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.

Now, When, Where, Why

Consider those times and places that represent humanity's greatest cultural achievements.

Objectively, the elevation of culture, even at the most base levels, evolves in conditions that promote and defend the freedom of the individual and the merits of reason and work.  Without these, there is only the stasis of collective morbidity, held fast by the tyranny of small minds.

Over Mind

Not everyone views art as being more than personal, emotional, expression, of course.

So it is that the art that is a living connectivity between the earthly and the spiritual, contemplative imagination-- which is to say, between ordinary consciousness and the transcendent-- cannot be realized by those attached to the mediocre and the mundane.

Freeze in Conformity

Conditions in human societies, for good and ill, have reason and cause.

Those who accept sclerotic social and political perspectives deserve the art and culture that reflects them.

Digital Inferiority

The West does not lack in reason, spiritual enlightenment, or contemplative arts.

It is contemporary life that is wanting in broader, deeper perspectives than the ones most likely to be celebrated in the shallow confines of academia, populist politics, and mass media.

Unrevealing

Look for what cannot be seen, listen for what is not there.

Fellow artists understand the essential nature of this statement, with some, but very few, others.

Entitlement and Falsity

Reality demands the artist be self-reliant.

The alternative is obligation-- obligation to cultural norms or special interests, commercial investors, and any number of people generally who provide for the artist's well-being. Some creative types will not only find this acceptable, but desirable, and these are the people-- predators and parasites, in point of fact-- who give art a bad name.

The artistic "expressions" produced in these scenarios are inconsequential, impermanent, detestable, and vain-- like the society they reflect.

Affray

No narrative that contradicts objective reality is viable.

When the arts are used as a vehicle to call day night, and night, day, the culture subjected to this is no longer merely wasting energy and indulging in frivolity.  Freedom itself is absolutely endangered.

Unmoved and Unmoving

The imagination of the individual does not fail.

Cultural imagination, when it fails, is replaced by artifice and contrivance.

This failure is the direct result of the manipulation of media through which public acceptance of the superficial over the substantive is engineered by those with vested interests in "artistic productions".

The individual artist perseveres, nonetheless, in solitude, while the culture is the worse for it.

And those who are predisposed to equate individuality with the "evils" of conservatism are in the worst, that is to say, the most ignorant and benighted, cultural straits of all.

L'Air du Temps

Sound imagery may mean more, or less, than it suggests.

Neither complexity nor simplicity imply merit in themselves.  What matters to listener and composer alike, upon final reflection, is total effect.  Therein lies balance, expansion, and elevation.

There Are No Terms

Every artistic potential that becomes real does so because of choice and action.

Neither cultural attitudes nor the "preparedness" of "the public" can stop the artist. There is one thing of importance, and one thing only: the work.

Cultural Drift and Correction of Course

The convergence of cultural messages demands acceptance of the status quo.

One can expect nothing more from mass media, academia, and other purveyors of ideological cant.

Meaning is found through arduous exercise of reason and insight. Anything less is simply surrender to false appearances, error, and mediocrity.

Sources, Origins

Search memory, and aural impressions will reveal themselves.

These are unconscious sensory images, taken from the course of daily events and reaching back across the gulf of experience and consciousness to recognition of first and primal sound settings.

Some will call it impossible to realize such impressions in musical form.

The artist as composer will say music is not the sonic form by which these atmospheres may be brought into being.

Istigkeit

Witness the world in motion.

If the goal is to express the aesthetic, contemplative moment, the composer must hear what the visual artist sees, in both objective reality and in the inner ear of imagination.

Identity, Image, and Audacity

Typically, diversion and dance come to mind when discussing the purposes of music.

Further consideration suggests the use of music in ceremony and ritual, and for artistic expression of emotion and ideas. Enhancement of concentration and meditative focus, refinement of perception and the reinforcement of contemplative states of mind and being, however, are of far greater importance to those who practice these ways of engagement with reality through expansion of consciousness.

Certainly this is the position of one who composes works in sound to such ends as these.