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Post by neilnv2 on Jan 26, 2024 10:17:11 GMT -5
'FACTORY' I spent awhile trying to figure how the FACTORY works as it's more folk-art than factory - or at least 1/2 and 1/2 - and that may be the key.
A grid makes things the same, and also allows for differences. In other words, the pedantry of a photo is ideal for the expressive side. That's quite an odd idea; only if things are EXACTLY the same can there be artistic variations. By 'the same' one means routine, habits, geometrical abstraction.
CC Beck made a similar point about cross-stitch embroidery that it is a simple design that should be kept simple. Only by keeping the simple geometrical design can one have pictorial variations (TCJ 'Art or Craftwork?')
In other words, two things are needed: the retention of a simple grid, and the overlaying of a picture, variations in shade. The repetition is needed for variation. Folk-art or Greek pottery workshops work on that principle, so the old idea of a FACTORY is to have both EXACT repetition znd constant variation.
The two feed off each orhers in a very productive endeavour. What is avoided is pedantry - CC Beck cites the photo-realistic pictures made in cross-stitch. One does nor interfere with the simple cross-stitch or the grid.*
So, there are two separate processes going on: the simple repetition, and the artistic interpretation. What that seems to mean is that a 'factory' that is pure repetition is not a FACTORY in the old-folk or Warhol sense.
Warhol is reinventing a FACTORY that uses repetition as a means to an end. By that, modern factories are 'half-factories' because they interrupt the total process of creativity.
This is a pretty odd idea because obviously one is taught to think of modern advances, but one can see biologically that protein manufacture is totally repetitive, allowing for later layering effects. The organic process relies on a FACTORY that gives variation.
The fact that things may be totally repetitive shouldn't make one think of a modern factory because there are two separate processes at work. The repetition is what allows for FACTORY overlaying and creative artistry, detachment and difference, while modern factories are pedantically the same.
* 'I have, in the past few years, made designs for people who do cross-stitch work. This craft consists of working out with needle and colored thread, on course linen, pictures and lettering made of stitches made in only horizontal or vertical directions or at angles of 45, 26 1/2, or 63 1/2 degrees, that is, along the diagonal of a square or of two squares together. Cross-stitch designs are therefore quite abstract, not at all realistic.' (TCJ #121)
CC Beck was known as a strict reactionary on artistic matters and for him anyone who tried to put 'realism' into a comicbook was wasting their time. I wouldn't go that far, but there is a vital point about what it is we mean by 'realism'.
If abstract things do occur, then abstraction has to be a part of reality. To be pedantically 'realistic' is to be a pedant, not a realist.
A pedant is someone who thinks everything is realistic and not abstract. So they will foe instance think that protein manufacture by polymerase is realistic and not abstract. However, we know proteins form abstract shapes as a matter of course (coiling and so on) so are we supposed to say that abstract shapes are realistic and not abstract?
Likewise, molecules do simple things repetitively and form simple, repetitive patterns. The extreme pedantry of modernity creates a universe of 'facts' out of what are habits, routines, geometrical abstractions that are totally spontaneous.
If molecules form spontaneous identical shapes, is it not also possible that higher-level developments form spontaneous, abstract shapes? Realism is a gradual process that develops from the boundaries that take shape between organs (it's not a fact, despite the fact that cell-specialization is controlled by a genetic switch; that's a fact but the process isn't, it's abstract.)**
None of these are actual 'facts' but abstract, spontaneous patterns. To seek to try to determine what is happening is to pedantically intellectualize what is spontaneous.
I think the same applies to modernism at large. 'Facts' are just so much noise that appeals to the pedantic heads (the so-called elite.) The abstract nature of society is in the shapes and patterns, even the grid-design of cities. These don't require thought because they just exist.
Society has an abstract nature of shape that constitutes a neighbourhood. Much of the charm to a neighbourhood is in self-government and is fairly spontaneous. Well-designed US cities with early 20th century art-deco buildings have been left behind by the formless intelligence of data-flows and shopping-malls (consumer noise.)
It is a society run by so-called 'facts' for and by pedants and not for the people who harmonise together (or fight.) Some detachment is needed to just let things work themselves out and form patterns (see Butler's fantasy series 'Patternmaster'.)
** ie There can be logical events alongside non-logical events, coming in at prearranged times once the spontaneous events have made headway with the arrangement of harmonious forms. The logical events are related to 'fact' or in other words when the fact becomes visible in the developing process and some major process is unleashed. So there are two separate things going on and they at certain times intersect.
'DAGAR' = Detached Abstract Genre/medium ARrangers (Armatrading, Warhol, CC, Lee Perry)
Nietzsche I just spotted Alan Moore's short gag on 'The single most important thing in writing'. If we're talking misdirection that is everywhere to be found in nature. DNA has to be 'honest', that is a true, logical fact BECAUSE the entire scene is certainly not that. There has to be no doubt in gene-switches because the whole scene is so shambolic. The apparently extreme logic of DNA has to be there to counter spontaneity. Both are needed and hence there is misdirection. The spirit is a type of tension and balance, the Nietzschean idea of an eternal struggle (see Jan1.) Because 'facts' are convincing, there seems to be a type of formless intelligence that uses data for its own needs (as per Robin James.)
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Post by neilnv2 on Jan 31, 2024 9:14:58 GMT -5
'Octavia's Brood' It can be instructive to read 'the enemy' and I got this on audio; it's a collection of radical activist sci-fi/crits that justifies itself as the spawn of Octavia Butler, seemingly by way of LGBT as well as disabled. It's not as bad as this sounds; I've always thought it a good idea to have 'space-culture' like song, dance, rather than the 2001 thing of just talking at a computer and eating at the mess. That's the OK side, but their crit of Butler was enlightening in a different way. Speaking mainly of 'Kindred', they say there is a "co-dependancy" that makes for "moral ambiguity". Meaning here that Dana, who travels back to the Antebellum South, has a White forefathers. If she kills him as a kid, she will cease to exist. That's straightforward enough, it's when it comes to Butler's other works that the ambiguity is lost in their radical agenda. The co-dependancy and the power dynamic is very visible in 'Lilith's Brood' (the Xenogenesis trilogy), whereby an alien 3rd sex, the ooloi, breed hybrid humans. According to their crit, this indicates an adaptation that enables survival in a shell-shocked planet. But this interpretation is highly dubious. The adaptation is forced or coerced, and the third book features a hybrid human-alien ooloi called Jodahs, Lilith's son. Seeing as Lilith is a Biblical character, it's clear that this is a reference to Judas, the traitor. The radical activists seem to abandon ambiguity in favor of their LGBT agenda, when it's pretty clear that power and ambiguity run through the books, particularly the third, 'Imago'. Even in the 'Parable' books, the theme of 'change' - the religion developed by African American Lauren Olamina - is challenged by other characters who say change is too abstract a notion for worship. Butler is self-critical, and arguments are a part of her agenda. Her heroines are charismatic and encounter savage and bestial forces. Her books depict a struggle, and force is part of the struggle. The second book, 'Parable of the Talents', is told from multiple points of view, and Lauren is depicted as am aloof figure. Her daughter Larkin is almost repelled by her single-minded drive, though they possibly reconcile towards the end. In the face of powerful and dark forces, strength is needed. As Armatrading sings in 'Help Yourself' "Seems you have trouble Helping yourself It would help me more If you helped yourself" The moral force is the strong leader, and this will always have an element of ambiguity. Butler deals with the ambiguity of a discourse, of a journey and not a finished product. The radical activists like to think of themselves as visionaries, but they disdain the process of arguments which Butler engages with. Struggle with an argument is a source of power and takes a strength of will against that moribund order. It could be that in Butler's books the struggle is what we get, not the perfect vision of radical activists who are not that active. "Worship is no good without action" "The Self must create its own reasons for being To shape God, shape Self" (Parable of the Sower) 'I'm singing from the mire don't you know I'll do without a choir don't you know I'll give it all I've got, not a lot I'm going to go on till I've a lot' (sung to the tune of Passenger) 'Black Greeks' They're a mixed bunch in 'Octavia's Brood', from Muslim Black elder Kalami YA Salaam to 'barely Black' Detroiter Adrienne Maree Brown. I know radical activists like to imagine there is a crossover of races that is neutral, but let's not be gulled. There is a power in Blackness that is not in Whiteness. This goes equally for mainstream writers like Bethany Morrow (prev) who, in 'Song Below Water', depicts Black women as gorgons. Her reasoning behind this she makes very clear in an interview; the gorgons have power and so are feared or shunned by the White mainstream. Clearly it is not a disadvantage to have power, so the reason she is not a radical activist is that she prioritises power (over disadvantage.) The stories in 'Octavia's Brood' don't really do this; Adrienne Maree Brown's 'The River' is sbout a spiritual force of Blackness that swallows invaders. That is a relatively vague proposition beside Morrow's aggressive and shrill gorgons or sirens (that she calls "mermaids".) Morrow is being somewhat honest about the power of Blackness, and I want to be fairly specific about what that might be. Black power is that there is no need for thought. At the top of last page is a link to JA discussing her symphony, and I remarked on her immediate crushing of dissent, almost too quickly for thought, a feeling. To prioritise feeling means one knows one is good without the need for thought. This is again demonstrated by JA if you look at the opening track on Rockpalast79 concert ('Down to Zero'). The song is delivered with an offhand air that gives the strong rhythms poignancy. The lyrics are actually 'Oh the feeling When you're reeling' but it's delivered like 'Oh - feeling When you're reeling' VERY NONCHALANTLY, idly, matter of factly. In other words, Armatrading is not worried about the words but the rhythm.