted with.. whatever it is that’s unique in me.. and integrating it with the older stuff.
Into the New Music
If you’ve been listening to my stuff for any length of time.. you’ll note that this new track is basically an evolution of some of what we heard on ZarMattAThustra’s Deep Space Adventures:
What we hear here is what we were hearing in Deep Space.. but now arranged, mixed, and sorta composed around.. in a kind of new way. It’s been said that the Deep Space stuff was like exploring out into space.. and now we are listening in on Alien conversations..
It’s a crazy kind of dark and harsh ambient.. or that track is, isn’t it? Makes me feel like a journey into the shadow side of the soul.
About this direction
The direction opens up a whole lot in the way of possible possibilities… err, so let me describe the process of the above track.
Inside Reaktor
I started out in Reaktor.. with a sound source by which you can make music / sound / whatever.. via twiddling some knobs with your mouse.. by twiddling the parameters of sequences, synthesizers, sound generators, effects processors, and mixers.. you can only adjust one parameter at a time.. and you tend to not do it too abruptly most of the time.. you spend a lot of time navigating the interface just to get so you can get the thing you want to tweak’s parameter…
Controlling one parameter at a time.. sorta slowly.. with gaps between where you can tweak.. has the effect of making for a somewhat slowly organically evolving sound.. and because we are talking about parameter tweaking.. its as if the resultant sound is.. well it sounds like its coming from the same device who’s pattern and behavior is shifting over time.. and expressive in that way.
Parallel Compression
So you do this over and over again.. generating a few sound files.. and you take these sound files and submit them to an automated process of what is called “parallel compression.” Parallel compression means.. you have a sound source.. that gets thrown through many compressors working in parallel.. and you mix the outs of the various compressors.. indeed I mix the sends into the compressors as well as the sounds out.. The idea is that the various compressors you’re dealing with all color the sound in different ways.. in relationship to things like.. the dynamics of the audio.. and they also effect the dynamics of the audio differently..
So we are both colorizing the sounds and shaping there dynamics.. the latter of which will allow us more control once we get to the mixing and arrangement process.
The Mixing and Arranging Process
Next I take the audio files and load them into my DAW.. Digital Performer.
There’s certain interesting aesthetic issues that pop up about this point. Because each sound file was generated independently of one another.. there’s no “design” to there interrelationships accept that they were all created at the same tempo… There relationships of timber and pitch (counterpoint, harmony, orchestration).. are.. in essence indeterminate.. which kinda brings us into John Cage Country…
What is similar is that.. in many cases the effects treated to the instrument are the same.. or at least some of the effects are the same.. and they are all created via the same process.. so the way they evolve over time is very similar: Process dictates a probability distribution of attributes.. so that its as if there’s a systems level interrelationship of stuff.
The process of mixing and arranging is then our chance to insert a little design into the production.. For now I’m not doing anything much more sophisticated then deciding when an audio recording should be inserted into the arrangement, choosing additional effects for that instrument.. effects of the general mix.. and mixing the instruments.. –Although I have been creating custom stuff with say.. Native Instruments Machine.
The Mixing
In my conventionally unconventional music.. harmony is at least in part conceived of as 3 dimensional.. What I mean is.. the issue of overlapping frequency ranges is a central issue to the mix engineers stock and trade.. and some of how this is dealt with is panoramic positioning.. and just where a sound should be located in a virtual sound stage. Because in my music the mixing and the composition are integrated.. harmony is conceptualized in a context of spacial relationships.
So if you think about it.. the process of mixing.. can be like a process of contextualizing material.. which means embedding meaning into it.. and um.. that kinda thing.
What you end up doing is listening to the material of the audio.. the various audio files you have.. and asking questions.. What you do is making decisions about.. what to highlight at one moment or another.. what should be dominant in the mix.. how the sounds should interrelate.. how to make things interesting in terms of how the track evolves over time..
So in essence the mixing is the composing.. moving things around in space.. automating effects.. and all this kind of thing.
Where Maschine fits into all of this?
Maschine is in essence a pattern based percussive sequencer.. and a little bit more. You compose in it various patterns.. and then in your DAW you tell it when to play what patterns..
So, at the very least Maschine represents the possibilities of pattern based sequencing.. to my music.. something that’s very good for real time music production.. and based sequencing is a big part of what’s going on inside of Reaktor in much of this production.
Machine gets mixed in like any other element.. though its the one element where we have conscious control of.. so that it works to somehow.. fit things together.. I guess.. another layer of it..
Where to go from here
It seems to me that there’s an incredible number of possibilities moving forward from here.. I have an obvious interest in working out how to create a kind of music that is similar to this.. in a live scenario.. and then there’s all the kind of possible mutations of this…
With Kore [ and hands on controllers more genearally ]
Kore, shown here:
represents one obvious set of possibilities. You can load up various software instruments, effects, and what not.. into Kore.. and control them via its buttons and knobs.. which you map to various parameters of the instruments / effects in question.. You have various pages of mappings that you can then move between.. allowing you real time control.. without a mouse.. and in a way were you can control multiple parameters at once.
Real time control of software, in this fashion.. radically changes the way you think, and how you work with.. the software.. it’s really awesome.
A day or so latter:
Implications
The full implications of real time hands on control of software in this fashion, and relative to this sorta production style are really.. well more then I can really lay out in full for you here today… but I can throw a bit at yea
Manipulating multiple parameters at once
As mentioned earlier… mousing around single parameters at a time produces a certain kind of organic evolution of the sounds.. hands on control is a very different beast.. we are not talking about… well there’s a certain artistry of performance.. kind of more power.. and with that power comes the need to know how to temper it.. and anyway.. there’s a good deal to explore here.
Beyond this.. things can get a little complex.. especially is we are using multiple controllers.. and the idea that we can now play with interrelationships on the performance level.
