Connected Everything

Here are some things I'm going to be covering in my thesis.

• All possible enumerations: "Wishing Well" by Eijssen and Klopman, "Borges" by Jochem van der Spek, Every Icon, God's Eye, Imagen, Magic Mirror, The End, 8-bit, 4-bit waveforms (also in hardware). The legal-political implications of these projects. Stéphane Mallarmé's "[dream] of a universal work, capable of encompassing all the others". Ablinger's conception of "all notes" as "white noise". Borges' Aleph. pppd and RC/NAND combinations toward the idea of a "functionally complete" synth.
• Possible permutations: allRGB. If you're enumeration everything, how do you arrange it in an interesting way? Anti-gray codes?
• Very long pieces: Pi house music (indefinitely long), Infinite C (indefinitely long), Soundtrack For An Exhibition (96 days), The Shapes Project, As Slow as Possible (639 years), Longplayer (1000 years)
• What is music? Of all the sounds that can be made, which are musical? Is there a connection between meaningful sounds and musical sounds? Considering noise as a human-centered phenomenon, or otherwise.
• McLuhan's symbiotic medium/message relationship: Photoshop Gradient and Smudge Tool Demonstrations. Glitch art as a method for uncovering a medium: Ceibas, MPF, CD-glitching from Oval and Yasunao Tone. The aesthetics of failure. "Looking at what's broken" is a technique regularly used in cognitive neuroscience, outlined by V.S. Ramachandran in "Phantoms in the Brain". Eigenradio. The role of transcription: ethnomusicology as a case study.
• The history of MP3, the language and the logistics behind glitching compressed formats. Remixing 4'33" for a new media (Only Everything Lasts Forever).
• Correspondence theory of truth versus coherence theory of truth, the connection between truth and meaning, meaning and music. MOOKDFJLAL and 241543903. Side channel attacks (especially TEMPEST), persistence hunting, and reality cracking. Buddhist "interdependent arising" as a "coherentist metaphysics". Autoloop as purely sonic coherentism. Jean-Jacques Nattiez' "symbolic web".
• The role of illusion in meaning, finding patterns in noise, and the "edge of chaos": Kanizsa triangle, dalmatian and cow illusions, Christian iconography, The Holy Toaster, the face on Mars, Einstein's Brain, the golden ratio as a guiding principle for beauty in nature and art, prime numbers and the Ulam spiral and Sacks spiral, equidistant letter sequences and The Bible Code, Haiku Finder, SETI@home and the definition of a signal, astronomical patterns and constellations, geographic patterns, the Voynich manuscript as a hoax. Working with Mark Changizi on evolutionary psychology. No Noise.
• Emptiness, and art everywhere: Cage's 4'33", Duchamp's "Fountain", Rauschenberg's "White Paintings" and the monochromatic tradition, including Malevich and Rodchenko. Nietzsche's "will to power" and Sartre's "existence precedes essence" as models of self-created coherentist meaning.
• Noise and copyright: illegal numbers, pi in binary.

Big Wave Surfing

Why is big wave surfing so engaging?

There's something about huge waves that inspires fear. From the shore it's possible to write them off as passively destructive. But from the water, they can look positively evil. The wave itself can't even be identified — it's no specific body of water, but a general force. A collective action of the entire ocean. An unseen force manifest in a mountain of water.

The big wave surfer confronts this: an unidentifiable, shape-shifting, destructive force backed by the entire ocean. They collaborate, redirecting all of that destructive energy into a single creative action. They name the unnameable.

From the shore, the ocean has no scale. There is nothing to be compared. But when you see a surfer on a wave, you know exactly big it is. Big wave surfing is the humanization of infinity.

Other/Self and Noise/Music

Trying to understand the noise/music discussion in the language of other/self: traditionally (e.g., Jacques Attali), music is to the self as noise is to the other. The primary deficit in this analogy is the non-consciousness of sound. One sound cannot approach another sound and have the realization of the "other", but an external entity is required to create and collapse distinctions.

