Tuesday 27 March 2007
Friday 23 March 2007
Moving the Goalposts
Kabir sings of the body as an instrument of measurement, a balance, scales.
How can musical apparatus be an instrument in the sense of a scientific measuring device rather than in the sense of an instrumental agent, a tool by means of which to achieve an end?
Of course it can be both. But I'd like to readjust the balance.
How can musical apparatus be an instrument in the sense of a scientific measuring device rather than in the sense of an instrumental agent, a tool by means of which to achieve an end?
Of course it can be both. But I'd like to readjust the balance.
Emergent Design
The sarod, or indeed any musical instrument, is a perfect example of co-evolutionary technology.
I was just thinking of the length of the strings. In Bhairav the distance from Risabh to Gandhar (D flat - E) on the fingerboard is a stretch. My hands must be of average size - if not slightly larger than the average in the Middle East and Asia over the last few hundred years. I don't think anyone arbitrarily decided out of the blue that this was a good size for the instrument. If that had been the case then the first one would probably have been abandoned as too difficult to play. The concomitant innovations needed to be developed in tandem at the bodily, cellular level. The fingers needed to be trained to work with this machine. And of course the actual music also evolves and accommodates simultaneously, becoming the exploration of what is realizable.
So the biological, the technical and the metaphysical all push and pull one another along a path of development that can only be seen in hindsight. Relatively small, iterative adjustments in each eventually lead to a complex, interdependent system. This is evolution. A cycle of innovation, discovery, construction and obsolescence. It is also music.
I was just thinking of the length of the strings. In Bhairav the distance from Risabh to Gandhar (D flat - E) on the fingerboard is a stretch. My hands must be of average size - if not slightly larger than the average in the Middle East and Asia over the last few hundred years. I don't think anyone arbitrarily decided out of the blue that this was a good size for the instrument. If that had been the case then the first one would probably have been abandoned as too difficult to play. The concomitant innovations needed to be developed in tandem at the bodily, cellular level. The fingers needed to be trained to work with this machine. And of course the actual music also evolves and accommodates simultaneously, becoming the exploration of what is realizable.
So the biological, the technical and the metaphysical all push and pull one another along a path of development that can only be seen in hindsight. Relatively small, iterative adjustments in each eventually lead to a complex, interdependent system. This is evolution. A cycle of innovation, discovery, construction and obsolescence. It is also music.
CeC & CaC (sekansak)
This is what I was doing a couple of months ago.
Terrible time lag, this blog has...
Anyway the organizer's idiosyncratic but lively report is now up.
It was a very interesting event which certainly moved my thinking on with regard to the technology/innovation/language/music nexus.
And some exciting new collaborations are growing out of it.
Terrible time lag, this blog has...
Anyway the organizer's idiosyncratic but lively report is now up.
It was a very interesting event which certainly moved my thinking on with regard to the technology/innovation/language/music nexus.
And some exciting new collaborations are growing out of it.
Tuesday 20 February 2007
The yoga of music
Feeling a tremendous rush of energy from the satisfaction of being able to do something that had seemed completely mysterious or impossible.
Have now finally got pretty well under my fingers the sthai of a gat in raga Bhairav. It's a complex dancing pattern of intricate movement. It's a fractal process. Now that I have (after much effort) the skeletal infrastructure of it, bends and slides, expressive movements around and between, are beginning to reveal themselves. The process of learning has a beginning but no end.
After a period of intense concentration when I get up for a loo break I examine the quality of mind in which I'm suffused. It is taught and sharp - like a steel string. And, like a string, it is a line with no breaks. If a space appears, of cloudiness or haziness, there is no string, no tightness. Just a flapping, flabby, floating meander.
Interesting that right concentration - samadhi - is often described as a laser. A string of light. Pointed, focused, sharp. And ordinary, untrained awareness is a generalised, diffuse, dim light. I wonder if there is a universality about this experience. And if so, does that imply some physiological structuring? Is there a material line being drawn somewhere in my body? Thinking in terms of neurons, what is the difference between the electrical activity in the body when it is in an ordinary lax state, and that when it is focussed, as in musical performance.
But I have played lots of kinds of music and this feeling is rare. There is something very particular about the quality of mind cultivated through this particular technology. The sarod requires a tremendous amount of concentration because of its fretlesness. There is a lot of rhythmic complexity in the right hand picking. And the gat I am learning, because it is a single melodic line within a raga, has a very clear structure but also tremendous openness to expansion and contraction. New twists and turns and weaves grow in response to this particular moment of perception. It combines structure and improvisation.
