Category: Uncategorised

No Hollow No Projection

We finished our first lecture with Ingrid Plum, and one statement from Ingrid fascinated me: “Subscribing to certain categories of conciousness can create culture wars.” This idea refracted with my interests in buddhism and awareness. How do we work with an uncategorised conciousness, one free from the prison of objectivity? The path of awareness is depicted as a transcendantal path, one that transcends category. But in truth there are many ways to explore being in this world, and those ways can contradict eachother, even to the point of harm. This is an interesting point, the individual truths that bring us closer to the unknown can be so different, it makes me wonder about truth itself. Can we propose there is another way, one rooted in subjectivity, that does not perpetuate the supremacy of reason above all else? In academia, that tends to be a eurocentric reason.

I do think there is another way, and it’s edges are sharpened as globalisation continues. Does globalisation unite us in struggle? In this context I am imagining globalisation not as an interdependence but an increasing homogeneity of tools, services and architecture. I don’t struggle in the same way as the peasants who grow my own food, but given the trajectory of our systems our struggles may be coming closer together. We may use the same applications. GAFA (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon) unites all. (To clarify, according to the internet 4.39 billion people use the internet, that is 56% of the global population, so not everyone. This hypothesis imagines that number increasing.) In this sense the categories of conciousness become reduced as we upload ourselves into the metaverse. We are united and yet reduced. The will of GAFA is to exploit, isolate, and dismember people of their hearts, to then mine energy from this disturbed dopamine junkie creation. We are extracted. Here is the language for a non-human solidarity; my polluted mind winces at the polluted river. GAFA will reach into the far corners of human settlement for every last one of us. Can we hitch a ride by the back door perhaps? Can we undermine this process by using the same powerful tools of unification to have a global conversation that revive heart? The xenofeminists say “We want neither clean hands nor beautiful souls, neither virtue nor terror. We want superior forms of corruption.” We participate in corrupt systems to undermine them. Interestingly, the xenofeminists use XENO and ALIENATION to make a commonality of struggle similiar to the one I have made. We need to take caution making claims of a global solidarity to not appropriate the struggles of BIPOC. The global conversation is already happening and it is most important to give higher platforms to minority voices. And perhaps we can start to carve a unified heart.

Jana Winderen

“I record them in their environment then take these recordings to another environment… I make stories. … I don’t include myself, I want the listener to have freedom to think about their own association. I don’t want to tell that this is that and this is that.” – Jana Winderen

I love Jana Winderen! She records sound environments and creatures unknown to most of us. She believes in connecting with microscopic organisms as a way to spread awareness of macroscopic climate disasters and species exctinction. Her work is humble and minimal like the costume of an eco-activist and carries a clear message about the affect of human civilisation on other lifeworlds.

Pragmatism. Endings. Products? Winderen is an art warrior: she wants to make an impact with her work because she believes there is something wrong that is possible to change. In this sense the work can be considered as activist work, in the way that the practice does not only affect the artist but also attempts to change systems of power (resource extraction.) Her approach is pragmatic and due to her wanting material change it is action based. She finds pride in her history as a poor art student who saved their little cash to buy equipment. Ego as a tool for success! Her dedication can be seen in how clearly she draws these fish that she spends hours listening to.

The Noisiest Guys on the Planet | Jana Winderen

I believe in this action-based approach the philosophy must be limited. Is philosophy a fear of life? Winderen loves Life and she wants to protect those living beings. So at a certain point with her work, she stops reflecting and pondering and starts moving forward, towards a material result (sound object, installation, concept, essay). Must we do the same? Some artists criticize those who are ignorant of something because they didn’t have enough time to think about it. Others criticize those who think too much.

Thinking is a solo project and even the theorists have to write to export the ideas from their inner world.

This is a dichotomy that I am curious about, between thinking and action. However limiting those two categories are they point to a dilemma that has divided people at crucial moments in history. Must we think, must we act, or must we do anything?

Thankfully Winderen is acting, and makes beautiful work that I enjoy listening to.

Her message to us students was to find a way that we would like to work and create that space for ourselves, not to wait for anyone to invite us in. It’s a clear fruitful message we must remember when we have dreams.

Big Thief Rambling

Sonic experiences with Big Thief. Big Thief is an indie folk band currently releasing and performing across the world.

