Artificially Yours

Between the representation and the real lie perceptions and ideas.

Expression challenges and reflects the depth, or lack thereof, of individual experience.

Simply put, one should offer no barriers to the enjoyment of apprehension and understanding.

Sounds, Illuminated

As a medium of artistic expression, sound may be shaped in forms other than those generally recognized in terms of music, which depend, for the most part, upon elements such as rhythm, melody, and tempo.

Musicianship is expressed creatively through such things as disciplined virtuosity, instrumental eloquence, and conveyance of emotional feelings.  It is an entirely different artistic expression to manipulate media of any kind to peculiar effect.

The sound composer may choose to operate accordingly, engaging instead, as I do, concepts and gestures, regarding ideas, events, and settings in terms of transmuting perceptions into works of aural imagery.  It is a matter, simply enough, of asking and contemplating what sounds may be suggested by diverse experiences and bringing them into being.

Consciousness and self-knowledge governed by rational thought and intuitive perceptivity clearly, demonstrably, elevate the human condition far beyond that of mindless impulse and base instinct.

This is true in every aspect of life, and remains true in the arts.

Connectivity

Clarity elevates and obscurity provokes curiosity.

Each enables the contemplation of mystery, and inspiration to imagination and action.

Lucidity, Comprehension

What is commonly called "order" contributes to predictability and routine, but order has diverse forms, not all of them strictly concerned with organization.

Certain forms of order reflect juxtapositions of the simple and the complex.  Some involve greater, more expansive schemes of perception and understanding, such as the rise and fall of things, for instance, or awareness of processes in the way of, say, emergence, convergence, and dispersal. Others are discernible as guides to movement, or to the direction of attention to specific objects or ideas.

In such ways do the arts, and particularly those involving music and sound, realize concepts of order, in clear contrast to disorder and pointless chaos.

Attention to Sound and Mind

Just as there is a difference between looking and seeing, so it is with hearing and listening.

These are matters of interest and engagement, both passive and active, direct and indirect. 

In the normal context of continual activity and distraction there is little time for deep thought, clear articulation, and lucidity of perception.  But one must make time; these are essential to being and becoming, and thus to dynamic consciousness and living.  

My compositions are designed to enhance an hour and more for contemplative listening, reflecting this fundamental attitude.

Prescience, Magical Thinking, and The Uncanny (Excerpt)

Sonic Sensibility

Wide-ranging experience lends itself to diversity in taste and the capacity for dynamic action.

Such is the nature of curiosity itself and the impulse to go beyond the "given" often established in the artistic temperament.  There is no denying this perspective has its origins in romantic subjectivity and the idea that it might be possible to order one's work according to a vision of an ideal world or life of adventure, to allow for typical examples.

But the way of the artist can often demand equipoise in gesture, a balance of forces without which expression is incomplete. For the composer, this requires leavening the passions with the clarity of reason and bringing sounds into accord with one another, particularly in the evolution of efforts to transcend customary aesthetic and musical models.

Art and Atmosphere, Sound and View

Place perception in context.

Now the composer and listener, artist and observer, given diversity of experience, may discern unique perspective as percipients.  If engaged, intellect, emotion, or the spiritual may dominate, or they may balance together.

Each point of view, initially defined by natural differences, gains a degree of unity and a sense of meaning, established by setting and circumstances.

Artifice, Vérité, Being

All representations of reality are artificial in nature, whether they express concrete objects or abstractions.

What the art reveals may be fact or fancy; one may be artfully disguised as the other.

To be deceived by a false perception of idea or event is utterly different from being briefly fooled by a recorded sound or the effect of a trompe l'oeil illusion. The latter are simply auditory and visual; the former may prove to contain the genesis of fatal errors in judgement.

For the composer, it is the difference between glamorizing the base, absurd, or benighted, and imparting the essence of the real.