* A poem works like this: the separate lines are broken-up with rhythm; there is the logical meaning of the lines and the illogical feel of the rhythms. Rhythm is memorable; Homer is thought to have been originally recited by troubadours in an oral tradition. Rhythms knit things together with an energetic flow of broken-up lines The spirit breaths through the troubadour, and spirit is something a priori that is present in music (Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, Jan1.) Nowadays, we are constantly told to think we are 'the heirs of the Greeks' (see Faraji), but we are only heirs to logical thought. So, Black power and the ancient Greek spirit are the same thing. We live in a world of words, but there is another world outside that that is the creative one. There is an interplay between the two, there is no non-stop advance or progression. This is something Butler has directly alluded to in interviews. The radical activists sometimes give the impression of of 'choosing' to be Black without perhaps recognising the power-dynamic innate to Blackness. * The word is 'accent', ie skipping a word to favor the accent. On 'Let it Last', she skips the 'Ah' to '..got love'. It serves the performance, giving the live version a dynamic presence. This is also probably what KT Tunstall calls the vibe of a single take. On To the Limit, JA performed 'Bottom to the Top' in one take to get the reggae feel. So accent is feel and of course life, shape, the dancability of the music, imperfection, ragged. CODA Going back over previous ground, if a system is mediated by thought (mathematics), what does one think of? This was Butler's criticism of sci-fi extrapolation from present advances; more of the sine, ie more thought. If people have a metaphysical grievance, it is about the nature of reality (as per the hippies, Jan11.) It's clear that an acoustic wave can be applied to data that is probabilistic, so we could soon be living in a statistical mathematical universe. This, according to Robin James, will have its own 'musical' harmonic But this is where a contradiction comes in. Quantum physics is already harmonic; it has to be because probabilities are composed of interferences of amplitudes. Reality practically has to be harmonic because the periodic table of elements is highly harmonic - it's no accident.* So if reality is harmonic, as Faraji said of the Eastern sound of Greek music, "One can't make a tomato more of a tomato." All one can do is replace the harmony with an artificial or imitation intelligence. My misquote of Bethany Morrow (Jan11) was because I was thinking of a type of neoliberal head that wasn't either White or Black, ie the intelligence is a formless imitation. So, this brings it round to what I mean by 'Black power' If one is constantly thinking mathematically, one lives in a mathematical universe. But that universe is an imitation. The reality is form, that is to say, people. Writers like Bethany Morrow are thinking about emotion, like, dislike, fear, rebellion, loss. Octavia Butler with her dynamic of power (hierarchy) and co-dependancy is thinking about these all through her novels. Finally, JA is one of the more thoughtful songwriters with powerful lyrical poignancy In other words, the problem with modernity is that one is living in a system where there is vastly too much thought in the guise of mathematics. The system is a formless imitation of intelligence. The Black legacy and Black fantasy in general is unconcerned with this 'noise'. One could easily add shamans and the psyche of tribal lore (Rysdyk.) Reality that has a physically harmonious quality (UVS-website and aether; "Aether is a physical quality of space", Einstein.) All that is really contrary a metaphysical condition that we are entering, the 'smart-verse' where we are told everything by means of a formless intelligence that harmonises data. Scientific methods builds-up data in any system, such as consumer-data or 'noise'. I'm not saying we should go back to the garden of Eden - and that pesky snake- every system has flaws, but as thoughtful, ethical peoplevwe shouldn't be fooled (again) by imitations. Only the real thing counts; shapeliness, and the shaping of reality by people * 'The periodictableis showing how the atoms are harmonically coalesced from the vortically formed particles in the hypersphere of aether.' (email from UVS) UVS sent this table (the website is down currently.) The elements coalesce in harmonic phases with the curvature of a hyperspheric (4D) bottle. 'Greek measure' is based on proportions of geometry- as distinct from the neoliberal measure of harmony as a sine wave - so this diagram is harmonic in the Greek sense. It looks a bit complicated but I suspect playing a guitar well is pretty complicated too (it's "odd shapes" says Armatrading, that's nature, right? Oddness, cuteness, strangeness, 'People are Strange' The Doors.) Intrinsic harmony is proportionate and not logical (the 3:2 ratio of a perfect 5th.) As I said to Vincent of UVS, physicists like logical systems which is probably why they don't like aether, which is inherently harmonic.
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Post by neilnv2 on Feb 5, 2024 9:12:41 GMT -5
Carrying on from the last statement of the last post, in order to make logical sense you need the illogic, that is, a morphology in aether. Aether can have a topology because it exists physically, spacetime can't because it doesn't exist physically, ie it's a metric (an interval of time or space.) This problem seems to have been around for 100 years but doesn't bother the powers that be. One can only assume that's to confuse the peasants with logic (math), but math is not so abstract that you can't have anything more abstract. You can't get more abstract than geometric shapes; you can be as abstract but not more. So therefore if you talk about geometric shape you are at a bedrock of reality, at least as abstract as number. Logical sense is another bedrock of reality, and it is not possible to get geometric shapes out of number (math.) That is a logical statement because geometric shapes are a bedrock; one cannot create them out of thin air. Therefore, since we humans live on a planet where circles snd squares exist, the same applies to all previous times of the existing universe. These things cannot be created, they have always existed. So, logically the illogic is needed foe anything to exist (the alternative is that there is some switchboard operator behind the scenes who plugs things in to make them appear real bur that seems unlikely.)* Only something that exists physically can have a morphology, and spacetime only exists as a metric interval (according to Vincent, Einstein was in favor of aether but was overruled.) (wiki) As can be seen from the diagram, a Klein bottle is fairly simple, starting life as a square (a fundamental abstract shape.) To construct it, pull the red lines up from the page till they meet in a half-cylinder. Push them into the page till they meet, and you have enclosed a cylinder. One then glues the ends of the cylinder together by passing one end through the side of the cylinder. The intersection cannot exist in 3D space, so one jumps to 4D, and that is the Klein. There is a math of geometry but the geometry has to exist first. This is a self-consistent and non-contradictory system once the 4D geometry is there to establish it. So the basic point is that geometry has to exist because it can't be creates by math or anything else; it's the stuff of reality, whether one talks of particles, planets or galaxies. From it the Greeks derived harmonic measure. Geometry is very abstract and it's not information, which is 'fact'. The abstract universe does not appear to feature in the modern scientific agenda, and they prefer harmonic data-flows (of information, the neoliberal establishment, Robin James.) Should we assume scientists work for our benefit? Who benefits from this experimental system of 'musical' number? I'll leave the question open, perhaps 'Rider' knows? * Supposing there was a logic-board behind reality, it might work simply because it follows valid principles of reasoning. The amount of information garnered on mechanics alone could generate a facsimile or imitation. Whether it works and how well is fairly irrelevant, since it is just one more facet of the neoliberal harmonic or sine wave; the electronic harnessing of information for the purpose of converting it to data-flows of the new harmonic. Anything that starts with information will finish with information because thete is no proportionate harmony. The mechanics of the human anatomy has the dynamic equilibrium of action (Burne Hogarth, Dynamic Anatomy.) Musical dance has spontaneous feeling. Because the mechanics of human anatomy is based on proportionate geometry, it is based on a bedrock of reality. The neoliberal facsimile cannot have a basis in reality since so much data is so much 'noise'. Instead, it is based on statistical harmonics that serve the needs of the neoliberal elite. Information is not a bedrock of reality because of primordial geometry. As has been observed previously, quantum converts to classical (zap physics) since quantum is the probabilistic equivalent of classical. Therefore, geometry can never become outmoded by the operation of statistical laws which can only be a facsimile that facilitates the needs of the elite with tautologies of data-flows having no basis in reality. The fate of the convincing imitation is to live in a neverending tautology, the dollar equivalent of Jean-Luc Godard's 'Alphaville' (1965), in the film symbolised by a circle.** Escape from geometry is futile; can one escape from oneself? In logic, a tautology is a statement that is true by virtue of its logical form ** Circle, square, triangle are related by Pythagoras theorem mathematically and harmonically. IE on the fundamental level there is a harmony of mathematical relationships, something that may go unnoticed owing to its simplicity. Confused thinking on Stepping Outhaving pinned up the gatefold image (third down), the straight lines on the white trousers looked like something underneath. In the dim light it proved a puzzle but was just a trick of the fold. The simplicity of the gatefold sets you right; how much confused thinking would there be in a world where there was no simplicity, only words? (Godard's next film ' Made in USA'Ā has scenes of a political manifesto read on reel-to-reel by the murdered character. This might be a hangover from the circular motif of Alphaville, the futuristic city run by the alpha60 AI. His next film, La Chinoise, is on Maoists in Paris again reading their manifestos.)