Recording Automation rather then Audio
A significant difference between the way I was tweaking away in Reaktor.. and tweaking away with controllers in a DAW is that we are now recording automation data of a performance.. and not simply the resultant audio.
This means we can go back in and edit the performance.. we can perform on one set of parameters on one take, and another on another take.. so that the results can become a good deal deal more complex in how they evolve over time..
There is a kind of negative.. which is.. well has to do with most modern music.. that you don’t really have to make choices.. when you can alway edit / adjust things latter… this is a kind of long conversation.. but basically it has to do with.. the creative process.. and being pushed into situations where you have to work your way out of the hard way.. and in so doing.. often that’s how brilliant things happen.. But without going to far into this topic.. I will say that ultimately its up to the artist, in how to relate to the technology on this level.
Taking it to Ableton Live, and the joys of patterns.
I imagine the next phase of things is to take the whole production, and bring it into Ableton Live.. creating patterns.. using MIDI effects to tweak the patterns.. and make it so the whole production is produced this way…
Here we really get to thinking deeply about how to take this into the live arena.. also… we are getting out of Reaktor.. and using the rest of my instrument library.
This is sorta like.. “lets go do stuff in the usual studio” stuff. It’s hard to say too much about a path you’ve yet to walk but.. An Ableton Live based… pattern based.. compositional process.. can actually lead you into a world of more control.. more.. lets say design developed.. stuff.. then traditional linear sequencing…
Basically.. you have a bunch of patterns.. and you play with how the different patterns play together.. this can be how you think of production and composition in the real design sense.. or it can be like the design of a framework for improvisation.
There’s perhaps more to say here.. but I’m tired..
Integration
The final subject is really integration.. to integrate this stuff with the stuff that I’m actually good at… or maybe the better way of putting it is where I’m already strong..
I see this kinds of hands on.. tweak it.. kind of organic evolution of sound.. as having certain elements that my more programmed.. crazy attention to detail music lacks.. In case you haven’t heard this stuff.. a reasonable example might be this remix of the Cobert Report Interview with Lawrence Lessig.. I did recently
This track took me about a month to do.. there’s a hell of a lot more attention to detail then you might notice at first.. ( including a fair amount that doesn’t really come out when listened to streamed).. the problem with this track is perhaps mostly how short it is.. as so much of this sorta thing for me tends to be about taking a little trip.. and its hard to go that far in a couple of minutes.. In some ways you can listen to it as a prototype for the new direction of what we are calling my conventional work.. Even with whatever it’s flaws might be.. it does represent a step forward on that trajectory…
I love the idea of taking a whole month to do a single track.. I mean just the level of detail you can achieve that way… that much love and attention to every moment.. of course it’s a little on the unrealistic side.. but still!
The integration can probably happen along multiple axises
If you create a music form where it literally takes a month to finish a couple minutes of music.. to have this along side music where in a day’s work can give you twenty plus minutes worth of music.. well.. now the month for a couple minutes is realistic..
I have this notion of a whole album that is of the tweak kind.. where via creative mixing.. the super programmed detail stuff.. sorta comes out of that world.. where in you’re really considering the album as a whole. ( which may not make a lot of sense for custom play lists )
The Tweak-age stuff could be an element inside of the super detailed programed sequence stuff.
There’s a lot of stuff I’m thinking about where.. you have.. say.. a kind of tweakage space reverb and delay inside of a deeply programmed mix..
A Concluding Statement
Stretching is important.. and that’s really what this is about.. What’s slightly strange about this post is that it seems to almost emphasize the.. let call it objective facts.. over the sorta internal organizing principles that would be.. what is actually known.. the facts.. we must.. as Hunter Thompson would say.. buy the ticket, take the ride.. to really get at.. so it is a strange synthesis.. and we’ll have to see what happens.
In any event.. in the end.. this is just like a confession of one tiny piece in a much larger puzzle
I’ve said before that I think giving the life story.. is.. in someway a part of the art, and the art object, and of the context via which we appreciate the art.. “lets look at the life of the artist.” So I guess that’s a lot of what this scribbling is all about..
And on the other hand.. The story I give you is a construction.. my construction of it.. and so in a sense.. it’s a lie… as is ALL of social media. For this reason, from time to time, I have suggested that what I’m giving you is an unreliable narration.. that it’s in someway like James Joyce.. that you somehow have to jump in and kinda of make heads or tales of it you’re self.. and I suppose.. It’s my job, on a pr level, to try and influence you to see in the direction I want you to see.
Ahh.. but then there’s the artist in me.. The artist want’s to call you’re attention to this construct, and its seams.. it perhaps wants to put up this construction and ask you to look at the construction as art its self.. that the pr is the art… the marketing is art.. In some ways, you could look at this as if I’m saying “well really all art is is a special kind of frame.” But.. if you explore the philosophy of my art, which I take to be at least as serious as the art its self.. I don’t even believe in frames.. or I do, but in a complicated way.. inside of which I think it’s a mistake to view the world inside of a system of fixed frames.. and I even think the point of social media is frame granularization… ( Think Picasso on steroids )
This idea, as it happens.. is central to my art and thought.. that the distinctions we make.. between one thing and another thing, one field and another field.. are all a matter of frames, and not a matter of reality… and if we are able to see this.. we are able to see how we could learn one set of things.. and in so doing, we know a whole lot of things, perhaps everything.. and this notion underlies my idea of calling myself a “media artist” in the sense that I’m working with sound, computer graphics, animation, photography.. and on and on and on.. that on some essential level.. it’s all the same thing.. and if I put my focus on that level… well….
So essentially I’m a kind of Greenberg anti christ…
On the “What is Art” issue
As someone who spent some time in art school.. I don’t fully fathom the difficulty people have relating to art.. In the sense that I sorta grew up in it.. and it’s, at least on some level, my world. I don’t really feel alienated from it.. at least not most of the time… and I don’t go around spending a lot of time worrying if that thing in the museum is “really art.” (Of course, at least historically speaking, the Boston MFA has been rather conservative.. and thus has sucked ass when it comes to modern art, but that’s sorta another subject.)