Yoga is to yoke. The spirit hitched to something fixed. Freedom by itself is amorphous, indistinct, ultimately without content. The structure of a technology gives a form to consciousness. The asana acts as a lens to focus the mind. The instrument is an asana.
So is the core use of technology. It's a yoke for the oxen of one's will. Not a means to an end but a hitching post, a marker, a medium. Of course ends inevitably result. They are indeed the catalyst. Eg, I want to practice yoga asanas in order to look fit on the beach, or to achieve immortality, or to feel comfortable. Of course a laser can be pointed in any direction - by a surgeon or a soldier. Technology is inherently dangerous. So it must have an ethical basis.
Even a musical instrument can be mastered with a view to winning applause or wealth. The long term viability, the sustainability of any technology rests on it's ethical foundation. WHY is it?
A sarod is relatively inactive in the world - in comparison with a plough, say, or a spear. So it has many of the benefits of a technology to which to yoke consciousness, while avoiding many of the dangers. But still the motivation behind it's mastery needs to be constantly examined. This is vipassana - the binding together of concentration and detachment, awareness and equanimity.
Have now finally got pretty well under my fingers the sthai of a gat in raga Bhairav. It's a complex dancing pattern of intricate movement. It's a fractal process. Now that I have (after much effort) the skeletal infrastructure of it, bends and slides, expressive movements around and between, are beginning to reveal themselves. The process of learning has a beginning but no end.
After a period of intense concentration when I get up for a loo break I examine the quality of mind in which I'm suffused. It is taught and sharp - like a steel string. And, like a string, it is a line with no breaks. If a space appears, of cloudiness or haziness, there is no string, no tightness. Just a flapping, flabby, floating meander.
Interesting that right concentration - samadhi - is often described as a laser. A string of light. Pointed, focused, sharp. And ordinary, untrained awareness is a generalised, diffuse, dim light. I wonder if there is a universality about this experience. And if so, does that imply some physiological structuring? Is there a material line being drawn somewhere in my body? Thinking in terms of neurons, what is the difference between the electrical activity in the body when it is in an ordinary lax state, and that when it is focussed, as in musical performance.
But I have played lots of kinds of music and this feeling is rare. There is something very particular about the quality of mind cultivated through this particular technology. The sarod requires a tremendous amount of concentration because of its fretlesness. There is a lot of rhythmic complexity in the right hand picking. And the gat I am learning, because it is a single melodic line within a raga, has a very clear structure but also tremendous openness to expansion and contraction. New twists and turns and weaves grow in response to this particular moment of perception. It combines structure and improvisation.
Yoga is to yoke. The spirit hitched to something fixed. Freedom by itself is amorphous, indistinct, ultimately without content. The structure of a technology gives a form to consciousness. The asana acts as a lens to focus the mind. The instrument is an asana.
So is the core use of technology. It's a yoke for the oxen of one's will. Not a means to an end but a hitching post, a marker, a medium. Of course ends inevitably result. They are indeed the catalyst. Eg, I want to practice yoga asanas in order to look fit on the beach, or to achieve immortality, or to feel comfortable. Of course a laser can be pointed in any direction - by a surgeon or a soldier. Technology is inherently dangerous. So it must have an ethical basis.
Even a musical instrument can be mastered with a view to winning applause or wealth. The long term viability, the sustainability of any technology rests on it's ethical foundation. WHY is it?
A sarod is relatively inactive in the world - in comparison with a plough, say, or a spear. So it has many of the benefits of a technology to which to yoke consciousness, while avoiding many of the dangers. But still the motivation behind it's mastery needs to be constantly examined. This is vipassana - the binding together of concentration and detachment, awareness and equanimity.
Language consists of grunts, tics, gestures, tones, melodies, flourishes, as much as discrete words.
Sounds are fuzzy haloes of meaning rather than fixed objects. Writing obscures this fact.
I'd like to make a landscape of words. A text somehow melded with a junglescape. Huge scale, sumptuous like a book. A lightbox?
Perhaps a series, some using non-Roman script. Or a palimpsest.
Some in which the text is readable, poetic even.
Sounds are fuzzy haloes of meaning rather than fixed objects. Writing obscures this fact.
I'd like to make a landscape of words. A text somehow melded with a junglescape. Huge scale, sumptuous like a book. A lightbox?
Perhaps a series, some using non-Roman script. Or a palimpsest.