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Post by neilnv2 on Feb 9, 2024 7:08:50 GMT -5
The lune of Hippocrates is an ancient puzzle on finding the area under an arbitrary curve by geometric means. It relies on Pythagoras' rule that the hypotenuse of a right is isosceles triangle is V2 the opposite sides.. ..therefore the diameter AC of the larger circle is V2 times the diameter of the smaller. (From pi r2) the smaller circle = 1/2 the area of the larger..hence quarter circle AFBOA is equal to the semi-circle AEBDA. By subtraction, one has the proof. Historically, this is called 'squaring' since it was a geometrical process. It has been replaced by calculus, whereby integration is the sum of differences under a curve over time. The point of this exercise is that calculation is nor needed if the curve has a simple, harmonic shape. Speed=distance/time, so for a constant speed there will be a regular measure over time, ie a rhythm. It is nor necessary to calculate speed if the rhythm is visible (as in a car passing bollards on a road. ) The point of these 2 exercises is that if things are simple, calculation (math or algebra) is not needed. Simple things are rhythms and harmonies. The exact opposite of this is the path integral (this was covered on the zap physics: quantum to classical example previously.) Richard Feynman writes in his autobio: "One day my high school teacher told me to stay after class.." and he was given a book on advanced integration. Being somewhat facetious, one can choose to integrate distances over time (quanta), or one can choose to run the Marathon as the ancient Greek Phaedippides did. In that case, one is going up hill down dale following the contours of Earth's topography in a jogtrot rhythm to convey the news of victory. All that says is that the ideas of rhythm and harmony don't go away as they're there on the basic geometry of reality. Earth has a mechanical geometry that spins, and that doesn't go away. Primitive or tribal people will have simple geometrical patterns and there is therefore an intrinsic harmony to their designs. A circle is a spiral carried to the infinite degree. The relationship between shapes is intrinsic and enables the spontaneity of artistic creation. There are various factors that come into play here. Spontaneous events and things have charm and are carefree. We live in a careworn society that is obsessed by thought. But the simpler things are, the less that is needed and the more spontaneity is apparent. Simple chords harmonise together. There is an intrinsic measure of harmony based on the geometry of musical instruments (the 3:2 perfect 5th of a monochord.) Probabilistic quanta seem to parallel the statistical measure of harmony as a sine wave in the data-flows of neoliberal calculations. In both cases, complex probabilities (or data 'noise) replace the rhythmic simplicity of the human body. The main difference seems to be that one can convert quanta to classical (zap physics), whereas neoliberal statistical data-flows are a 'musical' imitation. By 'music' one means oscillations without underlying reason, merely for the purpose of facilitating selling. One has to be aware that 'music' is related to one person's feeling. Number cannot replace feeling. One is left with a facsimile with no feeling* To a ancient Greeks, geometry was almost a religion. Nothing comes for free and one has to build the basic blocks of a civilization. Music isca joyful celebration, and that is the opposite of neoliberal calculation. NO LOVE FOR FREE (from 'Back to the Night') not up Footnote The spontaneity of things is quite natural and must go a way to make the artisan's craftwork somewhat easier than they may appear. It's apparent that the spiral rug is woven into a sort of rope-like line that is twirled round. By disentangle it one can recapture the original line, pull it taut. Hence a straight line. The accuracy of geometry is very natural, needing no calculation. Again, musical measure is a natural resource of the instruments and the natural harmony of chords. In place of this simplicity, the neoliberal harmony is a symphonic intelligence of 'noise' given a semblance of form. But the form is an imitation having zero spontaneity. The accuracy of this data is very dubious, where there is zero natural harmony (of the human form.) It's not so much a dollar question as to the intelligence that is running it. *From Robin James, thre is a formless intelligence that calculates oscillations of data-flows with a 'musical' sine wave. But without the measure of harmony as a geometrical proportion, there is no origin, only the accuracy of data. Original things are simple, such as the snake-like twirl of an ornamental rug. The human body, with its egg-like head, has a unity of form that is nothing to do with information. The origin of things is geometrical and harmonic because that is the finished result (logically) -beauty, order. Neoliberal calculation leads to formless results, and the same probably holds for the data on DNA. Anything that goes away from form is pure calculation (as previously noted, quanta converts to classical in physics, so there is no change to the geometry, only a probabilistic calculation of paths.) Genes are stochastic, meaning the probabilities are unpredictable owing to the body-form. The formless neoliberal intelligence treats data statistically and the body-form as non-existent. The same probably holds of neighbourhoods which have their own distinct geometries and aesthetic. [The Armatrading song is the first track off Back to the Night. The whole album has a streetlife feel; No Love for Free was inspired by prostitutes she met at the Bronx while staying in Times Square. This latter has of course been tidied-up and otherwise destroyed (Samuel Delany wrote a whole book on it.) This sort of social life is a trade, as her song lyric notes, and trades don't need governing. Money is a good lubricant, pardoning the pun. Social life isn't destroyed by money but the calculating intelligence that succeeds through destruction in a formless numerical state.]
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Post by neilnv2 on Feb 13, 2024 10:24:57 GMT -5
It might be worth pointing out the odd differences with Robin James' acoustic sine wave and symphonic resonance of marketing data, which she terms neoliberalism, and my use of it.
The 2 main differences are probably that she is left-wing (I'm anarchic right), and my assumption that neoliberalism is an intelligence. My definition of this is: A formless numerical intelligence that resides in the neoliberal head and harmonises 'noise' by oscillating, with the destruction of geometry.
This intelligence I am calling 'symphonic' and tallies with her sine wave resonance. It is not a metaphor but a real, formless activity of the neoliberal elite. Because the intelligence harmonises 'noise' it is highly destructive of geometry; its success is destructive.*
DETROIT The savage decline of Detroit left abandoned blocks over at least 1/4 of the territory. There was little demolition and rhe aesthetic appeal didn't help impoverished residents (incidentally, I saw Strauss's opera Elektra performed in an abandoned Berlin factory to great effect.)
In this century, though, there have been developments such as the restructuring of a dilapidated railway station into 'the future of US mobility'. This also incorporated high school students. Another is 'Greenway Coalition' that connects the green or abandoned areas with bike and walkways. 'Live6 Alliance' seeks to repopulate abandoned commercial areas.
This history demonstrates that there are 2 resources left intact by the decline. One is the actual impoverished population, the human resource, largely black. The other is the buildings.
The atmospheric charm of neglected buildings turns into an actual resource, which I would say is the exact opposite of neoliberal destruction, demolition of old buildings, gentrifying environments and bringing in 'gentry' (if possible.)
The other point is that the social movements of the late 60s take no account of the destruction that might ensue socially/materially. I'm not saying no social change was required, but it should be balanced with the bricks-and-mortar of neighbourhoods (incidentally, Lloyd Price the 5os r&b pioneer later built low-income housing in NYC.) Detroit did this, perhaps more by luck than judgement.
* Intelligence is something that acts intelligently, however 'resonance' or 'oscillation' sounds more like musical attraction. Since the music is an imitation (the sine wave), the intelligence is an imitation. By that, the neoliberals could be said to create the intelligence as well as belief in it. That could include the belief in DNA over geometry (prof Denis Noble alluded to a musical score even though he professes to be a non-believer in gene-centric science, ie this could be his neoliberal self talking. That implies DNA is a commercial or marketing endeavour; not too unlikely!)
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Post by neilnv2 on Feb 15, 2024 6:53:26 GMT -5
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Post by neilnv2 on Feb 16, 2024 8:23:48 GMT -5
As a direct branch from the RD skit, the mechanical shapes of the body have an effortless and sonic resilience that is more animal than human. A superhuman is an animal, as is appreciated by tiger and wolf motifs in the pulps and comics. Animals have has no need for thought, and philosophically the same applies to humans. According to ancient Greeks (or Nietzsche, take your pick), there is an eternal duel between the vain human desire for order through thought, Apollo, and the cavalier frolicking chaos of Dionysus. Neither can win, and neither are wholly good or evil ('Beyond Good and Evil'.)* The vanity of Apollo will try and suppress Dionysus, and this is something I was trying to get into the skit. But it cannot succeed because thoughtlessness is a power of nature. The snake-like oscillations of muscle and sinuous dance, enticing the eritic excitement of thoughtless and sensual activities (akin to 60s hippies.) Effortlessness is what caught my attention in Joan Armatrading, and it is a sign of superhuman status. At the same time, the history of slavery points to White racial views of Blacks as less thoughtful. Ideologies tend to be wrong because based on logical thought. Now we are in the era of acoustic waves that use an imitation intelligence to 'harmonise' marketing data (the sine wave.) However, the power of natural harmony is that it is a simple and spontaneous ratio of geometrical forms. Dawkins represents an ideology that uses thought - marketing, acoustic wave, speech - to promote an imitation intelligence in DNA. The effortless and spontaneous are completely opposed to this. Geometric form is above all spontaneous and simple, and that is the power. Natural power has to be spontaneous because it follows the basic proportions of physical bodies; the sphere, cylinder, cube. It goes beyond thought and beyond good and evil since it just exists as cardinal proportions One has to know (or guess) when not to think, and to let effortlessness carry the day. Pop sounds have that quality while speech does not, and Black-inspired pop notably (sounds, 'whoops', 'ooh' say more than words.) While racial ideologies may have died-out, we are left with what might be termed a 'species' ideology that substitutes an imitation acoustic derived intelligence for the power and grace of the human races. * Note, I changed this para to include order and chaos. Greek plays are abundant in this opposition, one of the best known being Euripides' 'The Bacchae'. The king of Thebes denies the divinity of Dionysus, and is torn into pieces by the god's followers the Bacchae (who sort of resemble enthusiasistic hippies.) When thought is applied to social order, the bacchanalian element is either outlawed or sent underground. This means planning, logic, knowledge and data. So this is a very broad area. The opposing area is purely spontaneous social activity based on urges. This corresponds to the street-life of Armatrading's No Love for Free, and the gentrifying of Times Square. 'Nothing's that exclusive, that obsessive' The New Inquiry/The Sonic EpistemeI spotted this extract from Robin James' book and realized she takes a certain view of 'Blackness' (last para), that it doesn't need accuracy and uses indiscipline creatively. Turning thus argument round, the same could be said of the dominant White culture, because its calculation of harmony is nor based on geometry but on frequency ratio. James uses the acoustic example of a threshold signal with a ratio of 5:1, whereby anything above the threshold is reduced from 5 to 1 in gain. Thereby the signal is 'compressed' and deviant signals are reduced, to the benefit of the 'norm' frequency. Exactly the same principles are used in a society governed by statistical calculation of frequency ratios, so that the 'norm' in marketing data is accentuated (the neoliberal or post-social identity society.) Yes, the acoustic wave is a good measure of this, but indiscipline doesn't need to be the answer. It isn't the case that spontaneous feel and effortless performance are indisciplined; Armatrading is known for being thorough in rehearsal. There is another principle here, that one rehearses IN ORDER to be freely spontaneous in performance (Bruce Lee wrote a whole book on the looseness and adaptation from strict routine needed in a fight.) The dominant culture thinks that routine is everything, and routines are easy to calculate statistically into frequency ratios (of buying habits etc.) But they are not everything because there is a whole other world that is spontaneous and effortless. This is related to geometry and proportion, and hence harmony (as measured by the Greeks.) Here, in biology proteins are highly harmonic. Genes are probability distributions whereas proteins are harmonic.