meta-theory

[Manannan Mac Lir]

I very much enjoyed some of the theoretical debates, particularly the meta-theory thread.I have been reading a biography of Afred Schnittke recently and it seems that his later approach is aimed at creating a meta-music, where time, style, genre are all entwined in a musical utopia, a utopia in which rational time is overwhelmed by musical time. This seems to me similar to the late ideas of Philip K. Dick where he sees his Valis trilogy as a sphere of information through which infinite journeys are possible. The director Werner Herzog also uses the term ecstatic truth to describe this type of expression, that of an experience beyond the rational truth, this could possibly apply to Lynch’s Inland Empire . I would like to propose a discussion on the types of theoretical models used by us in our work, be they psychological, mathematical, philosophical or just plain mystical. I was tickled by the meta-theory idea and believe that as a group, microsound has a huge potential in this area of creative investigation. All aboard?

 

Le grand Macdara

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[Agxivatein]

in the text sonic experiences found here:

http://www.marinoskoutsomichalis.com/text/text.html

I discuss my approach to sound-art,

m

On 26 Σεπ 2009, at 12:41 π.μ., Manannan Mac Lir wrote:

I very much enjoyed some of the theoretical debates, particularly the meta-theory thread.I have been reading a biography of Afred Schnittke recently and it seems that his later approach is aimed at creating a meta-music, where time, style, genre are all entwined in a musical utopia, a utopia in which rational time is overwhelmed by musical time. This seems to me similar to the late ideas of Philip K. Dick where he sees his Valis trilogy as a sphere of information through which infinite journeys are possible. The director Werner Herzog also uses the term ecstatic truth to describe this type of expression, that of an experience beyond the rational truth, this could possibly apply to Lynch’s Inland Empire . I would like to propose a discussion on the types of theoretical models used by us in our work, be they psychological, mathematical, philosophical or just plain mystical. I was tickled by the meta-theory idea and believe that as a group, microsound has a huge potential in this area of creative investigation. All aboard?

 

Le grand Macdara

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[Paulo R. C. Barros]

http://www.mediaartfriesland.nl/NFF%20VideoArt%20Collection.pdf

Published in "Skrien Magazine" (The Netherlands) by Richtje Reinsma.

All the best,
Paulo
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[Adam Davis-3]

Mannanan,

 

Thank you for starting such a thread. Well, I like to contemplate a fusion of nihilism with self-similarity; everything is a metaphor for everything and everything else. Everything is everything and everything else. All is infinitely self-similar. Thus, everything is neither superior nor inferior to everything else; everything is neither more beautiful nor more ugly than everything else. I find such a concept very harmonious, and yet by the nature of everything, or rather infinity, it self-references, covering the very opposites to all that I have stated, and how I find such a concept very disharmonious also. This is my personal indulgence in a new kind of music...the aforementioned harmony and the loops and cycles of the self-reference subsequently (like the loops and cycles of rhythms) and the rhythm of opposites, reactions and the harmony of symmetry created from such conceptual equal and opposite reactions .

 

Adam James Davis

 

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[Manannan Mac Lir]

What do you base this dualism on, it appears Taoist possibly (except for self similarity). Does it come from observation? I think from an analytical perspective it also places itself in an area inaccessible to certain forms of criticism that cant take into account emergent behaviour.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Adam Davis"
To: microsound@...
Subject: Re: [microsound] meta-theory
Date: Sat, 26 Sep 2009 16:15:16 +0100

Mannanan,

 

Thank you for starting such a thread. Well, I like to contemplate a fusion of nihilism with self-similarity; everything is a metaphor for everything and everything else. Everything is everything and everything else. All is infinitely self-similar. Thus, everything is neither superior nor inferior to everything else; everything is neither more beautiful nor more ugly than everything else. I find such a concept very harmonious, and yet by the nature of everything, or rather infinity, it self-references, covering the very opposites to all that I have stated, and how I find such a concept very disharmonious also. This is my personal indulgence in a new kind of music...the aforementioned harmony and the loops and cycles of the self-reference subsequently (like the loops and cycles of rhythms) and the rhythm of opposites, reactions and the harmony of symmetry created from such conceptual equal and opposite reactions .

 

Adam James Davis

 

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[Adam Davis-3]

I would say it came from a long time trying to see the beauty, harmony and symmetry in absolutely everything, thus:

 

Symmetry and asymmetry, which is itself a symmetry, or metasymmetry. But the dominance of the symmetry over asymmetry is itself a meta-asymmetry...so on and so forth, ad infinitum. Those cycles...

