I’m in a dark mood.. err, I think it’s dark?

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.

But um.. I think I’ll leave this post here… 

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.

Few days latter:

Ok, I’m really going to post this 

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. 

Day or two latter:

Ok, time to post. 

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?

Hmm… I’m not even sure if this is my first post on the subject.. but a while ago I started talking about the project of bringing lyrics to my music. 

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..

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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…

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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. 

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

Has to share this with yea, thought it was really cool. A tip of the hat must go to @HbeeInc of hbeeinc.com for finding this.

It reminds me of some work I saw at the ICA in Boston… way when I tried to go see John Zorn.. but alas it was sold out… so I just wandered around the galleries for a few hours… and there was an artist who had works that were very much of this vain.. 

In any event, I’m kind of interested in exploring something like this..  

Long time readers… if I ever posted that post I meant to post.. will know all about “Bad Matt.” Bad Matt, as you might well imagine, is an evil bastard! What is the unspeakable evil that Matt is giving to partaking in? Well Matt has been known to spend large sums of money on books, music, DVDs and.. of course.. computer and studio related stuff. And today my fine friends… bad matt has struck again!

That’s right..  well you see it all started when I went to a little Boston Media Maker tech thing, MediaTechTonic. This was a little workshop sorta thing, led by David Tames, that explored WordPress. WordPress is a “blog engine” that’s very popular… In the circles I run in, it is the most popular. Indeed my podcasts, and this blog, run on WordPress. A long standing problem I’ve had is not really knowing how to do “theme design.” Theme design is.. well its like web design with a content management system… so you want to know  your xhtml, css, dom, and what have you.. and then you probably would like to know a little php… and um.. a bit about how WordPress works. 

Theme design has proven, at least for me, to be a major pain in the butt.. in part because I’ve had such a difficult time finding one source of information that sorta pulls it all together. David’s presentation..  gave an overview of some of the issues..  and was enough to really open my eye’s to the power of WordPress. Further, though he didn’t totally recommend it.. he sorta did: WordPress for Dummies.. which is so far the only good source I’ve found that brings all that together in one place.

Next Day:

So of course on my trip to the book store.. I made my way over to the WordPress for Dummies.. but…  Well the badness of bad Matt was such that I didn’t even stop there! Oh no, I went over to the music section! In the music section I found my copy of “The Indie Bible.”

If you’re an independent music person, the Indie Bible is a must have.. It’s basically a giant directory of resources for the independent sound person. It lists, as a for instance, radio stations, podcasts, periodicals, and what not.. that will play / review the work of independent sound people… and it does this by genera and location…

I suppose its worth saying something about where I’m at as it relates to this? As we speak the main thing I’m working on.. if I’m working on anything at all.. It’s at least the preamble to a project of some sort.. that I’d actually ask people to spend there hard earned money on… and of course I don’t know what the project will look like.. even what it will be actually… just that this is roughly my goal..  (which is not to say there aren’t a zillion ideas, much of which can be found scattered around this blog)

To be successful in the commercial aspects of this project… It would make a hell of a lot of sense if I did something to promote the works I’m currently giving away for free. This way.. you can just go check it out you’re self, and if you dig it, maybe you’d be interested in the project I’m now embarked on. So.. if I were able to sorta run a publicity type campaign while I’m working on what I have to work on.. to sorta get the word out.. then I could potentially build a fan base for the upcoming projects product cycle. So that’s the thinking anyway.

If you’d like to check out some of my music you can, of course, go to mattsearles.com/music where you can find 2CDs worth of free music. 

A hat tip to Len Edgerly on this find.. what a great video with Dali. 

;

While Max Ernst is really my fav surrealist… Dali seems a bit too.. well branded I guess..  this is quite the video clip.