The Projector's Trance

The proliferation of Powerpoint and other projection-based media in both the corporate world and academia has created a subtle but persistent phenomena. Think back to the last time you saw someone prepare a projector before a presentation. There is a moment, anywhere from an instant to dozens of minutes, where the unfamiliar device is connected and turned on. This moment is not sustained solely by the person preparing the projector; it emerges from the audience's collective gaze. In this situation, the audience finds themselves in a trance-like state: eyes darting from the projector, to the the cable, to the laptop, to the presenter. They are completely transfixed by the ritual — momentarily, being-in-itself. And then, without warning, the image provides some sort of affirmation that, indeed, all is in working order. The crowd recollects their freedom. They remember that they're watching a presentation, and that they can stop paying attention whenever they want.

Defining Music

"Music" has always been "meaningful sound"; but the definition of "meaningful sound" has not always been the same.

• Pre-Cage: meaning is found in your local culture. One culture's music is another culture's noise.
• Cage: meaning is found in your personal experience. One person's music is another person's noise.
• Post-Cage: meaning is found in contextualization. There is no noise, only sound that is more or less contextualized.

12/27/08: I still agree with the distinction between the three stages above. I'm less certain about "music" being "meaningful sound". By extension, "art" is anything with meaning. However, there are many things that people with pre-Cage (pre-Duchamp) — or even Cagian/Duchampian definitions of art — would call "meaningful" but not "art". The beep of a crosswalk has a meaning, but is not often called "music". Is there anything in common between Cage calling the crosswalk beep "music", and a pre-Cage audience calling Debussy "music"?

Have we ever called meaningless things "art"? Very briefly, when Cage or Duchamp were busy with 4'33" or "The Fountain". With those transitional exceptions, then, "art" is a subset of "meaningful things".

Three sets:

1. A Art.
2. M Meaningful things.
3. U The universal set.

Three steps (where ⊂ means "strict subset"):

1. Pre-Cage: A⊂M, M⊂U
2. Cage: A=M, M⊂U (not quite right, because of the crosswalk problem)
3. Post-Cage: A=M, M=U

1/22/09: Music is not necessarily "meaningful sound", but music is "named" the same way meaning is "named". Naming, and meaning, has always come from contextualization, but we've imagined contextualization differently over time.

1. Pre-Cage: societies are the contextualizers, deciding what is meaningful, what is music, etc.
2. Cage: individuals are the contextualizers (remove society).
3. Post-Cage: nature itself is the contextualizer (remove the individual), and humans identify subsets of these relationships.

Transcoding-based art (i.e., visualization, sonification...) and highly analogical explorations (e.g., VJing as an analog to DJing) can be heavily Post-Cage in that they acknowledge the many possibilities, and that they are sampling a subset of those relationships.

8/18/09: Attali has a note on these ideas in Noise, p 25:

In fact, the signification of music is far more complex. Although the value of a sound, like that of a phoneme, is determined by its relations with other sounds, it is, more than that, a relation embedded in a specific culture; the "meaning" of the musical message is expressed in a global fashion, in its operationality, and not in the juxtaposed signification of each sound element.

In short, while considering the origins of music, he identifies the pre-Cage contextualizers (society/culture) as bestowing meaning upon music.

The Eternal Questions

I've had a text file by this name sitting on my desktop for a while. It's a big list. Here's an excerpt:

• love and hate. how do you explain them? what inspires them?
• humility and selflessness, and evil, sin, and pride
• knowledge, and wisdom
• what is god? christianity, spinoza/buddhism, hiduism, taoism and pantheism
• faith as something reassuring
• free will and determinism
• redemption and salvation
• suffering and misunderstanding
• epistemology: what is the foundation of logic? does every epistemology making a negative claim contradict itself? what axioms do we start with? do we take in everything, or a subset?
• desire
• can we overcome confirmation bias?
• what can we do? for the starving? the hurt? the egotistical?
• interdependence and independence: is one an illusion?
• do we have an essensce? why do we feel like we do?
• morality/shoulds/"supposed to". origins and humanism
• the nature of time. cosmological origins and the present (is time an illusion?)
• evolution
• the brain and consciousness
• government and anarchy
• originality and newness
• naivete and optimism
• sincerity
• do people change? what causes people to change?