 

Though I remain optimistic that in a very far future, say, in a postposthuman age, there'll be innovations which shall allow for the escaping of feedback and cycles which are impossible now and may remain possible even in a posthuman future (something I like to call "cyclo-anarchy"...I've written a little bit about it). I also envision a future where strange loops and feedback will actually be the musical instruments of the future...the tools of a new rhythmic appreciation. Such thoughts are inspiration for the more euphoric moments in my music.

 

Also, I probably wouldn't say it's a dualism, rather, an infinitism maybe?

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[Manannan Mac Lir]

What do you think is beyond the loops.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Adam Davis"
To: microsound@...
Subject: Re: [microsound] meta-theory
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 2009 17:30:57 +0100

I would say it came from a long time trying to see the beauty, harmony and symmetry in absolutely everything, thus:

 

Symmetry and asymmetry, which is itself a symmetry, or metasymmetry. But the dominance of the symmetry over asymmetry is itself a meta-asymmetry...so on and so forth, ad infinitum. Those cycles...

 

Though I remain optimistic that in a very far future, say, in a postposthuman age, there'll be innovations which shall allow for the escaping of feedback and cycles which are impossible now and may remain possible even in a posthuman future (something I like to call "cyclo-anarchy"...I've written a little bit about it). I also envision a future where strange loops and feedback will actually be the musical instruments of the future...the tools of a new rhythmic appreciation. Such thoughts are inspiration for the more euphoric moments in my music.

 

Also, I probably wouldn't say it's a dualism, rather, an infinitism maybe?

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[Adam Davis-3]

This comparison may be rather crude, but I think trying to answer that question is analogous to a very prehistoric human trying to deduce what is beyond the big blue thing above it. I'd say probably millions of years from now, we will need extreme innovations that will physically manifest what we qould now consider to be absurd illogic. Take the Law of the Excluded Middle, for instance. It states that everything must either be or not be...but what if the "postposthuman" technology I just speculated would invert such a law and allow something to be physically being and not being, simultaneously on, say, the macroscale. Or, for an infinite impossibility to actually occurr whilst still remaining infinitely impossible.  

 

Paradox: A frontier outside of infinity...but surely infinity, because of it's infinite nature, would encompass the frontier outside of it; feedback, a loop...thus the need for cyclo-anarchic technology that will allow paradoxes to be transcended and for a "frontier outside of infinity" to be explored...for absurd illogic to exist and to be explored physically.

 

I'd love to hear some of your ideas too :)

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[Manannan Mac Lir]

Well I think what you're saying reminds me of David Bohm and his implicate order and the enfoldment of the universe. There are some really strange moments in Messiaen's piano and organ music where I think it pushes you beyond a rational or linear concept of time, it becomes enfolded to the extent that events become timeless, Messiaen wanted to create a sense of timelessness which is itself a paradox, indeed in one of the movements of his quartet for the end of time the tempo marking is infinitely slow which taken literally is a human (maybe not post-human?) impossibility but the suggestion or intention is interesting. Ligeti in his Aventures imagined a solid infinite block of sound that one experienced for a period but without beginning or end. Something I havent found enough information on so far is the aspect of music, psychology is too restricted a word, which effects ones "physically conscious" self. Why does music make more emotional sense than most other things to me? It seems to allow for an expansion of consciousness which I havent seen developed in other art forms. The Sufi mystic and musician Hazrat Inayat Khan has some very interesting writing, David Borgo's book Synch or swarm is interesting but ignores the "psychic" interplay between audience/performers that can occur. What I "want" is a musical theory/framework which can deal with diverse psychological phenomena. I still love notes and all that stuff but it seems to me the only important factor is how it effects the recipient. I think feedback loops have a huge role in determining the wiring of for example a group performance or composition, I'm only coming to terms with them via Fritjof Capra's web of life. For me the cyclic metaphor is liberating because it seems to partially resolve the composition/improvisation problem I have in never being totally satisfied with either, the cycle or feedback loop having the ability to encompass any situation. I dont think any music theory has really taken into account feedback loops in the contemporary sense. With a feedback loop one can create a living or developing system which seems to me infinitely interesting. I agree with you about absurd logic but I would say that in my ownexperience it is lack of absurdity that is illogical

----- Original Message -----
From: "Adam Davis"
To: microsound@...
Subject: Re: [microsound] meta-theoryI
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 2009 22:45:30 +0100

This comparison may be rather crude, but I think trying to answer that question is analogous to a very prehistoric human trying to deduce what is beyond the big blue thing above it. I'd say probably millions of years from now, we will need extreme innovations that will physically manifest what we qould now consider to be absurd illogic. Take the Law of the Excluded Middle, for instance. It states that everything must either be or not be...but what if the "postposthuman" technology I just speculated would invert such a law and allow something to be physically being and not being, simultaneously on, say, the macroscale. Or, for an infinite impossibility to actually occurr whilst still remaining infinitely impossible.  