The art I make.. normally isn’t the sorta thing that would seem to be pushing traditional notions of what art is.. accept that I would have the balls to say.. pr or marketing could be art.. or that we could understand it as art.. thus making it something like a POP art 2.0… or something. On the other hand, I grew up a fan of Frank Zappa.. who is sometimes looked at inside of a kind of POP art lens.. (having something to do with the relationship of high and low brow art) and his whole project object shtick.. is basically saying the same thing.. accept perhaps that I’m transposing it into a social media context.
To kinda sorta conclude this theme
So the subject of.. aesthetics, which is to say the philosophy of art.. and how I approach thinking about it in my own work.. is not an in anyway uncomplex thing.. and there’s no way I can really cover the whole of it in one blog post.. but it did occur to me that I probably haven’t even approach the subject yet in this blog.. so.. you know, it’s about time!
But what of that transfiguration of the common place?
This notion of the transfiguration of the common place.. well, among other things it’s a book my Arthur Danto… which wrestled with the problem of what is art.. from a serious philosophical stand point. I never really liked where he came out.. which was an “institutional theory.” To me… this was a bit like saying might makes right, when it comes to defining what is art. And you can just imagine me, being so anarchistic to not even believe in frames, at least not in a conventional way… would have trouble with that kind of power asymmetry!
But I love his tittle.. in part because it calls to mind Duchamp and Warhol… folks who really challenged our notions of what was art was.. in.. well they were land mark figures along these lines… and because.. my relationship to frames, is mirrored in it..
Now.. it’s not that I don’t believe in frames, or the truth of frames, or even the truth of constructs! Hell.. I’m not willing to go with you on your little “art is a lie” ride.. or “art is a lie that helps to show what the truth is” ride.. What I more or less believe is that the conscious mind is a construct.. which is to say anything that ever dawns on you, more or less.. and that the unconscious mind is a construct for that matter to.. but what constructs it we might say is more “an organic process of nature” or something like that.. Or perhaps we could try to argue that it is less a product of conscious will then the conscious mind..
As I write these words out.. I become all too aware of the limitations of definitions.. aka frames.. never mind that Freud and Jung would differ on these t0… which are the meanings that I’m sort of coming from.. all be it revised by yours truly..
As I see it.. much of this comes down to problems with definitions of what constitutes knowledge.. knowing something.. I’m in the Jungian camp in so far as I will talk about “psychological truth” which is to say.. when we say “its only in your head,” for me, doesn’t make it less real then something we might call “objective truth.” For me inner and outer “truth” are both just as real.. and that a problem with our modern situation is that we do not appreciate subject truth enough..
Basically, I see all experience as mythology… lol, and of course by mythology I don’t mean a lie.
For me.. it all comes down to God.. so perhaps Nietzsche gave birth to tragedy, and its my job to go kill it! ( a somewhat arrogant aesthetics joke ) Or what I really mean is that Nietzsche took us from a world where religion was the basis of all values.. and took us away from that.. and I’m bringing it to God.
And, just who is God? Or perhaps.. who is my God? God, boys and girls, is a symbol of the mystery that supports the universe.. which is to say.. the ratio of the known universe, to the unknown universe, is about 1 to infinity.. if meaning comes from context.. and the ultimate context is such a mystery… ahh.. so God is like a personification of this mystery…
I did mention I was a mystic prophet philosopher artist, right?
Yeah.. lol, so anyway… this whole thing I’ve been blogging about is like… way to complex to fully explore in one blog post.. In any event.. now you should get my meaning.. of all experience as a mythology.. at least a little clearer.
So.. back to the Transfiguration of the Common Place..
So Dushamp, you no doubt remember, came from dada.. which is sorta the basement of the house of surrealism… and as it turns out.. Freud’s pyschoanalysis plays no small roll in data-ist / surrealist theory… Dada and surrealism were a kind of art exploration of the unconscious…
Freud’s technique was to let you sit on his couch and gab you’re head off… and via this frame he would peer into your unconscious mind.. for me.. my gabbing my head off is my life stream.. and its via this frame that I’m attempting to transfigure the common place… which I suppose is a little like saying that Dada exists in an un-explicit way.. in the common place… err.. in conventional art..
Next day sometime
The process of writing this entry has me thinking I should try and write more serious entries… to try and articulate where I’m really coming from.. on the more deep levels. I realize, as an artist, I’m really coming from a rather radicle direction.. and seeing as I don’t have a lot of art critics trying to make sense of it.. the burden falls to me.
A little earlier tonight I sat through a number of motion graphics examples.. I was expecting to get a lot of eye candy wow-ness.. and while I got a bit of that.. I was left with a feeling of.. being utterly unimpressed with much of what I saw, which probably relates to the problems and issues I’ve been talking about, in my last 2 posts, on the subject of digital story telling. That said.. I did come away rather inspired.
I feel like.. as far as creative possibilities are concerned, the medium of 3D and motion graphics.. is powerful as all hell… The trouble, at least as near as I can tell.. is nobody is really doing it right.. Wow, what an arrogant statement.. well forgive me.. if you’re one of the folks doing it right.. I know.. it’s a little bit of an over statement.
But.. I’m also talking as a fine artist.. I’m also talking about the potential of the medium.. at least as I see it.. and anyway, I wanted to start to talk about some of what has me inspired.. talk about what I’m dreaming in this moment.. that kinda thing.
Dreams
The cost of the dreams
It strikes me that anything is possible. In this simple statement.. in this feeling that anything is possible.. in there.. the god’s sing.. the music of the spheres.. just waiting for an artist to hear.. and there tail to be retold. Can you hear it?
When we talk about film making.. when the conversation turns to special effects, 3D graphics, motion graphics.. we often talk about how expensive it is. That expense would, at least in large measure, seem to be an effect of what the designers in this area are able to command salary wise.. even with a lot of work being outsourced to India.