** The language of science (which is the theory behind neoliberalism) does not talk Greek measure of ratio as geometry, but of frequency ratio (of data), so that point is very well made. A representative like Dawkins will glibly talk frequency ratios till the cows come home, so he is clearly in a marketing exercise and is very good at it. However, the Greek measure does not need to be abandoned in the name of (acoustic) technology. It is there in the buildings, in the old neighbourhoods. Resurrecting the buildings with the neighbourly residents will automatically replace the neoliberal measure of harmony with the Greek measure. It's a case of less thought and more free association of people in neighbourly relations, without the marketing apparatus to calculate probabilities in the post-social identity society (after all, technology is an example of thought; we don't need to be bound by it.)** ** This underlines the viability of James's thesis. A measure of harmony that is a geometric proportion will have musical significance. The Fibonacci series (discovered by Pythagoras) divides rectangles progressively 1,2,3,5,8,13 (a+b=c..) This series is the foundation of the Western musical scale. The Golden Ratio or phi thereby derived is 1.618. The Fibonacci spiral is seen in the growth of some plants. Biologically, if a protein is harmonic, that doesn't mean it emits some sort of musical sound, but the harmonic is a stochastic oscillation of a bond (meaning a probability that can't br determined statistically.) Natural harmony can't be statistically determined, and can follow harmonic series such as Fibonacci. Natural harmonies are frequency ratios that have some relation to physical geometry (of a protein, say.) Robin James' acoustic waves are frequency ratios that have no relation to physical geometry. She gives an example of the 5:1 gain ratio in 'compressing' signals to the benefit of the 'norm'. More widely, frequency ratios in neoliberal marketing compress signals to subdue the deviant or less popular in favor of the 'average'. These are technological tools, but the point is this: if something is musical, you can apply gain (otherwise one could apply gain to crickets or dog barks.) Musicality has geometric foundations that cannot be denied. Therefore, this is not a technological point at all In terms of biology, if one talks of 'statistically calculating probabilities of frequency ratios' in genes, that fits James's definition of acoustic waves. In other words, where there is no geometric foundation of the harmonics, it fits James's acoustic wave (of harmonised data or 'noise'.) The danger as I see it is that, if there are 2 definitions or ways of measuring harmony, the two get confused (or deliberately conflated.) If, say, Dawkins talks about "statistically calculated probabilities of frequency ratios in genes", he could also mention that proteins are harmonic. However, this harmonic is unpredictable (stochastic.) In this way, one could have the neoliberal acoustic wave infecting biology and especially genetics. Speech, marketing and the acoustic wave are all closely related, especially in the friendly-faced spokesmen. One has to be aware that statistics underpins a lot of this, and the acoustic wave is there to make the statistics friendly. Natural harmony cannot be statistically calculated, and this is why there is a fundamental geometric basis in the actual bricks-and-mortar (quantum physics converts to classical, note.) An old downtown neighborhood may not be a perfect vision of architectural harmony, but it is close enough to have some bearing on the Greek measure of antiquity. Footnote It might be worth noting that James thinks of the acoustic wave as 'rational', which probably means an intelligence. Something that is essentially formless may appear rational, but one could easily take a Lovecraftian view. A faceless or formless thing is more like a vast slug, a tentacled entity with a facade of evolutionary ethics and the morality of survival, inhabiting some sort of continually morphing geometry or non-geometry. Don't let the 'normal' types fool you (again.) This intelligence can be seen as the statistically calculated harmony of data (noise or probabilities) in the form of frequency ratios. The statistics are made 'friendly' by the sense of symphonic harmony; put another way, the 'symphony' is there to disguise the formlessness of the intelligence. However, the sense of sonic harmony - lack of distorted signal - invites one to think musically, so there is the chance genuine music is added to the mix. Hence there is another confusion of the two different measures of harmony. 'Harmony is functional, mainly tonal melodies played by strings in octaves or thirds.'Ā Quote from Times on Armatrading's symphony (see prev.) I also heard Arabesques and a lot of repeated phrases, so for sure no reliance on harmony. Most reviews commented on the joyful musicality. I have a slight problem with harmony in that Steve Reich is extremely harmonic and virtually unlistenable. Added to that the fact that gain (5:1 ratio) implies increasing the harmony by compression of the signal. In terms of biology, if one is talking statistics and probability (as Dawkins is), all one does is add 'harmony' and one has what amounts to a compressed signal. One has to always bear in mind that proteins are harmonic in the Greek sense of geometrical proportion (ie in terms of their shape and not statistically.)Ā
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Post by neilnv2 on Feb 19, 2024 13:16:59 GMT -5
TECHNO-FIXATION Referring to the last 2 paras of the link to 'The New Inquiry', James has a 'green zone' foe beneath threshold gain, and a 'red zone' for above threshold, with the 'red' being an indisciplined area where distortion is used as a creative activity, with a social bias against neoliberal accuracy.
As was said previously, music is music, one can't apply gain to cats howling in alleyways. The Armatrading live album 'Steppin Out' works very well with precise gain off TwoNeo speakers, especially on the title track with the solo stage persona on rhythm guitar and hollering vocal.
Then, one ould ask: what is live performance? It's the activity of the human body, especially the throat and the fingers on fretboard. Gain is a precise way of capturing this on hi-fi, so can be practically a live experience. Why spend Ā£300 or more on output?
All that seems pretty obvious, so what is James talking about in the 2 paras? It's probably a type of radical action for affirming an alternative to neoliberal norms, so to that extent she is advocating disharmony by distortion, since distortion doesn't affect the rhythms of rap.
As far as I can see, though, that is the same as saying 'distorted neoliberal harmony'. Nature has non-affirmative harmony: it's action, avoidance strategy, pairing-up to breed, hunting prey (blood, life, death.)
What James advocates is 'affirmative harmony that is distorted'. What nature serves up is non-affirmative harmony that is precise, real (dangerous, loving.)
One can relate this to neo-Darwinism which includes statistical population genetics. The statistical type of things have a sort of affirmation, but on the ground there is chaos and almost disharmony. This is because action is non-affirmative harmony. It is a type of small-scale war
Statistics is unreal because the type of harmony is not related to body-shape and thereby geometry. Statistics as affirmative harmony is something that is amenable to signal compression by gain ratio.
The world of statistics is the world of frequencies and ratios. These can be compelling as in a somewhat similar way a radio-shack. However, probabilities have a way of returning to reality (as with quantum to classical, zap physics.) Outside of this world there is a lot of disharmony, but no distortion, it is very real (there may be the odd distorted guitar, not a general social rule.) What harmony there is is non-affirmative and felt.
"Nothing's that exclusive, that obsessive" (More Than One Kind of Love)
Notes on Armatrading tracks (etc) This is a very typical song that takes a moral route between two different types of love, something like the Greek idea of moderation. One can love to excess, while friends are steadfast. Her songs are often like arguments, trying to find a way out of a difficult situation.
Sometimes ruthless measures are called for. "You would help me more If you helped yourself" (Help Yourself.) One disciplines oneself and expects discipline in others. This is life as a type of continual argument. "I bite my tongue And it bites me back" (How Cruel)
Pretty bloody. The disagreement or argument is the morality of action and non-affirmative harmony. This is the harmony of the body-in-action, muscular and mechanically sound.
Referring to Robin James' acoustic wave, once one has argument - clearly intelligent - one is away from affirmative harmony, which is usually taken as a statistical average. It is very easy to compress a signal into an average when there is a statistical affirmation.
Affirmation is never natural, because nothing is ever wholly statistical in nature. The same principle applies to tribal societies. I've watched several of the Republic Serials set in Africa, and they tend to be good at delineating the layers of the societies.
In Jungle Queen, Lothal is a White goddess who aids the allies and the tribes against the Germans, who want to rule the North African coast to establish a Southern Front. Whereas the Germans have a hierarchy of organisation and planning, facts and directives, the tribes have a hierarchy of belief that creates a type of layered co-leadership.
The same is seen in Congo Bill, where Loreen is the ruler of a White tribe, but the witch-doctor often contradicts her rule and makes his own deals with the gold-diggers.
That's just by the way as this is more of a musical note. Kate Bush noted of Pink Floyd's The Wall that it had no "compassion" and was not "objective" in its depiction of a deluded rock star recluse (modeled on Syd Barrett.)
Objectiveness comes from observation, which is what Armatrading's songs tend to do. To be objective is to see someone else's point of view and to have compassion (No Love For Free.)
A neighborhood is an argumentative place, and the morality springs from that (from observation, from objectivity.) Neighborhoods function as the body does, autonomically. This is natural harmony, non-affirmative and argumentative. Molecules in cells are conversing continually.
James's talk of "modeling (social alternatives) with sound" seemingly applies to affirmative societies that are effectively compressed to averages. In this sense, her sonic alternatives and the neoliberal mainstream may not be so different as they superficially appear.
In order to have morality we have to have argument. The affirmative societies may have harmony, whether distorted or accurate, but they cannot be said to be moral. This comes from neighbourly action and a modicum of discipline.
DEFINITION If one defines the sonic wave as: Acoustic oscillations having a statistical affirmation by compressing the signal to a harmonious average (with a threshold for gain - Robin James term is 'musical quality' as opposed to quantitative science) ..it's fairly obvious that this type of harmony (a frequency ratio) may oppress argument, and any deviation from the 'norm', whether distorted or not.
Therefore one could easily say both neoliberalism and the radical left are equally oppressive. This is pretty mysterious; we pride ourselves on our freedoms. What exactly is being oppressed?
A sonic wave is like a sea wave in that one is submerged in it and born along by it in whatever direction it is going. The one difference is that this is a technological wave, an ideological wave
The sonic oscillations, the sounds we are hearing such as speech, are part of the wave and going in the same direction. Basically, what that means is the paradigm we are in is transmitted by the sonic wave. However hard we strain against the wave, you cannot prevail because of the harmonious output going the other way.
That's pretty abstract so to take a concrete example, I can't stand modern pop though others seem to think different. Going back to 1979 Supertramp's The Logical Song seems to me to be correctly confused about modernity. The lyrics and sound are significant because the person (Roger Hodgson) has a personal take on his own stake in the universe. It's also joyful as opposed to dreary (Coldplay et al.)
So, Hodgson is going back to childhood and probably a sense of Olde Englishe village life. It's personal and slightly idiosyncratic. OK, now Paul Tobin wrote a pastiche of Lovecraft set in an Olde Englishe village, but where a family of submergible ancestry had invaded the sanctity. Lovecraftian imagery often conveys a sense of an enormous factory that is submerged and gradually invading the land, so that is nor a bad parallel.
The oppressive sense of invasion is also found in 50s B movies. What exactly is being invaded, since we can't see anything visible? It could be what Hodgson refers to as the inner self that is reacting to the world outside it. If his song is accurately confused, what is it about the outer world that is confusing?