Buddhism via Backroads

Thoughts from my little black book:

Well now aren't we scaring ourselves?
Unnecessarily
Aren't we trying to hard?
Look no further,
It's in our hands.
It always was.
Björk

There will be no search party for us.
No black ribbons tied on antennas.
No one's going to stop traffic for us.
When we're gone, we're gone,
You know it's simple as that.
So Many Dynamos

You are the only light there is
For yourself my friend.
Gogol Bordello

To some Christians, taking responsibility for anything is seen as a sort of foolish pride; that you are somehow not resting in God or trusting him. Doing their best to trust God, they go reflect on God's purpose for their life specifically and find themselves at a standstill — unable to initiate independently, and without divine direction.

One response, from the Christian perspective, is to accept your "purpose" as something much more general — something that applies to everyone, along the lines "love God, and your neighbor as yourself".

There's another perspective. It acknowledges the expanse of all that exists, and our minuscule representation within it. If you look at the stars, or the oceans, or mountains, you see how little consequence we have on the majority of reality. Most things are indifferent to us; they have their own path and logic that refuses to mirror our own.

We may melt glaciers, but the oceans will only rise. In some time a new equilibrium will come. We're like bubbles rising from boiling water, or subatomic particles emerging from the vacuum — temporary discontinuities. We have nothing to lose, and nothing to gain. Our very nature is that of impermanence, and the only response to this is an overwhelming peace.

No fear, no hope, just peace — and this discontinuity.

Romanticizing Necessity

Supposedly both Nietzsche and Seraphim Rose wrote by candlelight (and Nietzsche with a retinal infection). Yet other philosophers have written in daylight, and still others have not needed to write at all.

We're encouraged when we hear stories about overcoming adversity, but romanticizing those journeys can lead to an unnecessary desire for their means(and a lack of appreciation for their ends). Not everyone needs candlelight to understand themselves.

An Equality Among Men

Søren Kierkegaard's last written words:

I have nothing more to add. But let me merely say this, which in a way is my life, is to me the content of my life, its fullness, its bliss, its peace and satisfaction. Let me express this, a view of life which comprehends the idea of humanity and of human equality: Christianity implies, unconditionally, that every man, every single individual, is equally close to God...How close and equally close? Because Loved by Him. Consequently there is equality, the equality of infinity, between man and man. If there is any distinction, it is that one person bears in mind that he is loved, perhaps day after day, perhaps day after day for seventy years, perhaps with only one longing, a longing for eternity so that he really can grasp this thought and go through life with it, concerning himself with the blessed occupation of meditating on how he is loved - and not, alas, because of his virtue. Another person perhaps does not remember that he is loved, perhaps goes on year after year, day after day, and does not think of his being loved; or perhaps he is glad and grateful to be loved by his wife, by his children, by his friends, by his contemporaries, but he does not think of his being loved by God. Or perhaps he laments not being loved by anyone and does not think of being loved by God. Infinite, divine love; it makes no distinction! But what of human ingratitude? If there is an equality among us men in which we completely resemble each other, it is that not one of us truly thinks about being loved!

"All is Full of Love" by Björk:

You'll be given love
You'll be taken care of
You'll be given love
You have to trust it

Maybe not from the sources
You have poured yours
Maybe not from the directions
You are staring at

Twist your head around
It's all around you
All is full of love
All around you

All is full of love
You just aint receiving
All is full of love
Your phone is off the hook
All is full of love
Your doors are all shut
All is full of love

From Father Zosima in The Brothers Karamazov:

...truly each of us is guilty before everyone and for everyone, only people do not know it, and if they knew it, the world would at once become paradise.