Five years ago I lived in a farmhouse hostel on the Beara peninsula in Ireland. In this time I was bright and holy and bowing to the world. Once I met a girl from North America, and we were two similiar souls bonding over music. Sitting on the sofa in orange firelight we swapped earphones, listening together, seperately. She shared with me her favourite band Big Thief. I never listened to bands before, I only listened to electronic music. After a week she left due to issues with her visa, but left her imprint on my journey with music. In the mornings I would sit on the edge of cliffs, watching sunrise and listening to Big Thief, tears of joy.

Certain environments allow me to be present: feeling openly in a safe and beautiful space. Feeling expanded and curious about the surrounding creation. Safety and quietness form a soul hyperconductive to the emotions of music.

In London Big Thief became a voice to resonate my internal feelings of loss and sadness. Adrianne Lenker, the lyricist, depicts a tender ecological heart. She calls for responsibility and connection: “The blood of the man who is killing our mother with his hands is in me, is in my veigns.” … “The wound has no direction, everybody needs someone and deserves protection.” The resonance of lyrics through sound is a way to understand ourselves in a world that carries multiple ways of being. Music is often a person’s anchor point to ones identity and mood. Some people listen to folk and trap in the same day. There is hyperfolk music! Music taste has a multiplicity, but it’s borders show a unique personhood.

I saw Big Thief live in the O2 Shepard’s Bush this week. We all piled into the theatre with no script or communicative structures apart from beer. The crowd was warm and innocent, naive. For a moment I felt ashamed of my passion for folk music because the bearded men in plaid looked less cool than the hardcore techno queers and yet the energy in the room was soft, relaxed. The air said RESOLVED. I thought it is nice to have a resolution and go to bed at midnight. The air also carried remnants of the pandemic that wrapped little bubbles around people.

Big Thief came and performed. Adrianne Lenker is a lucid artist and the room was in awe of her, holding their breaths. As a band that makes gentle and restrained acoustic music their live performance as more rocky and this felt jarring for me. As they gained popularity over the years their work became more accessible and I believed that the expectations of the audiences to be pleased was influencing their music output. Adrianne Lenker has a vision to make a better world, so she clearly sees value in making her work accessible to more people. This highlights a question I think about, about the preciousness or purity of art uncompromised. I felt I could still enjoy the work and accept the room around me and the organic mutation of the band as they entered a global music industry. Resisting these developments would be draining and unproductive.

Where we put the line of compromise in our work is a personal choice. I think we can hold back on criticizing an artist for selling out as we cannot imagine the pressure that begin to enclose them as they build a career within a toxic industry. Who makes the industry toxic? The air of resolution I felt in the room contrasts to the current collapse of civilisation. As white western people do we congratulate our interest in folk as a good quality? Did we participate in saving the planet? It is clear there are crushing limitations, on Adrianne, and us as audience/consumers. The sonic experience was pleasurable.

Elephants

I am listening to ‘Touching The Elephant’. The radio format is a perfect medium; an ironic layer of blindess and yet we are so immersed in the story. The limitations of the non visual format of audio is used to the advantage of narrative.

Moments of profound conversation are scattered like a collage, and build to create a moving and immersive piece. The tempo and density of information makes the piece function as a little painting on the wall that can be dipped in and out of. I notice the lack of clear structure, like an introduction, which makes sense for a broadcasted piece. Many listeners will be joining during the broadcast so it works to create an overall wash!

Polar Bears

Data and taste as polar opposites. An impressionate wash and an expressionate super reality. The work will contain elements of both, flickering in between, leaning towards a personal point.

I will discuss the differences between impressionism and expressionism and relate it to my work and vision.

The terms were popularised as two distinct art movements: impressionism in France in the late 19th century, and expressionism in Austria and Germany in the early 20th century. Artists who were friends painted in new ways. Both movements “reacted to the rapidly changing urban environments” and “criticized the dehumanising affects of industrialisation” says wiki. The paintings can now be found decorating the lives of those nasty industrialists, or sitting zazen in corporate corridors.

The paintings also proliferate in art institutions and many are available for free for the public. The range of people who will visit these paintings is a fraction. Who’s reading about impressionism? I never heard of these terms when I was a little country boy in Ireland. How do I morph my post-famine illiteration to absorb contemporary discourse? Should I fit my artistic vision under such terms that limit a unique expression formed in unique circumstance?

It would be naive to think that the movements of impressionism and expressionism did not penetrate my world from birth to departure from the cowlands. We will have our own impression of what these terms mean and how to use them to take advantage of the offerings of those fine art institutions. We will work on the backs of the rich!

