Art, Social and Personal

Media directs the attention towards external impressions, and interprets them for various purposes.

Yet, given its superficiality, imagery for mass consumption cannot rival direct experience, and does so only in proportion to weakness of intellect and will.  One may well consider all the implications.

Technology, Sound, and The Uncanny

An inquisitive nature will not be satisfied with partial awareness.

Beyond artistic meaning, the aesthetic sense may discern phenomena without apparent connection to temporal and physical events. As the sensitivity of various digital technologies demonstrably renders a number of peculiar elements, particularly of the type termed atmospheric, into clear forms that would otherwise have gone unnoticed, the artist as composer may expressively exploit those preternatural perceptions that come within the scope of consciousness through aural compositions.

Incidental, yet unaccountable, impressions of this order of reality inform all the Black Mountain School recordings, and are ultimately bound up in their origins.

I simply ask, why would one choose to do no more than those things that have been done before?

Higher, Wider, Deeper II

Sound alone may assert moral reason, reflecting the artist or composer's purposes.

As aesthetic appreciation of expression expands to contemplation of meaning, such elevation of understanding is commensurate with the insight the work evokes.

Spark and Means

Technology has its place.  This is not a complex or nuanced proposition, but plain fact.

Technology, in proper perspective, is absolutely subject to human reason and will.  It is, in fact, only as valuable as it is utilitarian, and only useful insofar as it contributes to the elevation and unburdening of the human condition.

Let those who will have it direct their lives defend it if they can, but such arguments are of no concern to free human beings.

Image, Information, Awareness

Low cloud cover reflects distant environmental sounds.

Music is no longer a rarity, as it once was. It is the nuanced perception of atmosphere that is an uncommon experience, so unusual as to be uncanny. Thus, for composer and listener alike, new inspirations, and ultimately new forms.

Meaningless

Observe the state of things with culturally aware eye and ear.

One might be forgiven for persisting in the idea that "instant access to all information everywhere at any time must ultimately lead to a cultural renaissance in twenty-first century, the likes of which have never been seen" has ever been more than a highly dubious proposition.

Connection and Separation

The modern has, for a number of decades, no longer represented a rejection of tradition.  While some artists and scholars recognize this, and others do not, this is not the issue.

One must turn to the so-called post-modern, a declining subset of modern perspective, to find puerile desertions of reason and meaning at play.  The modern, as a matter of course, continues to repudiate the specious, the false, and the failed, in terms of culture, politics, and social perspectives.

With this understanding in mind it is evident that the dominant artistic vision promoted in the global marketplace, in terms of contemporary expression, is nihilistic in nature. In those visual and musical arts directly associated with the mass media, this outlook serves as propaganda for totalitarian statist
purposes, in that it reduces cultural communication to impotent, manageable and predictable forms of divisive absurdity at odds with those in favor of individual liberty and freedom of thought.

The artist who believes otherwise acts accordingly, regardless of all risk, and it is effortless to take into account the essential nature of the resulting works. These are forward-thinking, rational, and, most provocative to elitists, expressions that link the audience to experiential reality, rather than diverting attention toward spurious, illiberal ideals.