 

Paradox: A frontier outside of infinity...but surely infinity, because of it's infinite nature, would encompass the frontier outside of it; feedback, a loop...thus the need for cyclo-anarchic technology that will allow paradoxes to be transcended and for a "frontier outside of infinity" to be explored...for absurd illogic to exist and to be explored physically.

 

I'd love to hear some of your ideas too :)

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[Adam Davis-3]

What a fantastic and encouraging response. Thank you. Ligeti's "solid, infinite block of sound" is inspiring...I've not heard of that one before. It reminds me of something I was contemplating recently...an idea I like to call "transolipsistic art". An example:

 

A regular geometric object, on any order of magnitude. To not merely perceive it, but to literally be it. Thus, to be the harmonies and rhythms of a static, geometric object in space. The object is "perfectly" solid, ie, not constructed of smaller components like molecules, atoms and sub-atoms. It is an indivisable object, even on our "macroscale". The harmony and rhythm of indivisable solidness whilst paradoxicall having borders and limits in the forms of the faces, edges and outside surfaces of said object.

 

Hmmm.  

 

"I dont think any music theory has really taken into account feedback loops in the contemporary sense."

 

I should try pitching it all to people of magazines, journals, blogs!

 

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[Adam Davis-3]

My apologies, that was supposed to read "paradoxically" of course.

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[Manannan Mac Lir]

I've been wondering about exactly how much of a role my own body plays in experiencing sound. On a very simplistic level cold showers usually trigger really fast music in my head/voice as my body turns on the adrenaline, similarly I was walking home late the other night and started looking at a light wavy (I think it's called cirrus) layer of cloud moving slow enough to just perceive and it seemed like I was watching Ligeti's Atmosphere (back to him I know), but is my experience of music based entirely on the creation of physical states, which then become an analog of experience? i.e. am I experiencing this physical sensation through sound?When I was watching the cloud it was like it's movement, it's texture all the tiny droplets of moisture it was comprised of had been realized in sound, internalized and it was like I was somehow experiencing a dissolution of the boundary between myself and the cloud (not literally unfortunately). So is my experience derived almost completely from "the body" in the expanded sense? Or, to treat it like a scientific experiment, how would I go about reproducing that experience for another objective person? To me the effect that the experience/music had was like a synaesthesis more than a kinaesthesis like these experiences had been waiting to merge back into each other, cloud, music, cloud... Still gettin to grips with your paradoxes but I think we really experience the paradox as "logic" but because my education/perception has been inverted for so long it takes a little used to turning your ideas inside out, but if you start from the outside it all seems to make sense... maybe?

----- Original Message -----
From: "Adam Davis"
To: microsound@...
Subject: Re: [microsound] meta-theory
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 20:18:33 +0100

What a fantastic and encouraging response. Thank you. Ligeti's "solid, infinite block of sound" is inspiring...I've not heard of that one before. It reminds me of something I was contemplating recently...an idea I like to call "transolipsistic art". An example:

 

A regular geometric object, on any order of magnitude. To not merely perceive it, but to literally be it. Thus, to be the harmonies and rhythms of a static, geometric object in space. The object is "perfectly" solid, ie, not constructed of smaller components like molecules, atoms and sub-atoms. It is an indivisable object, even on our "macroscale". The harmony and rhythm of indivisable solidness whilst paradoxicall having borders and limits in the forms of the faces, edges and outside surfaces of said object.

 

Hmmm.  

 

"I dont think any music theory has really taken into account feedback loops in the contemporary sense."

 

I should try pitching it all to people of magazines, journals, blogs!

 

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[Seth Chrisman]

Quantum superposition

On Sun, Sep 27, 2009 at 3:45 PM, Adam Davis <technohead3d@...> wrote:

This comparison may be rather crude, but I think trying to answer that question is analogous to a very prehistoric human trying to deduce what is beyond the big blue thing above it. I'd say probably millions of years from now, we will need extreme innovations that will physically manifest what we qould now consider to be absurd illogic. Take the Law of the Excluded Middle, for instance. It states that everything must either be or not be...but what if the "postposthuman" technology I just speculated would invert such a law and allow something to be physically being and not being, simultaneously on, say, the macroscale. Or, for an infinite impossibility to actually occurr whilst still remaining infinitely impossible.  

 

Paradox: A frontier outside of infinity...but surely infinity, because of it's infinite nature, would encompass the frontier outside of it; feedback, a loop...thus the need for cyclo-anarchic technology that will allow paradoxes to be transcended and for a "frontier outside of infinity" to be explored...for absurd illogic to exist and to be explored physically.

 

I'd love to hear some of your ideas too :)

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