Edge and Area

To realize the essence of a thing may require gradual and incremental observation and investigation; the expression of that essence demands a perspective that reveals its reality and meaning.

Often what is called the avant-garde in art is brought into being as a demonstration of possibilities, its purpose being to convey a sense of conceptual potentials that may be inarticulate and undeveloped fully, yet nonetheless indicate areas of interest that may be explored, analyzed, and refined.

Such initial expressions, on the surface, may have the appearance of mere absurdity.  Certainly there are many examples of  "sound art" that fit this description, especially in areas devoted to academic experimentation.

Aesthetic sound art, similarly, exists in opposition to "mainstream" forms, yet has, in contrast, aims centered upon elevated expression of the imaginative and meaningful through aural media.

Sonic Shadow and Light

Perceive, remember, experience, evaluate, and conceive beyond superficial sensation to distinguish appearance from reality.

Thus the artist and composer, observer, participant, and listener may engage any representation so conceived and produced as one that reveals, not only itself as an artistic form, but aesthetic truth in terms of the reality represented.

Peculiarity

When media frames perception in terms of a collective "we", the implication is that perspective is shared, when, in fact, it is given.

Such perspectives are anathema to the arts, cloaked as they are in affected intimacy while advancing the complacent attitudes of shallow authority.

In clear contrast, the way of the artist is the arduous one of singularity in outlook and expression, a viewpoint shaped by nature, temperament, intensity of experience, and dedication to imaginative beauty and meaning.

Art and Indifferent Things

Reality does not conform to the narrowly subjective point of view.

Yet to be removed from the simple order of things, from the course of natural events, and thus to lose awareness of the cyclical growth and decline of cultural conditions is a common state of affairs, one continuously reinforced by distraction and diversion of various kinds.  One need look no further than music and media encountered in the course of the day to confirm this fact.

Art fills needs for intellectual, emotional, and spiritual elevation, self-knowledge in the context of the human condition, clarity of perception and lucidity of expression.  With this in mind, the composer may do well to create with the purpose of fulfilling such needs through works that appeal to moral reason and the aesthetic sensibilities.

Prefigurations

Art inspires art, as experience and perception shape expression.

The nature of the art of sound is that it must expand, conceptually and in scope and gesture, with the vision of the listener and composer, outside the context of the so-called musical forms.

Each and All

Time Future is heard in Time Past; it echoes in Time Present.

Life continues, and expression of that beauty and that continuity may be heard with the inner ear.

Surface, Shadow, Symbol, and The Real

Art is human reality; thus within it, human error.

Observe digital media in various forms; consider these in the context of Plato's allegory of the cave.

Enliven

Exert the force of intellect; persist in intuitive thought, and sustain it; engage the moment now.

Discipline the faculties to observe and become cognizant of finer detail in a wider range of perception and experience is intensified, that is to say, heightened.  Open up the mind's eye and the inner ear, bringing imagination into being, in life and in art.

Undercurrents

Confine or limit cultural expression and it will appear in other forms.

Reason yields to instinct in the popular imagination until it reasserts itself out of necessity in opposition to confusion and error, just as primal emotion is brought to bear against rigidity of intellectual authority and control.

But these are simplistic reactions.  The way of the artist may be one of balance, and lucidity of intuitive expression.

Reign of Spirits

In the quiet landscape, near and distant sounds evoke uncanny presences in the imagination.

Listening, hearing, and contemplating the unseen, it is possible to perceive in the way of ancient or "primitive" people, alert to change of atmosphere and movement both subtle and extensive.  These are, in fact, highly refined faculties worthy of development for their perceptual and aesthetic virtues.

The composer may do well to create to this order of understanding.

Uncertainty of Beauty

Observe the course of the history of Western music, consider its developments, and give regard to the effects of widespread global influences over the past century.

The convergence of diverse forms leads the composer and listener to myriad choices, and ultimately to realizations, whether intentional or not, of broader perceptions and more refined artistic goals.