Of all the art forms I’m interested in, there is no doubt that 3D and motion graphics is the most expensive areas. Cinema 4D, which I’m using.. retails for between $3 and $4K… After Effects is now going for around $1K, Final Cut Studio is around $1.3K, last I checked.. and there are many other tools.. plus one needs a super fast and powerful computer.. and having many computers to form a render farm.. is a nice idea.. If one is shooting video as a part of it.. pro cameras are several grand.. lighting rigs probably start at around a grand.. MoCap is more then I even want to start thinking about.. the gear to pull keys is more money…
So just to get the tools to start learning the stuff is like.. prohibitively expensive.. or at the very least, investing in them takes a major commitment.. and then you’ll be faced with a ridiculously steep learning curve! So all of this “might” have something to do with why it’s as expensive as it is…
But lets just say you’re crazy like Matt.. and you’re like “screw it, I’ll invest in it cause I have a big dream,” now the economics are a little different. Now the economics are.. well once you’ve bought the equipment, the only real expense is the time you have to put into the work.. and arguably the regular expense of upgrades.
Of course Matt is even madder then all that! Cause I mean.. I’m also doing the sound studio stuff! The web design stuff? Yeah.. I have issues!
Ok, so implications of these here economics
So.. much like the lizard king, you can do anything..
A bit latter:
Anything seems like a worthwhile topic for meditation.. though anything might not be real. The topic of technical limitations comes to mind… limitations of skills.. as well as limitations of time… and there are still some limitations to my studio… but.. there is still, given all that, many vectors of limitlessness…
There are lots of little ideas.. many of which have been formed over the course of.. well many years really. I have all sorts of “strategic communications” ideas… relative to the question of how to relate to the market place.. well, lets explore these..
A few days latter:
Little ideas
I think what I really want to do is create “audio visual experiences.” I put it this way because putting it any other way seem to have a certain amount of bagged to it.. it suggests certain things… that “audio visual experience” does not.
I, of course, am a sound artist.. I kind of think being a sound artist is a huge advantage for a digital film maker.. type.. because you’re able to think holistically.. sound could be central, visual aesthetics could be central, the “art-ness” could be central, dialog could be central, a plot could be central.. and what is central, at any given moment, could shift.. and you really only have the ability to work this way if you are fluent in all these parts..
So audio wise I want to create an experience. There’s a lot of ideas I have that are unlike anything I’ve ever heard before, as a part of some sort of film.. so all these things must be explored.. along with.. just creating an amazing sonic experience.
3D
The impression I’m getting about 3D is that It’s really more about design then production. Every element.. it pays to do research for.. and its all about paying a serious amount of attention to detail.. and it might even be that I can get great results.. nearly coming out of the gate.. if I’m willing to put in the work on the research and design front.. along with a little exploration here and there…
Planning
It’s all about planning! My way of thinking about it is.. you start out with an idea and you develop the hell out of it… work everything out.. from how the sound might work, to how the plot works, the story…. all this stuff, and really refine it.. take it to an extreme.. but then, at that point.. well at a certain point.. be willing to just improvise and explore..
Day latter:
I’m thinking I need to just post this so I can go on to the next post.. I’m thinking this should be called memoirs of a meditation on digital story telling.. for the simple reason that it seems more like a record of a meditation then anything…
I’m in this strange mode of meditations on digital story telling… I am driving into this arena after all…
I’m a strange bird, for this there can be no doubt, and so it is that when I approach anything, seems to not matter what, I can’t seem to escape a certain contrarianism.. This is apparently my little cross to bare.. as it seems to have been an issue for me, at least.. since the age of 3… So it’s hard not to think “well, I guess this was God’s idea of a joke on the world” or at the very least it’s sorta a “vocational” thing, maybe.. You ever feel this way? Well… lets explore this as it pertains to story telling.
I have this strange belief that we are all in a constant process of having these little unconscious conversations with each other.. or that there is constant unconscious communication going on.. If you don’t quite believe me.. try taking LSD sometime.. err, I better explain that one, ha?
LSD has a way of giving everything a luminous, numinous, glow. As near as I can gather, from my limited knowledge of neuroscience, psychedelics like LSD essentially create a kind of state of “brain damage,” inside of which the.. lets call it cognitive process.. of attributing causation to stuff.. produces a kind of meta consciousness experience. This, of course, would seem to expose certain structural elements of the psyche to the conscious mind.. so that we have a kind of waking dream experience.. inside of which we can explore our subjective relationship to empirical reality. LOL, boy, doesn’t that sound technical?
Reality.. well it’s something we “experience.” In philosophy and science we often try to understand reality in a way that is like a god’s eye view.. it is a way of looking that is in search of objectivity.. of verifiability.. a way of looking that would seem to be emancipated from human experience.. at least in it’s goals.. The troubles with this are many fold.. not the least of which is that we never experience reality without our “experience” of it. Inside this experience.. is our own “subjective” view point. Here in lys the value of some understanding of psychology in.. well life.
One idea I developed once upon the time was an idea I called “the order of revelation.” The idea is.. in a world of infinite facts.. infinite ways one could come to understand something.. we only experience a limited portion of that totality.. and the “order of revelation” has to do with the order in which this stuff dawns on the conscious mind. The “order” determines “the shape” of our understanding. The order of revelation is thus the expression of the subjective on our experience of objective reality.
What shapes this order of relations is a complex of factors.. we can influence the order by means of prayer, ritual, and “magick.” Archtypes, as we learn from Jungian psychology, are what makes up the structure of consciousness and the psyche… and so the meta consciousness experience of psychedelics.. the numinous nature of them.. is about this.. and thus the connection to the order of revelation.. and the reason why so many people associate psychedelics with notions of enlightenment.
Ok.. enough of this craziness, how does this relate to the subject of digital story telling?