Some in which the text is readable, poetic even.
Monday 19 February 2007
Sarod
January 11th. That's when the wind got knocked out of this blog. That was my first sarod lesson.
It was like discovering a whole landscape to explore. I felt I was running into the hills.
A rollercoaster I'm building as I go. Hammering like crazy, pulling rails out of a back pocket. A cartoon figure. Building a path through the air, suspended amongst the forest so as not to disturb it. No footprints. The rail is invented in space.
That's what it's like, learning something.
The laying down of keratin at the roots of my fingernails echoes the construction of neuronal pathways as I build my knowledge of the sarod at the level of bodily practice. And absorb the body of knowledge embodied by the instrument.
Watch a plant grow in this light.
A tree of learning.
Interesting bloke...
'Atau Tanaka is researcher at Sony Computer Science Laboratories (CSL) Paris, spanning cultures and encompassing domains of artistic expression, scientific research, and industry. He holds degrees in science and music from Harvard University and Stanford University's CCRMA. He has conducted research at IRCAM in Paris and was Artistic Ambassador for Apple Computer Europe. In Japan he has been in residency at NTT/ICC and taught Media Art at Keio University. He is known for his work with sensor instruments and network music installations, in artistic exhibition as well as scientific publications. His current work is focused on harnessing collective musical creativity on mobile devices, seeking the continuing place of the artist in democratized digital forms. He has received support from the Fraunhofer Institute, Japanese Telecommunications Ministry, and the Daniel Langlois Foundation. He has served on committees of the Audio Engineering Society (AES), New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME), and ISEA.'
Websites:
http://www.xmira.com/atau/
http://www.csl.sony.fr/~atau
http://crossfade.walkerart.org/jujikan
Brief
As a time-based art, music occupies time and composers manipulate temporal structures. Sound art, meanwhile, represents a movement where audio is treated as a plastic medium. As sound is by nature a temporal medium, it will always traverse time. Acoustical sound is also physical, and is able to fill volumetric space. Ultimately time and space are not independent domains, but are endpoints in a spectrum in which audio works of various forms can be situated. Concert performances are temporo-centric, taking place at a specific time and for a certain duration. Installations are more spatio-centric, on exhibition and available to the spectator to explore at volition, free of time constraints.
Time and space, then, map out a continuum within which performance and installation can by considered. With this as a basis, we retrace examples of the author's work over the last decade in musical compositions created with interactive technologies. This spans a body of work starting with sensor systems as musical instruments, through networked performances and installations, looking on towards musical artworks conceived for communities of mobile devices.
Websites:
http://www.xmira.com/atau/
http://www.csl.sony.fr/~atau
http://crossfade.walkerart.org/jujikan
Brief
As a time-based art, music occupies time and composers manipulate temporal structures. Sound art, meanwhile, represents a movement where audio is treated as a plastic medium. As sound is by nature a temporal medium, it will always traverse time. Acoustical sound is also physical, and is able to fill volumetric space. Ultimately time and space are not independent domains, but are endpoints in a spectrum in which audio works of various forms can be situated. Concert performances are temporo-centric, taking place at a specific time and for a certain duration. Installations are more spatio-centric, on exhibition and available to the spectator to explore at volition, free of time constraints.
Time and space, then, map out a continuum within which performance and installation can by considered. With this as a basis, we retrace examples of the author's work over the last decade in musical compositions created with interactive technologies. This spans a body of work starting with sensor systems as musical instruments, through networked performances and installations, looking on towards musical artworks conceived for communities of mobile devices.
Sunday 18 February 2007
The Roots of Writing
(from Dene Grigar's course blog on 'Language, Text and Technology')
This image of a horse, from the Caves of Lascaux located in Southern France, is believed to have been created around 1400 BCE. The caves are filled with such images. Some scholars argue that the images represent pictorial stories of hunting expeditions humans undertook. Others argue that they represent rituals humans engaged in to guarantee successful hunts. The truth be told, the silence of the images tells us little. Hence, when we think about the notion that texts speak, we are more apt to think about texts whose writing technologies offer more exacting information.
Below are images of various writing technologies or artifacts that recall them.