From "It's in Our Hands" by Björk:

Cruelest, almost always
To ourselves
It musn't get any better off
It's in our hands...
Well, now, aren't we scaring ourselves
unecessarily?
Aren't we trying too hard?
'Cause it's in our hands

Beliefs About God

From Kierkegaard's "Provocations":

...no one becomes a believer by hearing about Christianity, by reading about it, by thinking about it. It means that while Christ was living, no one became a believer by seeing Him once in a while or by going and staring at Him all day long. No, a certain setting is required — venture a decisive act. The proof does not precede but follows; it exists in and with the life that follows Christ. Once you have ventured the decisive act, you are at odds with the life of this world. You come into collision with it, and because of this you will gradually be brought into such tension that you will then be able to become certain of what Christ taught.

Let's say you're in elementary school, and the teacher gives you an address for a penpal. You send the first letter on your faith in your teacher, and you receive a "proof" of the penpal's existence in return (a response). There is another type of "proof", though: as you correspond with your penpal and develop a relationship, coming to understand each other better, you receive proof of their character.

I can imagine trusting your penpal before you really know their character — there's a kindness to that — but it makes no sense to trust someone before you even know they exist. Of course, this metaphor isn't perfect, it's even more extreme in the case of Christianity: we aren't asked to trust God the way we would trust a penpal, we're asked to give up everything. I can see how proof of God's character might "exist in and with the life that follows Christ", but it doesn't make any sense to devote yourself to something without some initial reason to believe it exists (and especially not if you have reasons to disbelieve).

Merzbow's Noise

We are slaves to analogy. Every sound we hear evokes a reaction and association. Every image reminds us of a time and place; and if it doesn't, we imagine one. Breaking stimuli into its constituents doesn't do us any good: pure colors remind us of representative objects (the blue sky, the green grass), pure tones are reminiscent of various electronic devices, and pure rhythms occur naturally in the machinery that surrounds us. In an attempt to expand our sonic palette, Russolo introduces us to a variety of ignored noises. Yet his list of "roars", "whistles" and "screeches" still suffers from analogical bondage: all these noises are implicitly categorized by their origin. Even when we're confronted by an unfamiliar noise, if we listen closely we recreate it into something familiar (people often hear voices where there are none). Merzbow makes these kind of sounds, these cracklings, mumblings and loud whispers. But if "noise is the unconsciousness of music" in the same way "pornography is the unconsciousness of sex", he has yet to accomplish his goal. Listening to "Minus Zero" from "Red Magnesia Pink", I can still hear structure and reminders of life: broken radios, irregular rhythms, guttural screams, armor penetrating bullets, lasers, explosions, fans, engines, hairdryers and children's conversations. I have yet to experience "being-for-itself" as Sartre would have it. Unfortunately, Merzbow seems unaware of this issue. He initially "tried to quit using any instruments which were related to, or were played by, the human body", in an attempt to sever any connections the noises might incite. But at the same time he's rooted in the subjective interpretations of Dadaism and even gives his own analogies: "The sound of Merzbow is like Orgone energy — the color of shiny silver." Perhaps, in an effort to escape familiarity, after twenty years of experimentation he has created one more familiar sound? If the goal of noise is the "obliteration" of identity, as Simon Reynolds puts it, then the climax of Merzbow's noise is not found in its duration, but afterwards — in the silence. It's only in this silence, the un-created non-sound, that we are emancipated from analogy and forced to come to terms with our unconnected self.

"En Það Besta Sem Guð Hefur Skapað..."

It seems like we have a hunger for "newness", or death and rebirth. In Christianity, we have the death of the "misdeeds of the body" (Romans 8:13) and rebirth in Christ (and in Judaism, the Jubilee year). In Buddhism, the total death of self and recreation (or perhaps "realization") of oneness with everything. Academia is colored religous by its semester-oriented structure; any student can explain the "fresh" feeling of a new semester. Sartre takes this to an extreme, saying that we are new creations every moment (which, oddly enough, causes angst). Total permanence, reminiscent of Parmenides, traps us. Total impermanence, a la Heraclitus ("Everything flows, nothing stands still."), frightens us and causes angst.