Well, there are several things. One is that the majority seem to get on reasonably well at the social media and all the various entertainment features. Is it really so bad? No, I guess it's superficially reasonable, but there is the sense that something is lost.
It could simply be argument. John Clifton in 'Bite Now Suckers' (TCJ #190, 1984) opined that the rationalists asked questions and then proceeded to answer them with more questions. We should challenge the questions to avoid spiralling into the void of modernity.
So, fewer questions is pne possibility, but how does one go about that? One idea is that argument is itself the answer. Rather than have endless questions that carry one along in a tide of unknowing (a wave of sound), you are a person who lives alongside other people. Some you like, some you don't.
Now you're in the universe of Joan Armatrading's songs. If there are two different universes, that could be a way out. One is rational, and is composed of questions concerning statistics, frequency and ratio. In other words, that is the rational universe, that is its composition.
The sonic wave compresses these questions and answers into a harmonious sort of average befuddlement (neoliberal society of post-social identity.) So the sounds and speeches we hear are carried by the sonic wave to gently befuddle us and leave us mildly confused but not alarmed
The other universe is argumentative, and consists of people in neighbourhoods. So intelligence is a product of argument; ancient Greek thought was a product of many different ideas and very little agreement. Now that we are 'all' agreed on neoliberal harmony, there is no reason for disagreement. The sonic wave will keep this rational illusion going with its endless compression of signals (data) in the cosy harmony of mild befuddlement.
'Vultures', the new K West album, has been accused of being "superficial". Perhaps he was in a superficial state of mind or it's ironically superficial? With such a controversial record, who cares? All I know about rap is that it features repeated vocal dubs, and that's ok by me. Rational distortion is for the birds.
If neoliberal rationality is a type of universe, the Dawkins and Zuckerbergs aren't the enemy, they just don't know any better. From their marketing perspective they're doing OK, making logical sense in a universe that brooks no arguments.
The other universe is more realistic, if more left-wing, and has the 60s guys like Paul Kantner and Jerry Garcia. Neoliberal rationalists and 60s hippies may both be genuine believers in harmony, but of course there are 2 different types of harmony (one a frequency ratio - see Robin James.)
Which brings us to the vultures. In an irrational universe (of likes and dislikes, putrefaction and Chanel) they tidy up the remains of the day. In an irrational universe, good and bad coexist. What it comes to is that if we're not alive we're dead and may then be for the birds.
The logical universe doesn't care for that (as the song lyric says), but if good and bad don't coexist, what does exist? Probably the logical universe itself, which is harmonised by frequency ratios. Unless that's what you like, and you're happy to be in a smooth-running machine ('Eat Starch Mom', Grace Slick), you're living in a universe which is half chaos and creative destruction. So, where is the harmony? It's for sure not always there or much atall in evidence. If you want harmony that's always in evidence, you belong in the logical universe with the smooth-running machines.
You can have your machines, but it's like EC Comics, you have your rotting tree-trunks alongside them. There's a strength in irrationality because it's physically real and carries the dead along with the living, the fungi on the tree-trunk, the leaf-mulch on the woodland path and the insect detritus.
Historically, the realm of the dead and the realm of the gods coexist (Egypt, Greece.) Perhaps these guys were all wrong? It's not a logical universe, so to that extent they were wrong. However, it has the physical reality that inspires creative types, whether West or Armatrading or the 60s crowd. Argumentative intelligence, the history speaks for itself.
Francis Stevens Opinions differ, but it's possible Lovecraft read 'Citadel of Fear', the apocalyptic tale of modern demons written about 1920. There are two strands in her story; one is the ancient evil that enables bloated life, the other is the scientific mind that is corrupted by it.
The idea of corruption is common to both writers, in Lovecraft bloated maritime entities. While Stevens modernises the bloated shape-shifters, Lovecraft has them as a cosmic vastness that confounds scientific brains.
However, opposites can meet. When science grows 'clean meat' (for consumption) in a lab, it's at the expense of the fertile soil that harbours vegetative growth. 'Clean meat" is unclean because it is bloated and shapeless. The bloated corruption of nature appears in both the scientific tanks and Lovecraft's maritime vastness, I guess for different reasons but with similar end results.
A reasonable way to put it is that the connection between the two writers is gothic, the gruesome and ungodly. Stevens' story puts this in a scientific format, while Lovecraft doesn't specifically do that. However, there is a scientific strand within Lovecraft's fantasy.
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Post by neilnv2 on Feb 23, 2024 10:39:31 GMT -5
The Citadel of Fear Well, not being that familiar with Lovecraft, the source of his horror to me is unknown. With Stevens,a lot is known not only to me personally but in the design of her astounding tour-de-force of modern gothic horror.
If we are living in what amounts to a neoliberal experiment of the sonic wave (frequency ratios), the designs of our masters may have something in common with the design of Stevens' book. This isn't necessarily to say their designs are intentional; Archer Kennedy is a weakling whose will is hijacked by the subterranean god of Teacoatl for its ungodly ends.
There is quite a cast of characters, ranging from a muscular Irishman and his tough little sister, to a sinister albino Indian and a mute princess of a lost city, making for a human-centric exercise in conflict resolution - read lethal, not very methodical but effective.
The basic plot of the book is that Archer Kennedy remains a captive of the hidden city that his companions have escaped from. He becomes the acolyte of the god and his will is usurped in a quest for global domination. Years later, Kennedy rebuilds the essential design id the subterranean city inside a gothuc mansion, and it is this design that gives the book its global reach. While Lovecraft's universe is limited to the shores of Innsmuth, Kennedy constructs a universe within the cellar that is highly symmetrical, reaching up into the sky via a spire and down to the depths, with a swamp doubling for the hidden lake of Teacoatl, the incubation zone for the god's loathsome servants, a mechanical rampage of hybrid monstrosities.
Well, there is far more scope for experimental breeding in what amounts to a laboratory built on primal symmetry, a universe unto itself. If one says that Kennis essentially modeling the universe in order to recreate a universe in the image of the god, there could be a parallel to any attempt to model reality with an alternate image.
Referring back to Robin James, who talks of "modeling (social alternatives) with sound", what we have here in the book is an image, while James is modeling with sound. However, in both there is a 'compression' to an average lifeform, or the average mode of thought.
Compressing a signal to a harmonious average* has a musical quality (a frequency ratio) that can be appealing. It can seduce or almost suck the will dry of rebellion, effectively treating people technologically and not as humans.
I don't want to traduce James here as the neoliberal sonic wave is something that rings very true. I just think it's wrong to try to impose a technological solution on social areas that are composed of individual human beings who function better in family and traditional communes
Modeling society is full of peril, and the primal forces at play may not be fully appreciated and experiments have a way of going wrong.
* Given that a sonic wave has a certain musical 'quality' (compared to the quantitative or scientific area) one might be able to say something about this 'quality', more or less by way of comparison to (say) the 60s sounds
Even more specifically, The Beach Boys are known for their sophisticated vocal harmonies. These are like doo wop with some jazziness. The rhythms tend to be pure r&b as with "Surfin" USA', where melodies and falsetto are clear.
Basically, that's propulsive, melodic r&b with very cute harmonic, chordal interactions. The first two are the 'horizontal', the third is the 'vertical'. Comparing this to the sonic wave, compression either reduces or amplifies sound to increase 'quality', which can be taken to mean harmonising the signal by extinguishing deviations.
The neoliberal definition of harmony applies to frequency ratios and not to geometrical proportions; as was seen earlier, the Western musical scale is based on geometric proportions of the Fibonacci series (1,2,3,5,8,13).
This simply means that if you turn a tap on it could whistle (as a pipe)! It has a geometric shape that might create sonic oscillations or on other words a harmonic. The neoliberal wave is not that type of harmony, it really mainly means Compression of the signal to smooth the frequency ratios. It creates harmony out of 'noise or marketing data.
From that definition, the neoliberal wave has harmony but not a scale (ie pitch.) The harmony will clearly have some sort of rhythm attached (a time-signature) but not a tune. Music that is limited to harmony and rhythm is pretty dreary and clearly needs spicing-up.
That seems to specify pretty clearly that neoliberal harmony cannot function without adding genuine music into the mix. So in that sense, as was previously noted, 2 different meanings of harmony are mixed together. The neoliberal definition does not apply to a physical object, such as pipes that whistle.
If you check Nov19 (two pages back), there's a reference to CL Moore's two-note oscillation and "the auditory that signifies what is NOT THERE in all the other senses." If the auditory signifies what is not there, that clearly is an alternative reality.
'I waited for the kettle to whistle' (Wishing by JA)
Putting all that together, neoliberal harmony uses music to facilitate neoliberal harmony. James's alternative to this is 'distorted neoliberal harmony' (prev post), which sounds like a technological fix. The problem really is that pitch is a harmonic and pan-pipes are a very ancient sound indeed. This is an original sound and a physical reality so to overlook it in the cause of harmonising market data has a suspect sound.
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Post by neilnv2 on Feb 25, 2024 10:10:24 GMT -5
'The sonic episteme is dangerous, but thankfully it's not the only way to think with and through sound.. Phonographies articulate ideas, aesthetics snd relationships that exist in the frequencies perceptually coded out of the sonic episteme's spectrum..'
Quoting from Robin James from tops of last 2 paras, where she starts talking about Black studies, she leaves the sonic episteme and is talking about sound as it is transmitted through 'mixers and speakers'.
This is why in the last para when she mentions 'pitch and bass', she has switched from talking about neoliberal harmony to talking about the 'distortion' of 'White aesthetic values' by going into the 'red' zone.
I therefore accept that switch passed me by. However, the fact her switch is still in the technological area of mixing and speakers is somewhat puzzling. As was said earlier, one doesn't distort 'sound' with gain and threshold, one distorts music. Music is played on instruments (by people), so whether analog or digital they are all instruments obeying the same rules.
Her switch is therefore from the neoliberal wave to musical instruments, whether played by Black or White (this is relevant since The Beach Boys and numerous other bands are playing essentially Black music.)
In the 60s, groups of people from very different backgrounds had intersecting ideas and aesthetic habits. The Beach Boys represented middle-class White male youth rather than Black barber shop trios.