Not really. In classical music, impressionism is a generally more light and sensuous style than the more serious and psychological style of expressionism. Impressionist music defines the mood and atmosphere of the moment. It often carries a tensionless harmony. Expressionist music is a more abstract representation of the specific thing. According to wikipedia, expressionist music often features a high level of dissonance, extreme contrasts of dynamics, constant changing of textures, “distorted” melodies and harmonies, and angular melodies with wide leaps. “Presto In C Major” by Scheonberg, an influential expressionist composer, is narrative, pompous and dramatic. I imagine erotic glances across the ballroom, a dash of heel… Meanwhile, in “Une barque sur l’océan” the impressionist Ravel creates an ambient wash of loosely defined moods. A poet looks across the sea in psychotropic light, thinking of first love. Scheonberg tells me how to feel and I feel suffocated, whereas Ravel gently stimulates the awareness out to the world and allows for personal exploration. Scheonberg the dictator, Ravel the anarchist?

On ‘Canvas’, a blog by Saatchi art, the question is proposed “Do you prefer the spontaneity of Impressionism or the intensity of Expressionism?” I love, crave and often require the ambient wash of everyday soundscapes, or ambient music. I don’t like the dictation of feeling considered expressionist. When life already feels psychedelic, perhaps my residual cowlandedness, I want flavour enhancers, not additives. I like wallpaper so I can sit in the room. Life is spontaneous rather than narrative, and art that can stimulate awareness beyond ourselves is crucial in a period of alienating individualism.

Binaries are a simplification. There are moments when I love the intensity of more expressionate work. And we must send messages to one another! In Silicon Valley the elites meditate and continue expanding the power of the metaverse. Within spaciousness we should implant messages, or ethics. Within the impression there can be an expression.

I would lean more towards impressionism in my aesthetics. I compose ambient music with environmental soundscapes. My intention is to settle the mind and bring the attention outwards. There are other duties to take place. Art warriors!

Listening

Thinking about listening: Listening, deep listening, slowly. As a rest from our urge to categorise, analyse and isolate. It is a form of meditation. We have solutions in our intellect; how do we carry them out with caution? Listening, sitting with, a discomfort, a burning heart, passion and change.

“Deep Listening is listening to everything all the time, and reminding yourself when you’re not. But going below the surface too, it’s an active process. It’s not passive. I mean hearing is passive in that soundwaves hinge upon the eardrum. You can do both. You can focus and be receptive to your surroundings. If you’re tuned out, then you’re not in contact with your surroundings. You have to process what you hear. Hearing and listening are not the same thing.” Pauline Oliveros.

I like Pauline Oliveros and her concreteness. She writes almost clinically, but the intention is beautiful. I find it interesting that the wider world around her, the global community of Deep Listening, have added aesthetical layers to her work, but in itself it is quite clean and accessible.

Is it about sound-in-itself? Pauline discusses inner listening, the feedback and chatter, to have a more holistic approach to sound rather than sound-in-itself. As a meditation practice is it more about the practice rather than the truth of it?

Stimulating listening can have positive effect on the world. Perhaps it can be done without a philisophical debate around sound. I am inspired by many visiting practitioners who are creating practical work!

I was impressed by Asa Sterjna’s ethical practice. She focuses on the affect of an artwork: what real change can it make? I think affect is important to me and triumphs spectacle. In the overwhelming global situation and also the local ones and inner ones, action feels important. I learned that art can show a new perspective and allow people to think about something in a different way. So then the artists can say their craft is the most important craft!

It feels confusing to imagine myself doing a sound project. In the simplicity and limitations of a project it will contradict and make ignorance. Action is stopping the philosophy train for a second.

There is also the act of enjoying oneself and enjoying the creative process, without having to change The World :D. I find listening to be somewhere in between, spreading go/oodness everywhere.

From an array of artists I have been inspired to incorporate meaning and direction in my work, and from our conceptual voyage I feel more relaxed about my vision, feeling like it doesn’t have to be anything that it is not.

To stimulate listening, my vision is to compose above field recordings by remembering the states and moods of that moment. I am imagining music that does not block but participates in the wider space of the field recording. The music also reflects similiar dynamics to the wider space: it stumbles, falls away and comes together again, inhales before singing again, and wanders distracted like the melodic mind amidst the soundscape. I would also like to try step out of melody but I love it so much!

Anti-correlationism

My learning direction has propelled out of sound as primary. I’ve been wondering how to approach environmental issues without the essentialism criticised by Seth Kim-Cohen. The essentialism as a smokescreen behind which social constructs are maintained for comfort. The research does not feel like a detour since my music is often about ecological issues and I use environmental recordings to create effect. The aesthetic of nature is hyperised, like the effect of looking through a small window onto another world. I am wondering about the critical messages we can send and how music can help us cope with feelings of ecological grief.