Boustrophedon
http://www.nouspace.net/dene/5273/boustrophedon.jpg
Communication Models
http://www.nouspace.net/dene/5273/communication_model.jpg
Cuneiform
http://www.nouspace.net/dene/5273/cuneiform_details.jpg
http://www.nouspace.net/dene/5273/cuneiform.jpg
Hieroglyphics
http://www.nouspace.net/dene/5273/hieroglyphics.jpg
Mayan Hieroglyphics
http://www.nouspace.net/dene/5273/mayan_hieroglyphs.jpg
Phaistos Disk
http://www.nouspace.net/dene/5273/phaistos_disk.jpg
Rosetta Stone
http://www.nouspace.net/dene/5273/rosetta_stone.jpg
Stoichedon
http://www.nouspace.net/dene/5273/stoichedon.jpg
Printer's Mark
http://www.nouspace.net/dene/5273/printers_mark.jpg
---------------------
Essential readings:
The Muse Learns to Write: Reflections on Orality and Literacy from Antiquity to the Present
By Eric A. Havelock
Yale UP, 1988, Paper $17.00
ISBN: 0300043821
The History of Writing
By Steven Roger Fischer
Reaktion Books, 2003, Paper, £9.95
ISBN: 978 1 861 89167 9
Writing Machines
By N. Katherine Hayles
The MIT Press, 2002, Paper, $19.95
ISBN: 0-262-58215-5
Telematic Embrace: Visionary Theories of Art, Technology, and Consciousness
Edited and with an Essay by Edward A. Shanken
By Roy Ascott
University of California Press, 2003
Downloadable eBook version available:
Adobe E-Reader at ebooks.com, $15.95
Saturday 17 February 2007
Inside-out and upside-down
My last post was on Makar Sankranti. This is on Maha Shivaratri. The long night which belongs to ascetics, tantrics, fakirs, all those who are willing to plunge, fully awake, into the darkness.
Apologies for having been absent for a month. Once again now the blog reveals itself as an inversion, an upside-down, inside-out thing. You read it backwards, starting at the end of a sequence of thoughts. It is an exposure of interiority, a display of private musings. And now in its pattern of entry and absence it shows the negative space of my life. It is when there is most going on that this blog becomes empty. And it is when I disappear from the immediate world of firends, colleagues, family, students, that this blog swells and writhes into life.
So let me now try to stay close to the boundary between the two worlds. Between the positive and negative, at the flat plane of the looking glass itself, I'll try to trace some of the thoughts and events that have filled my absence.
Of course many things are jotted in my notebooks. Pen and paper have often been faithful companions when a portal to the internet, or even a portable computer, has been remote. So I'll give you a few snippets from those...
Apologies for having been absent for a month. Once again now the blog reveals itself as an inversion, an upside-down, inside-out thing. You read it backwards, starting at the end of a sequence of thoughts. It is an exposure of interiority, a display of private musings. And now in its pattern of entry and absence it shows the negative space of my life. It is when there is most going on that this blog becomes empty. And it is when I disappear from the immediate world of firends, colleagues, family, students, that this blog swells and writhes into life.
So let me now try to stay close to the boundary between the two worlds. Between the positive and negative, at the flat plane of the looking glass itself, I'll try to trace some of the thoughts and events that have filled my absence.
Of course many things are jotted in my notebooks. Pen and paper have often been faithful companions when a portal to the internet, or even a portable computer, has been remote. So I'll give you a few snippets from those...
Monday 15 January 2007
Makar Sankranti
January 14th/15th has been pious, festive and cosmic. I'm glad to be living in a country which is so conscious of astronomical movements that it closes its banks, businesses and schools and instead prays to the heavens at this time.
Makar Sankranti is a time of Sun worship.
I accidentally watched a film on the TV. It happened to start in my field of vision and I was gripped firstly by its visual style, then by the story. It was called ‘The Final Fantasy - The Spirits Within’ written and directed by Hironobu Sakaguchi. I'd never heard of it before. Apparently it comes from the world of gaming.
Anyway it got me thinking about my piece 'Array' and about recent conversations with Stephan Harding at Schumacher College (whose new book 'Animate Earth' has recently appeared) and David Abram (whose book 'The Spell of the Sensuous' has been influencing me for the last ten years.)
One of the final sequences in the movie particularly caught my imagination. It reminded me of those sumptuous ISKCON paintings in which the soul of each living being is pictured as a small golden light glowing in its heart. In the movie the soul force is pictured as a little light, like tinkerbell, floating up to meet other souls in a field of stars. As this inner fairy rises out of the body of a scientist, he gasps, 'It's warm!'
I can't see any stars from my Bangalore city centre apartment but on Makar Sankranti I'm reminded that they are there.