The intersection of musical styles has to do with playing instruments (style) and not with the technology of transmission. To what extent are any of the 69s bands to do with 'White aesthetic values'?
Well, the answer is obviously zero since it was a rebellion from that. Likewise, Joan Armatrading isn't bothered about her Blackness and will happily write the odd symphony alongside her reggae or jazz influences.
Mixers and speakers are technological appliances that transmit frequencies. Gain abd threshold alter ratios. That is still a neoliberal area, so one could still say she is advocating 'distorted neoliberal harmony'. The reason for that is probably that any science of sound involves technology and transmission (waves.) However, this wave tends to intrude into the organic area by degrees.
Resonance is something universal; I was looking this up, and the DNA helix resonates at a frequency related to the length of helix. In other words, resonance per se is not interesting. The question is, when does resonance become musical?
A possible answer is, when objects approach the appearance of instruments. Haemoglobin (oxygen-carrier in blood) has a to-and-fro pipe-like structure that resembles the look of a trombone.
A other example is one's stomach that resembles a taut drum and can thrum. While the neoliberal wave is resonance, things that resemble instruments are enclosed spaces that create harmonics in their geometry.
If we are talking technology we are not talking people playing musical instruments like drums. That's what I find odd in James's last few paras. It seems like a techno-fix to distort the neoliberal wave in favor of an alternative social zone of Blackness
But the 60s did pretty much the opposite! Differences intersect creatively, and this is really coming from the geometrical definition of harmony. Even if James is talking about instruments, her advocacy of distortion still appears to be in the neoliberal area of technological resonance.
This type of Weird confusion seems par for the course in disentangling the 2 measures of harmony. (Being somewhat obvious, machines are easy to use and continue the pretense of living in a 'waveform' reality that is easy to market. A guitar is difficult to learn and exists in the physical sphere of intersecting social reality.)
(JA has written in to say "This song is aesthetically criminial, a wrong, bad, stupid and evil misinterpretation of roots music") JA's nay saying aside, I asked for an unbiased comment on the aesthetic appeal from my sister Helen, who is not really into American things (and is actually co-founder of a BrontƩ society in Brussels.) "Yes it seems conventional in terms of harmony. If it gets you humming along I guess it's pleasing."
There are two things there; one is the vocal harmony, the other is the light footstepping. It has a sonic appeal and a physical appeal in the dancability. As Armatrading herself has said in her better days, music has a universal appeal, in an unbiased sense, that would be sonically and the physical, shuffling footstepping.
It could be argued that Blacks are often superior at improvised dancability, but it's all a question of taste. Arrangements differ, with bass or uptempo, falsetto or low doo wop registers. The questions of arrangement abd taste are aesthetic, musical judgements. The physical dancability plays a large part and quite a lot of that comes from the Black vibes of roots r&b.
As I have tended to say, street vibes abd the bricks-and-mortar of places are the source of the cross-breeding that took place between different genres of music. The social sectors left to themselves overlap (as Faraji said of Greek traditional music, "like a Venn diagram.")
The overlap is clearly because aesthetics and taste and arrangement are universal things knowing no borders. Tastes may vary, aesthetic judgement may vary, but there is a hell of a lot of overlap.
To say something is 'outside a particular aesthetic range of appeal' has to be a type of cutoff that does not usually occur in 'The real world'. I mean the cutoff that Robin James observes into the 'red' or above threshold of gain.
What occurs in practice is overlap of differences. Differences are not cutoff points, there are vast areas of agreement. Cutoff to me seems to be a technological term that applies technologically. The effect is to convert a technological (or basically mathematical or digital) area into the social area of 'Blackness'. This is precisely what James is against in the neoliberal establishment. Have I missed something?
'The Ontological (Speculative) Turn' To put background into this I looked at Yale Intro To Sound Studies.* There is a broad debate around 'sound in nature' or the real, abd 'sound in culture' and the auditory or heard.
The former broadly corresponds to resonance, most of which is subsonic vibrations. Critics of this assert there is a subject/object bias, as in the study of nature (by White Western science.)
There is a broad consensus that the sonic exists outside of Western thought. Feminists oppose the ontological turn, and propose a multi-ethnic approach to the aural.
For my part, there must be some correlation between nature and culture. Cultures are linked by nature. What feminists critique as 'the unsituated observer', in a culture is placed in a sonic context.
If you live in a traditional neighbourhood, the sounds have some cultural context (or even frogs burping.) There is also some musicality (as well as the odd street drill.)
Culturally, there has to be some musicality, and to my way of thinking Robin James seems to have overlooked it. Whether the cultures are White or Black or Red the same holds.
The sonic episteme or neoliberal resonance is the one area where this does not hold. The fact that it is associated with White males may hold a clue to the confusion. (*James Lavender on pdf)
Footnote Having dipped a toe into academia, one thing I came away with is that sound defies the conventional definition of 'text'. As in tou could say a film is a cultural text. Sound goes beyond this to an assemblage of listeners (at a concert) and a type of vibe.
But it goes much beyond vibration or resonance. An assemblage of people, there for the same reason with similar thoughts, have a pragmatic sense of context. The people are not just relating to a message but a feeling.
This could be so of Hitler's speeches or of The Beach Boys. The message is not fully textualised, it's also a sound and a feeling, an improvisation. Talk about 'Beyond Good and Evil'. (Jean-Luc Godard thought the modern world was essentially 'text'. His films are "Truth 27 times a second". In other words, action. His scripts are very minimal, music is punctuated.)
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Post by neilnv2 on Feb 29, 2024 7:02:38 GMT -5
Researching the sonic turn came across this Columbian - her description of the river people is pure Conan (Aurality hearing the non-human)
Taking something out of Ochoa's book, 'ZoƩ' (intro 9) is the human being excluded from the city of the written word ('The Lettered City'). One can extend this to 'The scientific city' of information that is increasingly used to define the species (DNA) and the market (statistical harmony of frequency ratios.)
Statistics ignores body-shape (Feb19) and geometry (the neoliberal measure of harmony, Robin James.) One gets the impression DNA does the same, though it is very difficult to prove or disprove these things.
Staying with Ochoa, the song and the voice and listening are human actions that link the person to nature (sounds of animals that resemble music.) The voice is clearly dependent on body-shape (throat, Oct13.) Rhythm is clearly fundamental to this, as Prof. Noble appeared to agree (Sept19.)
The human person existing outside the 'city' interacts with nature via rhythm and the voice, hearing harmony with the ear. The timbre or musicality of animals is imitated by the Bogas in Ochoa's study.
Music is also dependent on geometry ,in the perfect 5th of a monochord guitar string (Pythagoras.) Ochoa says intro10 there is a need to 'link the political history of the person with the species history of the human'
But 'species' is now associated with information. The history of the species outside the 'city' is actually associated with rhythm, geometry and harmony (in natural musical sounds.)*
The 'formless intelligence' (neoliberalism) is the intelligence of the 'city' outside of nature. Ear and throat and the body itself are spontaneous (a priori) developments of geometry and harmony and rhythm.
The city of written words and information (represented by AI and DNA) has become detached from the strong natural world. The individual person historically interacts with the natural world through sounds and actions. This is the true species history of arguments that are carried in the rhythms of sound, and not in the detached form of written data. (* Ochoa also mentions face-paint in geometrical designs to represent water znd sounds)
I picked-up something more from the intro, where Ochoa questions the colonial histories that compare the 'rational' Anglo/US with the 'irrational' Latin. Instead, she questions the division between 'zoƩ' (natural life) and 'bios' (the city life of the political class.)
"One of the central aspects explored in each of the chapters of this book is how a zoopolitics of the voice was a political means, in this historical moment of transformation from the colony to the postcolony, to redefine the relationship between the colonial and the modern." (Intro9)
So that a study of the 'natural life' and knowledge of the oral tradition changes one's perspective on what is political and rational.
Taking it further, a written and scientific culture develops via questions that advance answers, raising more questions (see Clifton.) This approaches a logical zone, which one can ally to a waveform (and thus probabilities.)
So one could argue that the 'bios' leads to probabilities or rule by statistical frequencies (neoliberalism.) In orher words, a logical universe is one that measures frequencies. Rather than necessarily say Latins are irrational, one can invoke the Latin temper that is argumentative.
Latin temper does ot lead to logic but to argument. One could argue that argument is the thoughtful mind, the ability to consider a layered reality that is far from logical.
The ability to argue encounters a reality that is layered, not logical. This reality is more akin to the Latin society than the Anglo. One could align it with the Nietzschean idea that one does not pursue 'good' or 'bad' but a median way of struggle.
Animal strength and vitality are constituted by struggle. Even if this seems a bit brutal, seeking an ideal 'bios' is simply an illusory order based purely on a measure of frequency for human wellbeing.
This universe (the neoliberal measure, Robin James) does not measure harmony by geometry and thus the spontaneous development of form. The active, rhythmic body in a neighborhood where music is encountered. Nothing is perfect and it can be brutal, but that's just reality.
The rebel street-vibe of Poly Styrene from the 70s. The alt-sax parts were written by Lora Logic who left for the off-kilter beats of Essential Logic. Whether melodic or not, music is intelligent if it has varied approaches. The highest intelligence of the musical sort is Joan Armatrading, lyrically argumentative and often halting rhythms and segueing a slow shuffle (Kissin and Huggin, Wishing, Cool Blue.)
The soporific break-beats of contemporary dance where nothing changes over time (-signature or sequence)* conflict with Kanye West's genre-flexing muscle. Daughter North has already started putting out snippets of criticĀ
* A soporific time-signature is also the dual-note of Jirel Meets Magic (see prev.) and the affirmative harmony of neoliberalism. JA has no reliance on harmony, and a superhuman appreciation of changes to the time-signature that jog the listener into attentive thought. The difference between thinking listening and being 'told' or suggested not to think is contained in this (rebel) music. (Harlan Ellison's short story 'Keyboard' has this soporific theme, if not the musical signature.)