As I was saying before.. there is this thing I’m terming “unconscious communication.” In my last post.. (which as of this writing I haven’t posted) I spoke of the notion of “ambient story telling” which.. essentially points to this concept. We could look at this simply on the level of “what are the unconscious cues” we get as we go about.. life, from our experience of… whatever. When we get “a feeling in our gut” or.. have a feeling about something that we are unable to quite articulate.. simply have a feeling about something.. or… perhaps an intuition.. this is what we are reacting to.
The lie detector test.. which measures biometrics in relationship to questions, is a means of detecting certain types of unconscious communications… The conscious mind is giving you one story, while the biometrics is giving you another. And so it is that the world of “non verbal communication” is an incredibly nuanced world. There are simple things about.. how you’re talking.. word choices, spaces between words.. tempo of words, pitch of words, varying amplitude and volume between words.. words, phrases, sentences.. the body language as this happens.. where the eyes move.. all sorts of little, itty bitty things… are expressing stuff.
Inside of this expression, interestingly enough.. we find the imprint, on everything, of the shape of that there order of revelation…
So, before.. in that last post.. talking about a painter versus design approach to media arts.. in talking about communications versus expression.. perhaps art versus design.. all of this kind of thing.. is about this sorta thing.
So.. that 3D graphics.. and motion graphics, is largely dominated by the design process.. as a pose to a painters process.. that what we are seeing is so much about conscious design.. means that the story telling of medium are more limited to the surface then.. might be.. ideal.
Next day sometime:
Hmm, perhaps I should post this.. and skip on to the next entry on this subject.
I like the idea of trying to get into the habit of posting everyday.. so lets see if we can’t get back into that swing.
Today I was contacted by a PR women. I had mentioned After Effects in a tweet… which was enough for her to go to the trouble of getting my email from the background image.. and message me about a PR campaign she was doing for Intel, which looks to be an ongoing series of.. kinda like motion graphics contests… and she wanted to know if I was interested, or if I might pass it on to others.
If you’re a regular reader you no doubt know that right now I’m focused on trying to develop some proficiency with with Cinema 4D… which is to say fairly high end ish 3D graphics. While I have other projects to attend to.. in general.. it would seem to me that to participate in the Intel project would require a shift of focus… which is a bit like.. you get the ball rolling and then you leave it.. and now how long is it going to take you to get that back in motion?
That said.. what I’m really looking to develop is a whole set of skills.. you render stuff out of Cinema.. you bring it into After Effects or Motion.. where you perhaps have other assets.. eventually this probably ends up in Final Cut.. and eventually render out as a final project. Inside of this scheme you might shoot video.. you might do a lot of things.. So.. moving from a pure 3D focus to a motion graphics focus.. where 3D is but one element.. doesn’t really seem like that bad an idea.
In any event I was inspired enough to go visit my local book store and pick up a couple of magazines I’d been eyeing: A UK digital arts type magazine has a motion graphics special edition this month.. and this month we also see the first launch issue of a magazine called gomotion. I didn’t buy these magazines before on account of how pricy they are.. the total was $34, but.. with all this on my mind.. it seemed like the thing to do.
Gomotion
Gomotion costs $20.. which seems to me outrageously over priced.. but, at least superficially, I must say it’s a very impressive magazine. A lot of 3D magazines are over priced.. and there’s a general feeling of immaturity about them.. or.. there not quite big enough.. but Gomotion is, in fact, rather kick ass…
What I’m digging about Gomotion is as follows: I’m in the process of giving myself a basic 3D education.. at the moment this is via the DVD based video tutorials that came with Cinema 4D. These tutorials don’t really cover all the bases of the software.. they’re basically enough to get you going… I’m only about half way through the main general course.. I’ve learned about modeling, I’m on to pre texture mapping stuff..
Bouncing around in the back of my head is past information I’ve gathered on the subject of 3D.. at one point I read a mega huge book on 3D Studio Max.. from time to time I pick up copies of special effects trade magazines.. and who knows what.. Most of this information exists in my brain on an almost unconscious level, and reflects a state of technology that is.. old fashion compared to where stuff is at today… which I’m only now getting to appreciate.
Gomotion.. has a lot of articles that are.. actually probably not bad for someone as clueless as I am.. I just read an article on character creation.. and strangely enough it conformed perfectly to certain preconceptions I’m starting to evolve as I try and work out what I want to do.. and when you see what other 3D artists wrestle with.. hear what a more advanced person perceives as the challenges.. it gives you a lot of perspective on how to approach your forward movement..
The Current State of Matt’s 3D Plans:
There is, of course, the basic business of getting up to speed on the basics… which is really nothing more then the 101 of the tools.. the projects will take us to the next level in the other areas..
The real project is to come up with some ideas for animated shorts.. What kind of stories do I want to tell? What kind of a challenge is it going to be to develop really good craft when it comes to story telling? I’m not totally sure what my story telling process will look like.. as I have influences coming from strange directions.. But I suppose the first thing is simply to work out what I want to explore.. write something like a script.. and then work out story boards… and from there..
Well we need to embark on a project of designing characters, sets, objects, and what have you.. that make sense for the story we want to tell…
The trouble, as I see it.. are two fold.. or perhaps one fold: There are two viable approaches as I conceive of it… one is that of the painter, the other is that of the designer. The painter process is exploratory.. it’s an adventure.. we perhaps don’t even bother with starting with a script.. we’ll find the story as we go along.. The designer process is the one where we start with a script and move onto story boards…. and blah blah blah.
So there’s a tension between these two approaches.. and the question really is.. how do we integrate them… and I think the question becomes most significant when we look at questions like.. what might we do in a 3D graphics program versus what we might do in a program like After Effects.
Indeed After effects is an interesting problem.. in that it offers the possibility of very strange work flows.. where in 3D we are purely dealing with the 3D world.. in After Effects we can deal with anything.. from photographs, still images, the rendered 3D stuff, 2D computer graphics, video… various sorts of special effects.. compositing… etc. Stuff is fairly endless.