*
So it’s good that at least we are beginning to acknowledge our mother and our siblings on this planet. This is a small beginning in the search for intelligent life.
The contemporary re-acquaintance with Gaia is useful in helping to alleviate some of the suffering caused by self-centredness. It reminds us of the more-than-human world.
But it does not go far enough. In fact it is the Sun that sustains even Gaia.
The Sun is the Father
And our Mother, his Daughter.
And he himself just one amongst councils and communities.
And each one of us is, to oneself, a star
Making the lights of others almost invisible.
Being,
seen from far away
appears as an insignificant pinprick.
But it is experienced as heat.
Stars are burning crucibles
Creating from their bodies the material of life
And giving rise eventually to spirit.
While we are consumed in the sunshine of the self
We do not feel the heat of the countless stars around us
But in the cool detachment of the moonlight
We can broaden the mind to see the millions of souls hanging in the heavens
And know that each is a fire in space.
That is unless we light the night as if it were day.
Falling into the Milky Way
I see my own little heat as if from afar, as a point of light.
And if I lose that viewpoint, I lose my place.
And it will not be long before I am lost altogether
Blinded by my own fires.
Makar Sankranti is a time of Sun worship.
I accidentally watched a film on the TV. It happened to start in my field of vision and I was gripped firstly by its visual style, then by the story. It was called ‘The Final Fantasy - The Spirits Within’ written and directed by Hironobu Sakaguchi. I'd never heard of it before. Apparently it comes from the world of gaming.
Anyway it got me thinking about my piece 'Array' and about recent conversations with Stephan Harding at Schumacher College (whose new book 'Animate Earth' has recently appeared) and David Abram (whose book 'The Spell of the Sensuous' has been influencing me for the last ten years.)
One of the final sequences in the movie particularly caught my imagination. It reminded me of those sumptuous ISKCON paintings in which the soul of each living being is pictured as a small golden light glowing in its heart. In the movie the soul force is pictured as a little light, like tinkerbell, floating up to meet other souls in a field of stars. As this inner fairy rises out of the body of a scientist, he gasps, 'It's warm!'
I can't see any stars from my Bangalore city centre apartment but on Makar Sankranti I'm reminded that they are there.
*
So it’s good that at least we are beginning to acknowledge our mother and our siblings on this planet. This is a small beginning in the search for intelligent life.
The contemporary re-acquaintance with Gaia is useful in helping to alleviate some of the suffering caused by self-centredness. It reminds us of the more-than-human world.
But it does not go far enough. In fact it is the Sun that sustains even Gaia.
The Sun is the Father
And our Mother, his Daughter.
And he himself just one amongst councils and communities.
And each one of us is, to oneself, a star
Making the lights of others almost invisible.
Being,
seen from far away
appears as an insignificant pinprick.
But it is experienced as heat.
Stars are burning crucibles
Creating from their bodies the material of life
And giving rise eventually to spirit.
While we are consumed in the sunshine of the self
We do not feel the heat of the countless stars around us
But in the cool detachment of the moonlight
We can broaden the mind to see the millions of souls hanging in the heavens
And know that each is a fire in space.
That is unless we light the night as if it were day.
Falling into the Milky Way
I see my own little heat as if from afar, as a point of light.
And if I lose that viewpoint, I lose my place.
And it will not be long before I am lost altogether
Blinded by my own fires.
Language, Embodiment and Self-Hypnosis
I've been thinking recently a lot about how to make an image of the literate, symbolic scene overlaid, underlying, or embedded in the 'natural', ie non-human, embodied landscape. Like the 'code rain' from 'The Matrix' movies which has become almost a visual cliche now.
Here are a couple of beautiful plays on the idea that other people have made.
I think both of these artists have amazing bodies of work, in terms of range, depth and lightness. And, considering I'd never come across them before, it's extraordinary how much sympathetic resonance I feel.
Thomas Broomé's ModernMantra drawings.
And here you'll find three text pieces which seem to be realizations of my recent daydreams, 'Written Forms', 'Composition', and 'Text Rain'
The work of both these artists are well worth exploring in depth, so I'll leave you now to wander around their websites.
Here are a couple of beautiful plays on the idea that other people have made.
I think both of these artists have amazing bodies of work, in terms of range, depth and lightness. And, considering I'd never come across them before, it's extraordinary how much sympathetic resonance I feel.
Thomas Broomé's ModernMantra drawings.
