Passing Sounds

Videos showing the performance of the folk band from Pomerania, Poland, manipulated using Zwobot software. Original audio made during the no input mixing session.

Mc Kenna talks about why IChing – the Chinese ancient theory of chaos, or differently, of why things happen the way they happen is relevant today and juxtaposes the Western approach to the matter. In short, according to McKenna the IChing theorists were asking questions regarding the time and the Western civilisations – about the matter or what are things made of. Probability theory, causal unfolding and logical necessity are according to him not satisfying enough if it comes to the social spectrum of the human beings.

He argues that IChing is very sophisticated and not at all primitive and that people’s role is to educate themselves on this more holistic and unified approach to the universe and how it works. He believes that it is an insight to the structure of nature.

His conclusion on the IChing is that, where you are in space has as much of an influence of what’s going to happen as when you are in time. “When there are times of novelty and opportunity chance taking is relayed well. In times of resistance and habit chance taking can be fatal or at least tragic.” It’s the lack of a dualism between the internal and external worlds in Chinese philosophy that creates this holistic way of understanding the world.

“The world is far stranger place than the cheerful world of rational materialism inherited from the 19th century”.

Novelty Theory – time flow is conceived of as a shifting boundary or tension between the habit and the novelt – and the unfolding of this is DAO.

He used, as he’s saying shamanic techniques and rational methods, using deliberate disorder of the senses. Novelty according to McKenna, is the complexity that is approaching faster and faster as the time goes by. His theory was that time is actually speeding up and that it is measured by the number of events happening in a fraction of time, always building up on the previous complexities and happening faster and faster. Human movements are not different from nature, except for happening much quickler than the movement in nature.

In this sense novelty (complexity) is the way the universe creates newer forms of complexity that are happening faster and faster. He believed that the emergence of all those complexities is not far off and that we are in the “shadow of the transcendental object at the end of time”. Summarising, according to McKenna we are now participating in the final moment of life as we know it and humans should accept that they are a part of this exhilarating developmental process that will make us unrecognisable to each other.

Australian video art scene has proven to be one of the most prolific. In my opinion, this can be caused by the work of Stanislaw Ostoja-Kotkowski whom I mentioned in my previous posts. The artist worked and lived in Adelaide and produced some of the most innovative pieces using mini computers, and also kinetic and laser artworks and performances in collaboration with scientists, technicians, dancers and musicians and could have been an influence on some of the artists featured in this post. Integrated (fused) audiovisuals, closely tied to experimental sound and music, can be explored comparably to a synaesthetic experience. Similar to the presence of hiss and hum, the audiovisual elements of a signal guide us towards the abstraction and transduction happening within or beneath our media streams. Audio influenced by glitches relies on disruptions on the surface, instances of interruption that hint at and embody their own underlying structure.

ANAT – Australian Network for the Art and Technology is an arts organisation in Adelaide, Australia. In 2008 the DVD was published with the work of Jean Poole, Robin Fox, Andrew Gadow, Gordon Monro, Wade Marynowsky, Abject Leader, Pxi+Delire, Botborg and Ian Andrews. The DVD is a take on Chion’s concept of synchresis, although far more alternative and abstract than the sychresis described in Chion’s “Audio-Vision”, whose cinematic role is mainly the representation of the human body, quite predictable and ubiquitous.

I put this simple and rough track together. I used samples recorded earlier using Behringer Neutron, chopped them up a bit, and extracted some bass using multiple plugins. Also added some tracks I recorded earlier, like a recording of a voicemail waiting recording while calling to book MRI scan back in summer, some old sample extracted from wind chimes (after a pretty intensive processing).

This track could definitely do with some mixing and mastering, which I hope I will learn better by the end of my university career..

Adding somer paintings of mine that, together with music from the artists like Karenn, Scalameriya, Empty Set and may more, served as an inspiration for this (unfinished and silly) track

Chion’s definition of synchresis is the “spontaneous and irresistible weld produced between a particular auditory phenomenon and visual phenomenon when they occur at the same time”. As this term was coined on relation to the cinema, its basis “emblematic synch point,” shows how synchresis can come to being, how a sound effect creates an event that “we haven’t had time to see” and at the same time the event that is not real, have never occured.

I moved away from the in a way, representative and cinematic definition of synchresis to more spontanous, as created on the go for of audio-visual dialogue. Video recordings of the rainy weather seen through the smudged window are accompanied with the sounds coming from Neutron Behringer and played live.

Sounds were created using Behringer Neutron semi-modular synth and a granular synthesis plugin Emergence

Experiment using Behringer Neutron semi-modular synthesizer

Korg Monotron Ribbon synthesizer (using only the feedback and effects, without using the keyboard::