A few latter, now over tired, resigned to the fact that this wont get posted tonight:
Thoughts on story telling
Story telling strikes me as an amazingly rich and complex subject.. one that.. is no easy art to master.
Lets take the actor. What is good acting, or how does one act well? That’s a complex subject that can take a lifetime to master… Acting is, after all, story telling.. a part of how we tell stories.
I was trying to get to this idea of the tension between a painter versus a designer’s approach to media making.. I stepped away from writing to watch Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.. when I was struck by something..
3D Graphics is an amazingly formalist medium.. Everything in it.. was put there on purpose, consciously.. where as with film.. we are in the world of happy accidence… I’m reminded by something David Lynch said.. about how if you go in someone’s house.. say there bedroom.. you’re amazed at what you find.. because its nothing like anything any production designer could have ever thought of.. so here we see it again.. the difference between.. something like the conscious mind of design, versus the unconscious dialectics of painting.
And then I’m reminded of Tom Wolfe.. Mr Wolfe writes what he calls “new journalism” where in he goes out and makes fiction based off of a kind of journalistic process.. because.. how could you ever writet dialog like.. well like real people speak?
I keep thinking about this.. how does the way a real person speak.. what does this tell us about that person? What does the way a real bedroom looks.. what does that tell us about the person.. To some extent you might think of this as “ambient story telling” in the sense that we are talking about little nuances.. which somehow have something to do with something.. that could somehow be a part of how we might tell a story.. but they also contain a certain extraneous possibility… or at least in how we think of them.. how they might relate to our preconceptions.. which, of course, is the problem of formalism and communication type design.
When I think of what I want to do.. a part of it is something formalistic.. always a synthesis of this with realism.. and always on the surrealistic side of things.. This idea that the unconscious is exactly what I’m after.. but not exactly as an end in it’s self.. which is perhaps what makes me interesting.. if contrasted with surrealism proper..
In my surrealist spirit.. I tend to think.. well what the hell.. do anything at anytime for any reason at all.. which is to take an anarchic approach, or attitude, towards traditional notions of structure.. and how might I weave such a thing into a story?
As you can no doubt gather.. I have some complex ideas about this subject.. which is perhaps atypical of someone in my beginner shoes..
A post ago I suggested that something like creative brilliance trumps what major studios have as there advantages.. and I suppose what it all comes down to is this.. and story telling.. and if I have brilliance in me.. I imagine it will come from an exploration of these kinds of ideas.. at least as it relates to story telling.. and this kind of animation motion graphics stuff.
So I got this kind of crazy comment on a post.. from John… which I think I could safely characterize as “insensitive” in its criticism…. which I don’t totally understand, accept that sometimes when one interacts with folks online one can forget one is interacting with real humans. In any event.. I don’t think John’s criticism was exactly constructive.. none the less I find myself searching for grains of truth in it.. which is an instinct I find a little dubious…. but it is what it is.
So I thought I’d sorta address his comment in a blog post.. well sorta.
If you have discerning eyes, and you look at this blog, you’d probably come away with an impression that “this cat has no desire to be a social media rock star.” Or to put it another way.. ( picture spoken in a somewhat Frank Zappa esk tone ) “This blog has got no kinda game at all.”
I’m not really sure why that is, to tell you the honest truth. I feel as if it’s just sorta indicative of the state my life is in.. which is.. difficult. Somehow, one way or another, I need to ether work this out or just accept it. Maybe.. instead of all my obsessions and whatever.. I should just focus on healing.
The difficult feeling of an artist.
When you go to art school.. coming in the door you realize you’re kind of screwed.. well unless you’re a designer or something. The plight of the fine artist.. is a difficult one.. and often we toil our lives away for little to no material reward.. In fact, just getting your life in such a situation that you can seriously focus on your work.. That’s a pretty substantial accomplishment on its own.
I think its a kind of addiction actually.. an addiction to the state of ecstasy that art making can bring you to… That feeling that you and the Gods are one. For me, I suppose, I really make art more for God then living souls… Or more for that internal spiritual nourishment. I mean it’s just the one place in my life where I feel truly alive. So if there’s anyway that I can make my way through this life, via this art, then I will call my life a success. That’s really all I’m looking for, you know?
I imagine to be a whole human, however, one needs a bit more. How about starting a family? The only way I could ever see that working out is if I found one hell of a women.. cause God knows I can barely take care of my Dad!
I don’t really feel like I have a choice in what I is.
So the deal is.. if you make art the way I do.. where you’re serious about exploring your own unique creative vision, regardless of what’s up with the market place.. well.. I don’t know.. What can you realistically expect?
I guess I’ll leave this at this — I’m kinda tired.
So recently I’ve been reconnecting, a bit, with folks from my college days at Mass Art.. and in the Studio of Interrelated media program.. with an interest in checking out folks work.. Which brings us to todays subject of Mr. Bobby Abate.
I believe I first met Mr. Abate while I was in the August Studio Program at Mass Art.. This is a program for high school students.. where you take a bunch of classes for the month of August.. it was an amazing time, living in the Dorms.. I met him and a girl he was hanging with.. while smoking butts outside the dorm.. just sorta randomly.. and ended up doing something that night.. don’t quite remember what.
Any who.. Bobby was a brilliant Artist.. I mean he just made a lot of really amazing work.. and what do you know.. his work’s still quite great.. and he’s one of the folks from that time who’s still very serious about his artist’s pursuits…
So here’s a Youtube video of his I really liked:
One of the thing’s that struck me sorta funny about this video is.. he mentions Tony Oursler as the guy who got the funding he was trying to get.. What I thought was sorta funny about that is that Tony was the video professor at Mass Art while we were there.. Tony is often hailed as one of the top 5 or so video artst’s to come out of the US ever.. so pretty stiff competition, right? But also this video makes me think of Tony’s work.. in that you have this kind of degradation of video in a way that calls attention to it’s video-ness in a way very similar to Tony’s work.. a sort of similar aesthetic.. Though clearly Bobby Abate’s work is.. well I want to say more erotically charged? And um.. has a certain dangerous quality in that and.. well lots of stuff really.