And here you'll find three text pieces which seem to be realizations of my recent daydreams, 'Written Forms', 'Composition', and 'Text Rain'
The work of both these artists are well worth exploring in depth, so I'll leave you now to wander around their websites.
Friday 12 January 2007
Technologies of the Self
Here's a course description I've just written for students at Srishti. Start teaching next week.
Technologies may be considered very broadly as means towards ends. They can help in the constant striving towards health and wholeness. Their inherent danger however, is that the tools may overshadow the purpose. The design challenge is to discriminate between means and ends, to keep the end in view, and to negotiate the narrow path between useful and dangerous technology. This path has become razor sharp and it is now time to reassess the value of our technologies in terms of personal well-being and the health of the entire planet.
In this lab we will look at spiritual as ecological technologies, emphasizing their complementarity. We will identify as a key issue the relationship between oral and literate culture, between listening and looking, between the vernacular and the institutional, between wisdom and knowledge, between science and superstition. We will trace, in the history of technology, a progression from embodied, participative experience to disembodied, abstract symbol. And we will also conjure future technologies to help to re-integrate and re-invigorate the body of the self and the world.
Technologies may be considered very broadly as means towards ends. They can help in the constant striving towards health and wholeness. Their inherent danger however, is that the tools may overshadow the purpose. The design challenge is to discriminate between means and ends, to keep the end in view, and to negotiate the narrow path between useful and dangerous technology. This path has become razor sharp and it is now time to reassess the value of our technologies in terms of personal well-being and the health of the entire planet.
In this lab we will look at spiritual as ecological technologies, emphasizing their complementarity. We will identify as a key issue the relationship between oral and literate culture, between listening and looking, between the vernacular and the institutional, between wisdom and knowledge, between science and superstition. We will trace, in the history of technology, a progression from embodied, participative experience to disembodied, abstract symbol. And we will also conjure future technologies to help to re-integrate and re-invigorate the body of the self and the world.
Monday 8 January 2007
Practice based Research
Writing is an invaluable aid to memory. But it can also be misleading. Over the weekend I've been working on a konnakol pattern beginning with ta-kitekitetake digutarikitetake...
The 'kitetake' phrase moves the tongue from the back of the throat, across the roof and right up to the teeth. It's very useful to have the written/visualised word as a marker of this movement. Particularly helps in those brain crash moments when everything becomes confused and all structure is forgotten. (Is that some kind of wholesale reconfiguration of the neurons?)
The words can engender a false sense of definition however. In fact it's the movement and the feeling which is important, a tiny part of which is photographed in the word. I have been discovering the immense variation that is possible even within this tiny phrase. It can be voiced at an infinite number of pitches, or unvoiced, in which case it functions almost as a stop to previous sounds and a coiling preparation for future ones. Different parts of the word take on different roles in the rhythmic flow. When it is whispered the 't' sound approaches an 's' and the phrase becomes almost a hiss - like the suck and sizzle of a hi-hat. The 'ka' becomes like the click of a rimshot and the 'ta' like a strong snare stroke. And this whole phrase is simply a substrate around which the bass and melody weaves in the 'Ta' 'Di', 'Thom' and 'Nam' sounds.
I used to think the fingers and limbs were capable of subtle expression and modulation - and indeed they are when they have been trained by a master musician - but the mouth, tongue, lips, throat, face, shoulders and breath are capable of mind-boggling permutations which I am only just realizing. The system is so finely interdependant that I can clearly hear the difference in my facial expressions. And I love the immediacy and constant availability of the voice. I now have a khanjeera and a bamboo flute but even those seem too bulky, fragile, expensive, complex, clumsy and limited in comparison to the voice. With the most fundamental resource, the body itself, direct work is possible on consciousness and musculature.
A question that keeps arising is whether I am pronouncing things properly. I'm seduced by the idea that there is one correct pronunciation. But perhaps, like any language, it is alive in the mouths and ears. It keeps wriggling and echoing in response to the changing environment. Any particular pronunciation is an instantiation by one particular person at one particular time. The joy I experience in my konnakol practice is in the mesmeric fascination with the effects of variations that orbit around the notated marker. The more stable and permanent the marker appears the more stultifying it is to my joyful freedom - or else the more vigorous and confident I must be in pushing and pulling it.