I am reading “Humankind” by Timothy Morton. Morton’s work explores the intersection of object-oriented thought and ecological studies. Object-oriented thought rejects the privileging of human existence over the existence of non-human objects. Objects exist independently of human perception. This philosophy relates to deep ecology and also the way indigenous cultures approach nature (as percieved by western culture). The point of these philosophies is to radically redefine nature to change our interaction with the planetary ‘resources’.

How can we approach environmentalism without the environment being “pure” or separate from the human? Without the human in the void of the centre, this is a planet at war with itself. Also! destruction is not far away but all around us. With focus on our proximity we can remain in dissatisfaction as a potency for action. Opening ourselves to the unhappiness is a delicate process, but essential for bright burning hearts!

Morton discusses a planetary situation of symbiotic entities: a biosphere: the symbiotic real. In symbiosis the relationship between beings is unclear. With the borders blurred between the human and nonhuman we can start to see our position as one of interdependence. For example let us remember the gut. Non-humans compose our bodies.

How to we imagine a world of interdependence without it having an essential essence, the one we call nature? What is in between beings as they rub against eachother? What is in common?

In “In The Blink Of An Ear” Cohen disproves the faith in a fundamental stratum of experience; some essential ontological state. But in the idea of universal beings there would be an essence of conciousness that is shared between all beings. It is not affected by the borders between things. If this were to exist it does not define my current subjective experience. I believe it is not a question of IF but moreso questioning our definitions of conciousness, sentience and matter. I believe in these other worlds, the other beings, that make up our shared world, and there is no essence to it. There is no inbetween spaces, just a tetris. This is the ecological perspective.

The ecological perspective does not have to be the natural harmony of life, but simply seeing a material surroundings that we do exist in, and we can no longer reject. These material surroundings are our source, our bodies, our microbiomes, the food we eat, the material structures that we walk in, etc. Contemporary culture pretends like these materials do not exist. There is discomfort, ugliness and shame around these topics. We walk around the city and dress up instead.

In the state of discomfort we make big theories about the world to prove our position, to prove anthropocentrism as natural.

Morton explains correlationism: there are things in themselves but they aren’t realized until they are correlated by a correlator. “The subject tends to be found hovering invisibly behind the heads of only one entity in the actually existing universe – the human being.” In contemporary art, recognition of the correlator is the major event. Kim-Cohen writes about the movement towards deobjectification, post-structuralism and non-cochlear ways of thinking. The mistakes in art to claim a purity without the human subjectivity prove wrong. However! What about the worlds without the human? How do we approach them with a human art? Let us expand the correlator to the nonhuman until it dissolves!

Can we expand the category of the correlator to also include the squirrel who perceives the tree branch in effort to move along? It does move. Then let’s include the tree as a correlator, as a being that recognises the light and moves toward it. A lesson in mental health. With this method the world becomes a net of unique worlds that all share a common space. Do all of these worlds have value? They must have value because they compose our world too.

I’m imagining this anti-essentialism trending in contemporary thought as a correlationism that is only defined to the human. A discomfort with our sources. Therefore why would we want to protect other species and other ecosystems? Valuing the nonhuman requires having something in common, which I believe is the world. “Having something in common is exactly what culturalism sees as reactionary primitivism.” Morton.

So why is contemporary culture so uncomfortable with the nonhuman, and so eager to write complex theories to disprove any attempt to protect the nonhuman? If we see culture as a progression of thought then we are totally right to disregard the source. But if we see it as a replacement for our relationship to the source, then we can understand this eagerness to prove the legitimacy of our direction and disprove a connection to wider planetary systems. Do we write theories to avoid pain?

Morton describes the “severing” as a “foundational traumatic fissure between reality (the human-correlated world) and the real (ecological symbiosis of human and nonhuman part of the biosphere.”

In my music I want to embrace the pain and create joy in the forward motion of the procession. It is a procession that we walk in. There is hope in our ability to make joy from even this!

Essentialismantiessentialism

After reading “In The Blink Of An Ear: Towards A Non-Cochlear Sonic Art” by Seth Kim-Cohen I have passed the irreversible step of injected knowledge; my house is bigger now. The house metaphor visualises bricks as knowledge. I have placed bricks, removed others that were quite old, resisted losing those dear to me. Certain bricks are large and sit in my new house, engaging with the world through it’s windows. Like I invite an interior designer to my house, I invited a theorist into the framework of my mind. Passively we dance with said theorist, imagining a sense of control but if I read another book my house would look different… However! the building process shows my interaction as a reader: what bricks I choose to place and where I place them. Maybe the garden remains in forever childhood. Spirit bushes glow and remind peace during the exhausting building process.