You can see more of his work at his official website.. sweetkitty.com, brilliant stuff.
I should maybe close on.. in reference to the video.. I don’t actually know a heck of a lot about the art world today. My carrier vision has always been about searching for new existential / asymmetric relationships to the market place.. but.. working out the art world part.. is something to do.. as I tend to want to go down rather serious avant guard -ish paths.. In any event.. you look at how Brilliant his work is.. and… well shouldn’t he be in a very high stratosphere?
I’ve been writing lyrics, at least, since I was in high school.. but have never done too much to bring them into my music.. or at least never felt terribly successful about it. At the moment.. it seems the tools I need to properly bring lyrics to my work is in the neighborhood of a few grand.. depending on how you want to slice it.. no puns intended.
One solution came out of an issue of electronic musician monthly.. which involved using a free open source voice synthesizer.. so I used it.. threw into it some lyrics.. rendered out the audio files.. processed the hell out of them.. started playing with them in Ableton Live.. and eventually just sorta left it on the back burner for a while. But then last weekend I bought a copy of ReCycle.. and started playing with them inside of a ReCycle / Reason kind of context..
My first little go at this is talked about here and here. The first “here” having, at least for a short time, a bit of audio that shows this first experiment. In that project I was playing with one of the lines to the songs I wrote as of that much older post.. some of the renderings out of the processed voice synth.
This brings us to the issue of musical linguistic adventures.
Musical Linguistic Adventures
Sometime ago I read a book of… well lectures given by Leonard Bernstein at Harvard.. which was…. largely on the subject of linguistics in music. There’s a series of ideas.. I believe Noam Chomsky is the guy responsible.. about an organic basis of language.. that its hard wired in our brains.. You see this in.. the names of “mommy” or “daddy,” that there’s melodic parallels in the words across languages.. as well as for water.. and it seems that childhood taunt songs.. and all the rest of it.. are pretty universal.. And on some level.. when we hear music, we do hear it the same.. Here’s a bit of Bernstein from those lectures:
Ok, so how about we now venture forth into an interview with Noam Chomsky, talking about lingusitics?
Danger Will Robinson, this one could be getting long…
I want to break in here and bring up a couple of things..
There’s been huge break throughs in brain imagining since the time of this interview.. so now many of these investigations are a lot more feasible… so such things are, no doubt, being explored now.
The nature of the nature versus nurture thing.. a modern understanding of the subject is that its not really nature versus nurture but nurture via nature.. which is to say that our genetic make up defines to what degree nurture influences our development.
This issue with Kant.. the limitations of language.. did you catch Bernstein sorta talking about music speaking the unspeakable? I’ll try and get more deeply into this latter as.. this is really the heart of what I want this entry to be getting to.. and has everything to do with my aims.. but.. well.. I wont say much more about it other then to try and hold this in your mind as we venture further into this interview:
Ok, a few things I want to get to here…
I could defend Freud psychoanalysis here.. but it’s a little too complicated.. in that it would take us away from our main thread.. of what’s already looking like a long blog entry.. I will, towards the end.. talk about this stuff in Jungian terms.. which will go along way in answering this.. however I will go so far as to say that in the history of psychology.. there’s a trend where in people are very good about talking about there own stuff.. and not so good in there criticism of others in the field.
My impression is that Heidegger does a pretty good job of dismantling the sorta metaphysical presumptions that are at the foundations of cognitive psychology. Heidegger’s interest in language, I think, makes him of special interest to this subject.. but.. we’ll skip on over that for now.
I think the Kant stuff is pretty central in Jung’s psychology.. in a certain way.
So I had a rough time finding part 5.. but here we go..
Ok… so now we’ve gone a bit deeper into Chomsky and linguistics.. and the larger implications..
So to curve back into music.. and a kind of linguistic basis of it.. what I’m trying to point out is.. language.. verbal language.. has a musicality… timber, pitch.. repetition.. all the principles of musical composition are present in verbal language.. and so there’s a connection here..
Ok.. so how about a fun little user generated video.. playing with the Bernstein lectures?
Sorta highlights the musicality of language, doesn’t it?
Ok, onto the psychedelic:
Linguistics, Neuroscience, Jungian Psychology, and the Psychedelics
I think it makes sense to start out here with a little Tom Wolfe.. In part because he wrote the Electric Cool-Aid Acid Test, in part because his notion of “New Journalism” in part influences how I think about new media, and in part because he’s dealing with many of the subjects we are on in this entry…
There are two other parts to this interview.. which we can’t embed here.. can be found on the National Review website here, and then here. For the full take on this stuff you really want to view these videos..
There are huge areas in which I disagree with Tom Wolfe.. as it relates to this topic, but for our purposes lets jump into something I can’t find any videos on… which is his views on psychedelics, which he borrows from modern brain research.
As nearly as I can tell.. the theory works something like this.. under the influence of psychedelic drugs.. the brain is unable to attribute causality in the usual way.. and having a nature of always trying to attribute causal connections.. starts making them where.. from an empirical point of view.. there are no such connections to be made…
Err.. let me put this in plainer english.. psychedelics causes you to attribute cause and effects relationships to things where there are no such relationships.. from a factual point of view. Going this far, I do not disagree.. but Wolfe goes so far as to say “this proves you don’t get enlightenment from psychedelics,” in the “ultimatereality” sense.. that this mythology has grown up around psychedelics is.. really attribute able to this principles.. and to the brain’s functioning working on a very slow kind of less functional sorta way, while under the influence of psychedelics.