So I can imagine in some Dreamtime, where the words and rhythms originate, that they come in a spirit of pure, unbridled creation. The marks of the environment then help to remember the creation, human oral formulae fix it further, followed by handwritten notes and then printed texts. Finally when it becomes the object of 'scholarly' or 'scientific' study it becomes preserved. Having had some 'education' in this memory game which is so highly regarded in our culture - the ratification of knowledge - I notice the tendency to feel slightly alienated from the material being studied. Eg., I wonder how nasal the end of the word 'Thom' should be, or how aspirated the 'Di' should be. But then I throw off the data collecting -ologist and immerse myself in the performative moment in which the truth shines out. Is this practice-based research?
The 'kitetake' phrase moves the tongue from the back of the throat, across the roof and right up to the teeth. It's very useful to have the written/visualised word as a marker of this movement. Particularly helps in those brain crash moments when everything becomes confused and all structure is forgotten. (Is that some kind of wholesale reconfiguration of the neurons?)
The words can engender a false sense of definition however. In fact it's the movement and the feeling which is important, a tiny part of which is photographed in the word. I have been discovering the immense variation that is possible even within this tiny phrase. It can be voiced at an infinite number of pitches, or unvoiced, in which case it functions almost as a stop to previous sounds and a coiling preparation for future ones. Different parts of the word take on different roles in the rhythmic flow. When it is whispered the 't' sound approaches an 's' and the phrase becomes almost a hiss - like the suck and sizzle of a hi-hat. The 'ka' becomes like the click of a rimshot and the 'ta' like a strong snare stroke. And this whole phrase is simply a substrate around which the bass and melody weaves in the 'Ta' 'Di', 'Thom' and 'Nam' sounds.
I used to think the fingers and limbs were capable of subtle expression and modulation - and indeed they are when they have been trained by a master musician - but the mouth, tongue, lips, throat, face, shoulders and breath are capable of mind-boggling permutations which I am only just realizing. The system is so finely interdependant that I can clearly hear the difference in my facial expressions. And I love the immediacy and constant availability of the voice. I now have a khanjeera and a bamboo flute but even those seem too bulky, fragile, expensive, complex, clumsy and limited in comparison to the voice. With the most fundamental resource, the body itself, direct work is possible on consciousness and musculature.
A question that keeps arising is whether I am pronouncing things properly. I'm seduced by the idea that there is one correct pronunciation. But perhaps, like any language, it is alive in the mouths and ears. It keeps wriggling and echoing in response to the changing environment. Any particular pronunciation is an instantiation by one particular person at one particular time. The joy I experience in my konnakol practice is in the mesmeric fascination with the effects of variations that orbit around the notated marker. The more stable and permanent the marker appears the more stultifying it is to my joyful freedom - or else the more vigorous and confident I must be in pushing and pulling it.
So I can imagine in some Dreamtime, where the words and rhythms originate, that they come in a spirit of pure, unbridled creation. The marks of the environment then help to remember the creation, human oral formulae fix it further, followed by handwritten notes and then printed texts. Finally when it becomes the object of 'scholarly' or 'scientific' study it becomes preserved. Having had some 'education' in this memory game which is so highly regarded in our culture - the ratification of knowledge - I notice the tendency to feel slightly alienated from the material being studied. Eg., I wonder how nasal the end of the word 'Thom' should be, or how aspirated the 'Di' should be. But then I throw off the data collecting -ologist and immerse myself in the performative moment in which the truth shines out. Is this practice-based research?
Sunday 7 January 2007
The Digital Wild
In The Vital Machine, scientist-historian David Channell says, 'One of the most important issues facing us as we move toward the twenty-first century is a new relationship between technology and organic life.' Pointing to medical procedures and engineering technologies that extend life and make survival possible, he argues that the boundaries between the natural and artificial have become less clear. This ambiguity - which he calls 'liminality'- between humans and machines brings discomfort to humans, and for that reason he argues that we need to engage in a reexamination of the relationship between humans and technology so that we can 'intelligently and responsibly deal with [the new technical developments]' (3-4).
The dichotomy of machine and organic suggested in Channell's argument is interesting when we consider that a driving force underlying much of what we humans do is a need to set ourselves apart, not only from the artificial but also from other organic life. As far back as Aristotle, we have classified, categorized, and codified organic life, arriving at the idea that what sets us apart from other life forms is that we 'liv[e] by art and reasonings' (Metaphysica 980b 26-7).
So, in a sense what this special issue, 'Wild Nature and the Digital Life' is meant to do is to refine Channell's call for reexamination by stepping back from distinctions of humanity and technology and looking instead at the liminal spaces between nature and humanity mediated as both are (or can be) through computer technologies.