Perhaps the love of shopping that so characterizes our American society thrives on this dichotomy? Materialism is a continual recreation through addition, coupled with an eventual eradication of the old. (Being the only sort of "recreation" people know, it's not suprising that Christian speakers spend so much time discouraging this attitude in the context of Christianity.) Materialism provides a sense of newness without forcing us to identify with a purely permanent or impermanent nature.

Summer Song

At the end of last semester, Princess played the most disturbing show I've ever seen. Yet... they inspire this macabre curiosity that makes it tough to stop listening. Near the end of the show, they belted out their "Summer Song"... I asked Alexis about it (which is where I got the lyrics — I tried to preserve his handwriting, but the emphasis is mine), and he said it was really just a series of rhymes that seemed to flow... The ironic origin takes its meta-commentary and self-reference one step further into the absurd:

spin it and I sing song
from treetops to king kong ping pong
ready set it wet it get it
medics let it pet it debit or credit
a fetish embellish u rellish n perish

Get it Get it going gone
these songs are arms trying to grasp
the world they Built
tilt down with a pound the sound
of clowns' frown abound
night gowns spin round n round
tight would might crown the night
sunlight at sunset jet set
magenta lent a particular bent
to the waves refraction
for a fraction of an instant
and we missed it

Cast as Audience

Kierkegaard on life:

In the theater, the play is staged before an audience who are called theatergoers; but at the devotional address, God himself is present. In the most earnest sense, God is the critical theatergoer, who looks on to see how the lines are spoken and how they are listened to: hence here the customary audience is wanting. The speaker is then the prompter, and the listener stands openly before God. The listener, if I may say so, is the actor, who in all truth acts before God.

Sartre used the metaphor of an actor as well:

His movement is quick and forward, a little too precise, a little too rapid. He comes toward the patrons with a step a little too quick. He bends forward a little too eagerly; his voice, his eyes express an interest a little too solicitous for the order of the customer. Finally there he returns, trying to imitate in his walk the inflexible stiffness of some kind of automaton while carrying his tray with the recklessness of a tight-rope-walker by putting it in a perpetually unstable, perpetually broken equilibrium which he perpetually reestablishes by a light movement of the arm and hand. All his behavior seems to us a game. He applies himself to chaining his movements as if they were mechanisms, the one regulating the other, his gestures and even his voice seem to be mechanisms, he gives himself the quickness and pitiless rapidity of things. [...] He is playing, he is amusing himself. But what is he playing? We need not watch long before we can explain it; he is playing at being a waiter in a café.

As Sartre goes on to elucidate, the unbearable angst emergent from our ephemeral consciousness is often replaced by a "role" — an "act". What's more, as the guests respond to the waiter, he becomes more convinced of his personality (highschoolers demonstrate this principle perfectly — the outcast becomes more outcast, the bully more of a bully, the clown more of a clown...).

Perhaps Kierkegaard's actor and Sartre's actor aren't as different as they first appear: what if religion is a massive play, where everyone reminds each other of the "reality" of their role, and continues on, encouraged but deceived? How can you possibly tell the difference between the actor and the authentic?

There would have to be some sort of objective reality behind the actions of the individuals (after all, science would have this problem of inbred certanity as well if it wasn't for its attempt at objectivity). A Christian, for example, would have to be completely themself in a way the waiter is only attempting. I doubt you can resolve this in others, but might you answer for yourself?

The existential idea of angst could be approximated as a fear of potentiality. We take on roles to overcome that fear — by limiting our freedom we find a cheap imitation of security. We'd know, then, that we weren't acting (i.e., not deceving ourself and riding on the affirmations of others) if we had freedom without fear.

That's seems like an easy line to draw between naïve and realistic philosophies: there's hope in legalism and asceticism on one side (the denial of our "nature"), on the other, there's hope in the revelation of our true self.

(Note: Deriving the qualifications for our essence from Sartre's existentialism, which asserts that "existence precedes essence", is ridiculous. For the above conclusion to be coherent, we would have to reimagine his definition as something about coming to understand an essence previously unkown.)