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Post by neilnv2 on Mar 7, 2024 11:09:40 GMT -5
Following on from North's clinical cut, the savage in history is contained in two orher Ellison stories, Scartaris and She Doesn't Know How To Leave Home (both from 'Slippage'). In the former, Scartaris engages a man of the cloth on the deities dep by Christ, to the former's horror,before finally decamping to a dormant volcano, awaiting the chance to 'recreate' the past (with followers.) This sense that history is an ongoing creative act between object and subject is put by Ochoa as a counter to the dominant Western writen mode of 'being taught.' Specifically, sound includes three things: the listener, the thing heard (such as music) and the presence of others such as animals. Ochoa has a very complex arguments (Intro23,24) that hearing and listening constitute acoustic assemblages where what is heard and understood (interpretatwd) are always going to be equivocal, depending on one's cultural and political perspective. The 'equivocal'is correct because of differing perspectives between different groups. Being in the middle is the right (argumentative) attitude. I liken this to the 60s nature of being at the Fillmore and in a particular cultural context of inter-breeding of influences. The abundance of nature and myths and songs also come into Ochoa's book. Ellison, in She Doesn't Know How To Leave Home, recounts the bestial nature of a particular maritime myth (set in Scotland.) Songs, at least according to Ochoa's book, relate more to natural sounds. The superhuman and the animal are closely related. This close relation to natural sounds on music and performance detaches the human from being 'told' by writen language that things are so. Specifically in pop, Benson Boone modeled his sound on Black performances like Marvin Gaye with high-pitched animal wails. One could probably relate this to Dionysus and the affective side of ancient Greek culture. To give this a political dimension is akin to having cowboys 'Yipping!' down the mainstreet. It has no meaning apart from the actual idea of it being an action of a person in a particular place and surrounded by animals or herds. Beyond that, the meaning is what we understand by nature, as opposed to a consumer product to be marketed by neoliberal measure of frequency for the 'political' human well-being. The other measure of harmony is related to an assemblage of people with a particular being that interrelates to other groups equivocally. It's non-affirmative and active, musical and occasionally brutsl. The connection between different social groups is nature so I guess includes natural sounds. Animal sounds have very varied pitches; Ochoa has a section on 'Howls and Pitches (ch1). This probably includes timbre. From my personal listening, Joan Armatrading's voice is very distinctive with both a reedy high range and a contralto low. An extreme range in human vocal might be likened to the varied pitches found in nature (I've only read the intro to this book as it's online.) 'Cosmopolitics' is a word Ochoa coins for the natural tendency. One might also think that a human voice can contain a cosmos; humans invent sounds, they are not hunting, they are inventing it through sound. The human voice is a vehicle for a cosmos (see eg 'Wishing') Cosmopolitics* Musicality is one way of condensing texts into something that can be uptaken. There is rhythm and the vocal pitch and some arranging finesse. The assumption I'm making is that the scientific method (which Stengers mammothly critiques) does not have these - pitch or scale is based on geometry which the neoliberal measure does not measure (Robin James.) The texts are I guess essential work, but they are not going to get read by the people who are the actual populace, so music makes an intermediary (medium/genre) that is direct and responsive. I'm citing Black performances so, starting with Lee Perry's reggae album (loosely based on Max Romeo's), his arrangements have a sort of stop-start jungle bass-line that is infectious and hypnotic. Cosmopolitics is basically saying there is a creative act between subjects and objects with a sense of animal sounds and surroundings.'Super Ape' could imply that Man is a super animal; there is an affinity between the superhuman and the animal, especially in sounds and pitch (as per prev.) Cosmopolitics musically is what I would call cross-genre (as Ochoa's book is interdisciplinary) and is more about arranging genres. Marvin Gaye's 'What's Going On' with street hollers and 'The Ecology' was disliked by Motown but has outlasted the label. Kanye West is another artist who crossrs genres and has an almost orchestral sense of arrangement. Genres are fine in themselves - such as rap or bluegrass - but are to some degree in a ghetto of like-minded listeners. Cosmopolitics needs an artist who is familiar with genres and also having a strong orchestral sense of arrangement. Of these, Joan Armatrading is an Olympian deity to the mortal pretenders. I'm just putting this out there as a Cosmopolitical possibility so, since of the 4 musicians cited 2 are dead and West is an unlikely contender, the rest is addressed with JA in mind. Songs are immediate and evoke responses between subjects and objects in surroundings which are 'sounding' or animal (an ancient Greek grove, l'apres midi d'un faun'.) So, we're talking a folk-song context. A song has a cosmic context that says you are in this situation and are actively doing things (sailors' sea shanties.) Cosmopolitics says that you are in a situation (already) and there is an ongoing creative act between subjects, objects and the senses of the animals (this would include not just sound but sight, touch.) Sight or the visual in Ochoa's book is associated with scientific advance and the dominant Western culture (of straight lines, electromagnetism, perspective order or illusion.) One could suppose that colour is more 'felt' and symbolic (green/sun.) There is an elemental sense in which in a harmonious situation one needs elemental things. A traditional ranch needs grass, water, oxygen, community (by oxygen I mean clean air.) See homegrownstories.org/omega-beef The Bones Brothers ranch in Montana breeds grass-fed beef but my impression was they need the feeder calf/feedlot buyers to survive. This brings us to the nub of the issue. Say JA writes a song-cycle lyrically extolling people to go out there, ready and willing to work in the green fields, the rewards are there for you.... Are they? Clearly there's no money in ranching, only hard work for zero reward I accept all that, and the fact that people may just want to buy 'clean meat' (harvested in labs) for their hamburgers. But people are not living in a Cosmopolitical situation. They are living in cities where shop heat-pumps denature the skin (with stale air) and slow one's body responses so that action is less desirable. The city is mainstream politics, but no one is suddenly going to listen to the Carter Family and go misty-eyed for bluegrass. The fact is that JA is a cosmos in herself that could invoke the get wet, ride hard, wrestle steers Cosmopolitics of the ranch. Texts are not going to do that ever. Ochoa cited the 'grammarian' presidents of Columbua who established the Hispanic-language city culture. Cosmopolitics is essentially about a cosmic balance that songs can invoke - in the Homeric sense. It is not fully textualised; there is almost a catch-22 that 'texts critique texts'; that takes up quite a large part of Ochoa's critique of the Hispanic history. In the cosmic sense, things are spontaneous (the hyperspheric periodic table of harmonic clusters, see several posts back.) If cattle herds in grassland existed, they would be to a large extent spontaneously healthy. This entails a new establishment of Cosmopolitics. Who will sing of the herds? That's the question and this is one answer. (* Dixit Belgian philosopher Isabelle Stengers who wrote a 7 vol text!) My personal take is that animals represent athletic power, a composed product, sound emanating from the object. Taken together as a whole there is a musicality. 'The presence of others' can be represented with musical sounds, voice, color, geometrical pattern. The 'visual' taken as perspective (not color) is a scientific advance dated from the Renaissance. Meaning a single-point observer or subject/object duality (scientific method.) (CC Beck as previously mentioned threw down vanishing points when he felt like it. Storytelling and artistry need not be dominated by scientific method.) Design of cities in a grid is abstract geometry. Geometry need not involve perspective (on a 2D plan). The one is an abstract shape, the other is a method. In other words, sound is part of an interdisciplinary area that includes other artforms. There is an abstract dimension that need nor include perspective method atall. Pitch, rhythm, phrase, color can all describe music. Pitch is based on a geometrical scale (see prev.) The neoliberal measure of harmony (Robin James) does not measure geometry so certainly does not have an abstract sense of form (the formless intelligence of marketing.) One could say the neoliberal measure of harmony has rhythm but not pitch, so is essentially non-musical; music or pitch has to be added to the mix. Sound and pitch, being outside the usual perspective disciplines of science, perhaps make it more obvious that science is a method. Ochoa's book for sure is proposing an ontology.* *Ochoa Intro13 quotes Sterne that 'vision offers a perspective', and that 'vision tends towards objectivity; hearing towards subjectivity.' Science is completely objective, so definitely tends towards the visual. But the visual means electromagnetism and all the appliances associated with the technology. This makes the 'visual' a perspective science (meaning wavelengths outside the visual range!) The visual is not necessarily perspective. It can be, or not (Van Gogh's interiors are one-point perspective, his landscapes aren't.) What you can probably say is that artists tend to use other senses and touch along with the visual. They are 'affected', the effect is interdisciplinary. Science goes way beyond what affects the senses. If one stays with the senses, there is an interdisciplinary area whereby things like atmosphere and the presence of others is there (in the surroundings.) The visual is part of this area; by saying the visual tends to be objective, one is implying the surroundings are somehow separate and to be observed. In the interdisciplinary area of the presence of others, the different things are interacting in a creative act. Not necessarily observing but partaking (in events.) Whereas science is observation and perspective, in this area of the senses it's not necessarily so. This argument is quite complicated, and somewhat like the one by Ochoa Intro23,24. (In a noir film, what you see and what you hear are both atmospheric and equally so, the two senses are not independent or separate but act together.)
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Post by neilnv2 on Mar 10, 2024 9:55:22 GMT -5
The 1st track off the 2nd album, the one inspired by New York street life of the 70s, 'Steppin' Out' to the Bronx and seeing the 'skinny burlesque queens' of Back to the Night.
'Seeing' is the word, the auditory/visual universe. Having read the intro to 'Aurality', it seems to mecthe arguments are doubly complicated by my deviation into the visual, so might be worth having an attempt at a brief resume.
The 1st thing to say is that my territory is the 60s or 70s music and not the South American jungle. Specifically, I am talking about the street life (Hait Street), or at leastvhave that in mind. Apart from that there are the Blaxploitation movies of the era, and Republic serials.
Of these, 2 are visual. So, my first point is that the 'visual' here is not the sense of 'observation' as quoted by Ochoa of Sterne. It is the visual of the street or the jungle.
I'm not gonna describe these again; Ochoa has done a good job already. It's fairly complicated and one is in an ongoing creative act between subjects and objects. In this situation one is not observing, one is acting. Hippies dressed and went how they pleased. They did things 1st, and the scene is what it is (you could calk that ontology.)
Sterne's 'audiovisual' uninverse is very much associated with recording and reproduction ('audile'). My problem with this is that a street is not a recording, it is a happening. Where there is activity, there is an ongoing creative act between subjects and objects
It is a very complicated area, and that point has been made by Ochoa. One us not recording the scene objectively, one is not observing it dispassionately, one is participating in it. In that sense, the visual and the aural are together. Sny differences between the 2 modes of perception are much less apparent than in any recording or reproduction.