Perhaps by doing so we will come to understand that that technology is not a category of objects that exist outside of humanity but within it. The essays, art, and ideas that Sue and I have put together for this issue tell us that a more productive response to new technical developments may be one that does not focus on distinctions between the natural and the artificial but rather one that articulates what humanity gains and loses when the natural and artificial come together. Is it not the unknown, the lack of understanding of their relationship, that makes either (and both together) "wild"?
Dene Grigar
"In Wildness is the preservation of the World."
Henry David Thoreau
In the introduction to the "Wild Nature and the Digital Life" Special Issue of the LEA, Dene Grigar asks: "How are humans reinventing 'the wild' digitally? What is the relationship between humans and wild nature, and has it changed with the advent of computer technology?"
The terms "wild", "wildness", and "wilderness" have undergone quite a few transformations -- from a designation of the beastly and savage to the sublime antithesis of "culture" to the rare and endangered spaces that need to be preserved. But in all cases, the "wild" has represented an instance that was opposed to civilization and the problems of humanity - a form of uncontaminated purity.
Both last two LEA's look very relevant to me.
New Media Poetics
and the November issue - Digital Wild
The dichotomy of machine and organic suggested in Channell's argument is interesting when we consider that a driving force underlying much of what we humans do is a need to set ourselves apart, not only from the artificial but also from other organic life. As far back as Aristotle, we have classified, categorized, and codified organic life, arriving at the idea that what sets us apart from other life forms is that we 'liv[e] by art and reasonings' (Metaphysica 980b 26-7).
So, in a sense what this special issue, 'Wild Nature and the Digital Life' is meant to do is to refine Channell's call for reexamination by stepping back from distinctions of humanity and technology and looking instead at the liminal spaces between nature and humanity mediated as both are (or can be) through computer technologies.
Perhaps by doing so we will come to understand that that technology is not a category of objects that exist outside of humanity but within it. The essays, art, and ideas that Sue and I have put together for this issue tell us that a more productive response to new technical developments may be one that does not focus on distinctions between the natural and the artificial but rather one that articulates what humanity gains and loses when the natural and artificial come together. Is it not the unknown, the lack of understanding of their relationship, that makes either (and both together) "wild"?
Dene Grigar
"In Wildness is the preservation of the World."
Henry David Thoreau
In the introduction to the "Wild Nature and the Digital Life" Special Issue of the LEA, Dene Grigar asks: "How are humans reinventing 'the wild' digitally? What is the relationship between humans and wild nature, and has it changed with the advent of computer technology?"
The terms "wild", "wildness", and "wilderness" have undergone quite a few transformations -- from a designation of the beastly and savage to the sublime antithesis of "culture" to the rare and endangered spaces that need to be preserved. But in all cases, the "wild" has represented an instance that was opposed to civilization and the problems of humanity - a form of uncontaminated purity.
Both last two LEA's look very relevant to me.
New Media Poetics
and the November issue - Digital Wild
Friday 5 January 2007
Making Sense
The ultimate lonely desolation is to be surrounded by nothing but reflections of my self and my own creations. Such a psychosis is the opposite of awe.
To inscribe the more-than-human into our writing we now need a computer that breathes.
For a computer language to be more than what we have decreed it to be it must be susceptible to more-than-human influence.
A computer with a multitude of sensors all affecting it would be capable of surprising, inspiring and frightening us.
A radio antenna, ECG electrodes, barometer, molecular analysers, cameras, thermometer, humidity sensors, vibration sensors, ultrasound sensors, mics, compass, spirit level. These would make a computer sensitive and emotional.
Communication with such a machine would be sensible. It would be possible to enter into conversation with such a machine. And what if it had the senses of bats, ants, potatoes? Or even rivers, beaches and mountains? How might it's logic be informed?
To inscribe the more-than-human into our writing we now need a computer that breathes.
For a computer language to be more than what we have decreed it to be it must be susceptible to more-than-human influence.
A computer with a multitude of sensors all affecting it would be capable of surprising, inspiring and frightening us.
A radio antenna, ECG electrodes, barometer, molecular analysers, cameras, thermometer, humidity sensors, vibration sensors, ultrasound sensors, mics, compass, spirit level. These would make a computer sensitive and emotional.
Communication with such a machine would be sensible. It would be possible to enter into conversation with such a machine. And what if it had the senses of bats, ants, potatoes? Or even rivers, beaches and mountains? How might it's logic be informed?
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