Seth Kim-Cohen assaults the reader with different anecdotes as evidence for the primary idea of the book. I felt convinced by the end as my confirmation bias was changed in the first half of the book.

The book is an examination of the tendencies towards essentialism in sound arts, or “sound-in-itself” as Cohen writes. He says essentialism is “based on faith in a fundamental stratum of experience on some essential ontological state, a metaphysics.” Percieving sound-in-itself is the attempt to reset the cognitive machinery to an imaginery baseline state. Particularly in sound arts, theorists have had the tendency to perceive sound as directly reflecting the real, or being the real. However Cohen claims that our relationship with sound is based on meaning and context.

Cohen is rejecting the tendency towards sound-in-itself for an expanded situation. He rejects the works of Lopez and Kubitsch that insinuate a purity to sound as if the listener is getting closer to a reality past the corrupt framework of culture. As I am reading, I am wondering about the value of these debates. What material results does this theoretical debate have on the world? Does it only resonate within s certain field? For me, this is a question we should engage with when arting; the question of relevance and political implication. A side note: my ability to see the relevance is construed and of course if someone is willing to write a book they must believe in it’s value. I will explore a personal point that makes me feel relevance in anti-essentialism. Anti-essentialism is an anti-primitivist argument, since primitivism is a belief in a harmony of human life that existed pre-industrialisation. Pre-industrialisation is pre-oppression and the rest of violence is natural! Wiki definition:“Anarcho-primitivism is a political ideology that advocates a return to non-“civilized” ways of life through deindustrialization, abolition of the division of labor or specialization and abandonment of large-scale organization technologies. Anarcho-primitivists critique the origins and progress of the Industrial Revolution and industrial society. According to anarcho-primitivism, the shift from hunter-gatherer to agricultural subsistence during the Neolithic Revolution gave rise to coercion, social alienation and social stratification.”

I was interested in anarcho-primitivism and doing political work in Amsterdam. I am grateful to be pulled away from one ideology into a new one; my house feels bigger, or I feel better in my house. I felt the lack of converation around gender troubling in primitivist circles, given the transphobia of the prominent anarcho-primitivst group “Deep Green Resistance.” They see the Christian construct of two sex species as an essential truth. They see the gender as a topping, chocolate or stawberry sauce. It is social constuct and therefore false. It has failed to see sex as a social construct.

One prominent example of the transphobia comes from Derrick Jensen, one of the founding members of DGR, responding to a DGR member asking him to clarify their position on transgender people. Jensen wrote :

Dear All, I have no ego investment in the following. I liked what I said to Julia or whatever his name was who wanted to join DGR: You are not a woman. You are a man who believes he is a woman. Thank you, Derrick

Interesting! Transphobia clothed in a radical political stance, one that has failed to understand that sex itself, the man-woman binary, is an epistemoligcal falsehood, a socially constructed violent regime that built our socioeconomic structures of today. For DGR to ignore this means their perception of reality is limited: the DGR framework is narrow enough to conceal hate and mask it as truth. It wouldn’t be so awkward if they didn’t claim to speak the truth….

isms everywhere, anti-essentialism for example.

Is the house the intellect? Is that all that we are? Cohen presents language as the base of our being, which could be criticized as another form of essentialism. What is beyond the house? Cohen would say that the belief in a reality beyond text and our personhood is a false belief; that we cannot escape ourselves.

We cannot ignore an object’s intersection with other elements of the world or situation: it’s setting, production, perception, impermanence. The borders of the defined object are conceptual borders: when examined closely they are more transient, since positionality has no centre. Coneptual art is often an exploration of these borders, with artwork that has no central point. It is a hole to direct attention to what is beside or additional to the work.

An expanded situation is necessary in the perception of art and sound as a way to explore our idealogical presumptions. The necessity is proven with the mistakes of DGR. The situation can be boundlessly explored but requires work, since text is formed and applied, and ignorance needs to be proven wrong with hard earned proofs. There is no essential wisdom, only the discussion of knowledge – marching forwards – towards a truth but never making it. I feel like we don’t go forwards, because in the attempt to progress we create new issues. It feels more like, a shifting house, one without any truth at all, just a lot of signs pointing to the sky that we will never know.