eyedrum IMPROV::The New World Order etc. & etc (fwd)
Alan Sondheim
Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 14:16:27 -0500
From: robert cheatham <ze...@earthlink.net>
To: art...@pd.org
Subject: eyedrum IMPROV::The New World Order etc. & etc
NEW WORLD ORDER: Aliens from Zeta Reticuli landed, destroying all
C-Major Chords
Wed Feb 2, 2005 12:57 PM ET
ATLANTA (Reuters)
It has now been confirmed that aliens have taken over certain aspects
of American life, starting with a little known art and music gallery
in Atlanta Georgia.
EYEDRUM art and music gallery is apparently the epicentre for a
plague of events which are just now coming to light. Apparently this
unknown force from beyond time and space has found a way to
selectively destroy, or at least radically alter, all C-Major chords,
and allied musical formations within the human species. Personnel at
the aforementioned eyedrum gallery are believed to be somehow
infected with a type of nano-structure which facilitates this
destruction or alteration. It is unknown exactly how many humans are
associated with the gallery, and specifically with the alteration of
the C-major chord.
The C-Major chord has long been known to be one of the primary
musical structures, along with allied chordings, known to create
happiness, prosperity, and a sense of well-being. It is unknown to
what degree the humans associated with the little known Atlanta
gallery are cooperating with this alien force and whether they are
purposely trying to make people 'feel bad' or whether there are other
motivations behind the somewhat enigmatic actions at the gallery.
Other galleries contacted by reporters were apparently leery of
making any public statements. The Atlanta Bureau of Cultural
Affairs, who have been known to provide support for events, when
contacted said they had no idea what this reporter was talking about
and threatened to have us removed if we did not leave the premises.
One person who wishes to remain anonymous said "I've seen it coming
for quite some time now...none of us involved locally know what to
make of it." It is not known however how far the 'infection' has
spread since the anonymous informant, not connected with EYEDRUM ART
AND MUSIC GALLERY, noticeably flinched during the interview as
Brittany Spears and then Usher came on the radio in the background.
It is understood that there will be some sort of gathering at the
eyedrum space on Thursday February 3, around 9 pm, said purpose
apparently to further promote the alteration and maybe even
destruction of the venerated C-Chord. Authorities have viewed the
website at http://www.eyedrum.org and found little cause for alarm.
However it is thought that the Zeta Reticuli aliens are using some
sort of on-line coding (called 'steganography') to spread the unknown
cognitive contagion. Potential viewers are warned to use caution and
common sense in viewing the site. At the first signs of discomfort,
viewers are urged to contact their local philosopher since it is not
known how latent the alien structure is in all musicians.
mIEKAL aND
all the rest of the diatonic chords, & perhaps disintegrate the circle
of fifths as a bonus detournement.
~mIEKAL
mpalmer
is a loss I could never allow.
m
mIEKAL aND
what has already been created but simply prevent the same music from
being created again.
~mIEKAL
who loves In C
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INTERNALATIONAL DICTIONARY OF NEOLOGISMS
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Dreamtime Village
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http://www.dreamtimevillage.org
"The word is the first stereotype." Isidore Isou, 1947.
Talan Memmott
http://memmott.org/talan/qwerty/proto.html
This is just a prototype, a piece of proof of concept...
The sound is over compressed because the shockwave file is 20MB when
uncompressed, which is how it is intended... But, you'll get the idea.
This is a single application prototype of something that would in fact
be eight different applications, on per instrument... With each
"player" activating the various sound files by way of the keyboard...
As indicated by a ninth application that poses as the "conductor"...
Each machine would be hooked up to its own projector, with
overlapping images from each projected on a screen above the players,
perhaps through the players...
The images in the prototype are just placeholders for the sake of
proving the concept... In the end there will be 72 images per
instrument, some of them video, some of the animations, some of them
text... Here, there are only 40 images total...
Really, I only put this together to check out the arrangement, the
composition, which is my own...
As it is there are only 10 files per instrument. In the end there
will be 36 per instrument.
Alan Sondheim
composed? And it sounds very 'modernist' to me - i.e. pointillist - can
you say something about this?
Thanks, Alan - the site's great btw
nettext http://biblioteknett.no/alias/HJEMMESIDE/bjornmag/nettext/
http://www.asondheim.org/
WVU 2004 projects: http://www.as.wvu.edu/clcold/sondheim/
http://www.as.wvu.edu:8000/clc/Members/sondheim
Trace projects http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/writers/sondheim/index.htm
Talan Memmott
musical phrases for each of the instruments. If all of the instruments
came up with phrase "1", and the editing of the files was consistant
in terms of time, they would line-up into something of a cadence (in
the ending of a musical phrase sense of the word, not a military
cadence for marching)...
The phrases are edited for their own individual time... That is, the
file ends when the instrument drops out... So, the issue of lining the
many files up to have it "play" as originally composed is complicated
at that point. Intentionally...
The recombinance, and the adjusting of time to fit the individual
phrases lends itself to the overall work sounding somewhat
"incidental" or "environmental"... As in, a sort of post-Varese
soundtrack, quasi-cinematic... So, yes, perhaps intentionally
modernist in terms of the way it sounds.
The most difficult thing, the most time consuming is the
composition... As I work out the visuals -- which are in the works --
for the final piece I am sure this will be as time consuming. But, I
think at one level the final piece will have a lot to do with the
cinematic apparatus and film narrative.... inferability through
music...
Lots of work yet to do...