Well everything we’ve been talking about thus far leads up to my argument as to why Tom Wolfe is wrong… to say nothing of some of the psychologies / schools of thought he’s regarding in such high esteem.
How Psychedelic enlightenment works
Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious could be, kinda sorta, boiled down to… “its an expression of instinct.” Religion is an expression of instinct.. its more complex then that.. but its good enough for now.. And let us not forget here.. that in talking about linguistics.. from Chomsky to Wolfe.. we are talking about mental faculties.. not blank slates.. We are.. in fact, talking about instincts, are we not? Instincts by another name?
All right.. so if we are attributing cause and effect relationships to things that do not factually have cause and effect relationships to them.. on what bases are we making them? Well.. on the basis of the structure of the faculty / instinct….. We are moving from objective truth to subjective truth.. from object to subject.. from the external material world to the internal psychological world.. and so the truths we discover are true in a “psychological sense.” In essence.. what I’m arguing is that psychedelics bring about a “meta cognitive experience.”
So.. if mystical / religious / ultimate reality.. is an expression of instinct.. and a meta cognitive experience is one that’s essential an experience of cognition its self… that it brings us into contact with “the experience of experience,” to put it a certain way.. and if we understand that.. subjective truth is a kind of truth.. and that we are now moving beyond the Kantian limitations.. well, now we are in the world of what Jung calls “the transcendent instinct.”
It speaking about.. that which is unnameable… that which is beyond our Kantian categories.. we are in fact talking about God.. for God, by definition, is a symbol of the mystery which holds up the world of the known.. it is the ultimate context of the world of the known.. which, as it turns out.. is the subject of both my most recent release.. and the music I’m working on now.
Aesthetic Implications
So in essence what we are saying.. if we complicate the attribution of causal relationships.. we will create something like a mystical experience? So with this.. lets move onto a short film.. that explores the concept of the cut up.. something we find in the work of William Burroughs.. where we see our linguistic faculties making these connections.. in the world of film grammar.. as well as on the literary level.
We of course see these kinds of ideas in dada and surrealism.. so how about a little film made with Marcel Duchamp.. Man Ray adding something here.. and of course a John Cage Score (what could be more perfect?)
How this relates on a process level to my work
On a kind of core foundational level to my thinking and process is this idea of aesthetic experience is a cognitive event.. having something to do with how we perceive and process experience. In earlier stages of my artistic and musical development my work was very often a kind of critique of this process.. It was very much dealing with the problems of Immanuel Kant and the transcendent.. and very similar, in someways, to what Chomsky is talking about..
In any event.. my work was in someway about this process.. and played with the process.. if we are now saying that mystical experience has something to with the challenges to cognition.. you can see how this could be central to my work.
Some of it is as simple as how you recognize patterns.. classic IQ test stuff, right? If you work in web usability you’ll no doubt recognize an early problem with game theory as a tool for understanding human behavior.. which is to say we don’t operate from a rational perspective so much as we muddle around with incomplete information..
What I say in relationship to patterns is that… you have two distinct things going on “the pattern its self” and “the pattern recognition.” In any pattern, lets call them patterns of cause and effect.. there are infinite possible ways of understanding the pattern.. of seeing patterns in it: if you see a series of numbers, and are asked “what’s the next number going to be” your job is to understand organizing principles of the pattern before you.. and you will start out with the most simplistic possibilities.. going out to more complex ones.. what I’m saying is that.. in the deep end of complexity.. you have that infinite possibility, that we never see, because of how we approach the problem…. kind of how we are wired.
So.. if our process is impaired.. we are going to go into the deep end of that complexity.. or to put it another way.. that’s what mystical experience is…
Without digging much further into this stuff.. I would just say there’s a range in my work.. of simple to complex patterns.. to even chance and chaos.. and effort to make a continuity between the extremes.. I mean its interesting that if you look at serial atonalism… It can seem as if we need a mathematical PHD in order to appreciate the organization.. and somehow the results are very similar to that of John Cage.. who’s music is the product of chance..
Here’s a clip of Leonard Bernstein talking, among other things.. about the beauty of ambiguity in music.. where we see chromaticism (which is basically what serial atonalism is all about) inside of a diatonic framework… He talks about music theory which.. if you’re not already aquatinted with.. might likely be a little above your head.. but basically we are talking about organizational principles in music.. which has to do with harmony and counter point.. which is pitch relationships.. which have to do with the physics of sound.. and perhaps psycho acoustics fits in here somewhere as well.
Ok, now I wanted to dig in deeper into the process of what I’m doing right now in my sound work.. the project I’m on right now.. but it seems that the underlying theory and ideas.. have taken up all our space.. so I’ll have to get to that next time.. what I want to leave on is.. a little more on how this stuff relates to the philosophy of religion..
Philosophy of religion and other connections
In the history of Christian theology there is this kind of.. well an idea that is perhaps not as well known as it should be.. which is to say the Bible is God’s second book… the creation his first. If we look at the philosophy of science at, around, perhaps before.. the American Civil war.. there is this idea that creation.. or the universe we live in.. is custom made to our minds.. sciences exploration of the universe is in fact an exploration of God.. There is also these ideas of natural and.. I want to say divine.. revelation.. The law we find Moses bringing down, the commandments, is said to be imprinted on the inside of our skin.. or to put it another way.. it is expressed in our biology.. which of course accords well with Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious… and these ideas of there being faculties, as Chomsky is saying.. that are built right into our biology. If we look to eastern philosophy and religion.. God is often thought of in a rather unipersonal sorta way.. God is a kind of personification of the forces of the universe.. and.. if we look at the various strands of Buddhism and Zen.. where the inward mystery of our beings is explored in great depth.. how we “really are,” which is something different then who we usually identify our selves with as.. is in fact… the universe.. as the mystic saying goes “I and the maker are one.”I wont go any deeper into this here..,.. but I hope you can see how this is interesting to contemplate in light of the ideas presented in this post.