Alan Sondheim
of course related to rounds - thinkin of "She was a Visitor" for example
or Cornelius Cardew stuff - even some jazz, think of Coltrane's Ascension
- Alan
Talan Memmott
but not on the computer. Though I'd love to have this score played
with real instruments somehow, the ability to do it here makes life
easier... I really like writing for ensembles of this size.
Though not so evident here, I think the visuals are important to the
semiotics of the work. In terms of thinking of the music as cinematic,
and how the sound and image recombinations (potentially) infer
narrative.
On Thu, 3 Feb 2005 01:10:16 -0500
Alan Sondheim
curious what would result... I also wanted to ask you about what i see,
rightly or wrongly, as a turn towards classicism in your work - your
earlier work was almost pure theory; the symbol/ic/s seemed hangings for
semiosis; now the content seems - and also re: your art history pieces -
to resonate with history - could you say something about this? - Alan
justin...@gmail.com
mIEKAL:
your words imply a death to the genre of music popularly termed
'standards', an implication that i simply won't allow myself to
imagine.
jUStin
Talan Memmott
The Art History pieces are not history, not art history. Some of the
same methods employed in Lexia to Perplexia are in most of those
pieces as well... For one thing, the appropriation and rewriting of
myth is something that is consistant in the theory work as well as the
art history work. And, any theory of hypermedia signification that is
evident in L2P is also there in something like Berth of V.ness. With
something like Self Portrait(s) [as Other(s)] there is a subversion of
context, which requires the context being setup (through the
interface)... so, the work itself is something of a 'setup'.
I don't necessarily look at the source material I use as being of a
time, classical or otherwise. But, I am rarely using it for
'classical' purposes. With the art history pieces I am certainly not
performing as an art historian...
The music works I have been doing lately are primarily interested in
emergence and recombinance... What happens when you take a coherent
piece of music, chop it up, and have it recombined without regard to
the original arrangement. It is amazing at times how it works out.
The other piece in the recombinant music works that you have seen
(recombinant tone poem #27), certainly has a tonal aesthetic, but how
would this really make it classical....? There's also one that you
haven't seen called Four Color Separation for Mallets. If anything
these pieces play with context as a readymade of sorts... The RTP#27
piece may have been a bit of commentary on sound pieces that are
entirely synthetic... This piece maintains some of the procedural
context of digital art, while pointing backwards at the same time...
When the actual visuals are added to the QWERTY Octet there will be
722,204,136,308,736 possible recombinations. That is not accounting
for the "player" interactions, the human latency that will occur... In
effect, making the recombinations indeterminate. There is also the
possiblity that the be automated or triggered environmentally in an
installation setting...
I am doing a lot of circuit bending lately, which I don't see as
classical, aesthetically or in terms of process... I am also looking
into alternative projection methods and surfaces.
On Thu, 3 Feb 2005 01:46:42 -0500
mIEKAL aND
on a radio station which used 1-4-5 chords & see if anything else
actually existed. Certainly if it was a station playing world music
there would be exceptions. But even on an alternative rock station,
I'd be willing to bet that just about every song would have primarily
the same basic chord structure. Within the chromatic scale there are
endless other possibilities. & if you start considering just
intonation, microtonal & noise whole other worlds open up. ~mIEKAL
On Thursday, February 3, 2005, at 01:19 AM, justin...@GMAIL.COM
wrote:
> !@#$%&!
>
> mIEKAL:
> your words imply a death to the genre of music popularly termed
> 'standards', an implication that i simply won't allow myself to
> imagine.
>
> jUStin
>
> On Wed, 2 Feb 2005 21:22:22 -0600, mIEKAL aND <d...@mwt.net> wrote:
>> It's my understanding that such alien destructions would not reverse
>> what has already been created but simply prevent the same music from
>> being created again.
>>
>> ~mIEKAL
>>
>> who loves In C
>>
>>
>> On Wednesday, February 2, 2005, at 08:53 PM, mpalmer wrote:
>>
>>> Ah, but then we'd have to do without the music of Terry Riley, and
>>> that
>>> is a loss I could never allow.
>>>
>>> m
>>>
>>>
>>> On Feb 2, 2005, at 6:46 PM, mIEKAL aND wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hopefully once the aliens destroy the C Major chord they'll go after
>>>> all the rest of the diatonic chords, & perhaps disintegrate the
>>>> circle
>>>> of fifths as a bonus detournement.
>>>>
>>>> ~mIEKAL
>>>>> NEW WORLD ORDER: Aliens from Zeta Reticuli landed, destroying all
Alan Sondheim
One can however look at a body of work and see what signifiers are
being used. I certainly never thought of your work either as art history
or as historiography etc. etc., but there are of course choices that are
made, which reflect an historiography. If I choose to make a piece using
Swinburne's Faustine or Donne, that says something about my choice; it's
not random; what it says may be something else, perhaps a relationship to
the lyrical for example. And for me, your source material definitely is of
a time, or times; how could it not be? Of the trillions of images,
millions of artists, tens of thousands of instruments, you choose certain
ones as material; everyone does. I work through older Chinese/Japanese
texts almost always in translation; this reflects something, again, about
me, although perhaps I'm not the one to figure out what it is. It's the
same for all of us. Again, where you say 'the appropriation and rewriting
of myth' - but what myth? I also use myth, for example, the early chapters
of the Kojiki. I expect to be called on that (if anyone reads my work
closely, which is of course something else again); it's a choice. One
might avoid choice through randomness, but even then the avoidance would
reflect intention of one form or another. - Alan (would like to hear more
of the music, get a cd when you do one?)