Spontaneous social activity of the street has atmosphere (as already noted of the pre-gentry Times Square seediness.) The atmosphere is just what it is, and obviously it can be sensed. A scientist might say 'one I'd observing something happening', but that does not describe it.
The 2nd problem with saying 'the visual is observation' is that that amounts to shopping. You see something abd you want to buy it. This is the reality we are in. The 3rd problem with observation is that shopping and marketing have been taken up by the neoliberal measure of harmony (Robin James.)
I'm not gonna go over that again. As already noted, I don't agree with her 'distorted neoliberal harmony' as a Black social area as I don't think it's musical. I don't agree that one has to take a technical approach to things as we are talking of human beings being active. This activity can take place on the streets.
The street has its vibe and its musicality. The senses obviously sense this. In other words, I'm talking about activity, the physical body being active on the street.
I'm not dissing the academics; without their texts I couldn't possibly have written this. Ir takes 2 to tango and the body is itself a harmonious thing as animals are. It seems obvious that senses are clearly part of the body. The body may at times observe and at times listen, but it is active (as the Bogas boatmen.)
One is not always observing or always listening. There are other things going down.
'See the Romeos dancing in the moonlight Night was made for romance You keep your sunny day Just get me.. Ā š 'The Presence of Others'
This is the 3rd element of Ochoa's aural dimension ('Aurality'). Music is mimetic, especially in the region of vocal pitch and Arabesques. Ochoa notes that in the jungle life is stratified, from the high-pitched monkeys and birds at the tops of trees to the jaguar on the prowl at the base . Absolutely, there is imitation and the animal, and in the jungle they are present. But if music is a mimetic artform, which it is, the scale and pitch call to Mind things which are not present.
Armatrading's lyrics are an anthem for street-life 'Sweet smiling rose The night life perfume 'Cause I love that life Gay night walkers Old blues buskers All night long there's just so much to do'
The aural is an immediate 'hit'. Sterne's list of differences with vision which Ochoa quotes, includes 'Sound is about affect; vision is about intellect' Now, the odd thing is Armatrading is an observer of life, she watches and that's the way she generally writes songs. This is zn intellectual approach.
The fact that things are very different doesn't mean they don't interact and are used together. The question isn't so much 'How different are sound and vision?' as 'How separate are they?'.
Scientific disciplines separate things into specialities; Armatrading's songs combine things artfully. The fact that song is affective and vision is intellectual needn't mean we separate them into separate disciplines.
Human life is both of these things together. If you have a scientific discipline, it is textual. As Ochoa says, sound resists a textual description, and is to some degree outside of Western mainstream science. Sound and music relate very directly and immediately to a street scene, and the mind is affected. Affection relates very directly to the scene we are in; intellectual is a type of detachment that an observer uses (to write a song.)
In other words, both things are there but the affective cannot be fully textualised. It is very directly a part of the scene we are part of. This scene is an ongoing creative act between subjects and objects.
Music is mimetic and affects the mind with sounds of the other (not of the particular scene.) An observer observs the scene using their intellect to write a song. When one is talking about a scene it is artificial to separate intellect from affection. While it is true to say music and sound directly impact on a scene, the scene consists of people interacting as subjects and objects (observers and performers), people with intellects (unless They're politicians.)
The ancient Greeks had Apollonian vision versus Dionysian (animal) urges. A song will unite them while science will separate them.
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Post by neilnv2 on Mar 11, 2024 15:21:46 GMT -5
Examples Having seemingly reached Nietzsche, The 'Aurality' of Ochoa might represent what has been lost to scientific vision. At least, according to Nietzsche Dionysus is a strong, primal force while Apollo is static order. Both are needed, in that neither chaos nor boredom are desirable. Music often represents a primal element in films and I picked 3 examples.. Morricone has a whole panoply of instrumental sounds, Birdlip flutes, cowboy whistles and whips, a choral jogtrot and bells in A Fistful of Dollars. The cowboy/sci-fi serial Phantom Empire ends on a high note with Gene Autrey's falsetto yodelling on guitar. 3rdly, the Nazi Youth song from Cabaret in a sun-dappled woodland setting. If music is primal and affective, that doesn't mean it is Dionysian; as implied by Nietzsche, art contains both elements, even if creative passion is primal. This could explain why sound is outside the scientific mainstream, since Dionysian rhythm is at its base. If harmony is the Apollonian element in music, it still has to be completely linked to rhythm (time-signature.) So music is a pretty perfect example of the Nietzschean ideal. The two cannot be separated. Of the 3 examples, I wouldn't say they're that chaotic, there is choral harmony, pitch or scale that is related to geometry. They're not chaotic (Dionysian) but they are affective. The affect can be intended. After all, the youthful Nazi singer may have known what a stir his costume and pose would have on the crowd of listeners. Emotion in music is often carefully prepared (thought our intellectually, choreographed.) So,basically, Sterne's division of the affective (sound) and intellectual (vision) need not apply to music. The point with music is that both can easily be present. Because both are present, music is not wholly intellectual - ie a science. Specifically, in any group situation it has an affect which cannot be fully textualised. The passions can be aroused as with the Nazi song. The harmony and the rhythm together are affective inside the group. Music is not amenable to the scientific advances of the visual arts because it is a shared experience between performers and observers. There is a type of unity, a beyond individual unity (Ochoa mentions the collective and sense of beyond individual in voicing, relating them mainly to animal.) Where the observer is separated, this unity tends to be lost and the complicated situation of subjects and objects lost sight of. So, basically, observation and order in the form of harmony are present in a group performance or street situation. To put objective observation and order on the side of visual as opposed to sound is to miss sight of the balance that is present in music in a group or street situation. I think this also applies to Robin James's use of 'distorted neoliberal harmony' (above threshold gain) as a Black social area. Social situations on the street include observation and detached intellect. It's a case more of taste than of technological reproduction (if neoliberal harmony is monotonous the reason is that the measure is technological, as James points out.) 'The Presence of Others' 2Well, the presence of others applies to group situations so, even though it's true to say one watches a screen to listen to music, the screen is itself static. Music relates to a group en masse, so that they will function as a group, and of course the group can start marching to war, or dance together So, the list given by Sterne doesn't necessarily pick-up on the fundamental fact that vision is static, sound is movement. That's way we live in a relativistic, static world of screens. The fact that we move fast doesn't alter that fact (that movement is relativistic or static.) Sound connects us to the Dionysian world because of primal rhythm, whereas vision can take one away. The world of primal rhythm is the ancient world of the satyrs and nymphs frolicking in the woods clutching garlands of pansies and acting disreputably. There's a weird connection between naive innocence and carnality that is also captured in Harlan Ellison's story 'She Doesn't Know How To Leave Home' (prev.) JA would herself make quite a decent satyr (she already has the hooves in the above illo.) She has the same lyrical contradictions. The idea of weirdness, or the slightly androgynous look, started with the Greeks. The shamanic girlishness with long curls, be they mem or women (Byron recounts an incident where he slept with his hair in curlers and was discovered; "I'm a damn fool.") The girlish innocence brings one closer to flowery nature and the instinctual animal. I think one can relate this to the type of 'beyond individual unity' Ochoa mentions. It is a shared experience in nature that is expressed in group music (or sound.) Mimetic music evokes otherness, and often attracts the weird-looking performers like Poly Styrene (Jim Morris on, Janis Joplin.) 'The presence of Others' is standard in nature, as the weird or shamanic are standard in ancient societies (not just Greek but Nordic, see prev.) When otherness is standard, the world is movement, and music can mimetically evoke this world. We live in a static, visual world taking the image of marketing-type technology (neoliberalism, Robin James.) However, as noted, the difference between visual and sound is sort of artificial as they can combine in the group. However, musicality us certainly easy to detect in natural forms. The body consists of 'otherness'; each organ is a universe on itself. The primal rhythms of music can unite subjects and objects in a group, and the primal rhythms of the body can unite the parts of the body. The primal has to connect to harmony (geometry) in a musical sense, so that the key is the balance between Dionysus and Apollo (the latter being otherwise static order.) Geometry and rhythm function spontaneously if the two are connected. Otherness is a mimetic, musical condition where shared experiences between subjects and objects are united by the balance between primal rhythm and spontaneous geometry (order.) Otherness is present in the body as in nature as in the group. MORE THAN ONE KIND OF LOVE (music-video) 'The Ontology of Others'(Music) These arguments are very difficult to put into words, as I'm sure others would agree, so one has to resort to terminology. Ontology is the physical state of being (reality as perceived), while Metaphysics is the 'outside physical' (or mental.) The basis of this (musical) ontology, then, is that reality I perceived via movement. If you go back to Oct31 there is a link to a Tai Chi master, the body practicing defense/attack and breathing (in/out) and I make the comment vinyl is up and down. One way to achieve measurements of body movements is to use motion-capture. This employs a 3D coordinate system of X,Y,Z (I assume Disney-style 3D animation does the same.) To animate something uou therefore need a 3D coordinate system X,Y,Z. Some way back on discussing the visual/sound split, I did mention that the visual I'd associated with electromagnetic technology (and so goes beyond the visual to radio.) Science detects things via X-ray diffraction, hence we know of DNA etc. The musical/ontological position is that movements create the coordinate system for the development of the organism. The fact that DNA is detected via X-ray diffraction does not alter the fact that it is static. The balance between primal rhythm and spontaneous geometry creates the coordinate system. This prompts DNA, in other words mobilises it via the correct time and place. The physical reality is therefore not DNA, it is primal rhythm and spontaneous geometry as applied to static DNA (spontaneous geometry is something that was previously discussed via the harmonics.) Science is ontologically confused owing to the visual/sound split. What you see (via instruments) is not all that's there. The balance between geometry (spontaneous harmony) and rhythm give it a musicality. In a nutshell, that is it. Anything else is adding to the idea. For example, films are 'moving picture' š¬ but modern films are littke more than mouthpieces for actors. I was watching the 1935 serial 'The Lost City' and rhe screams and baying from the Black tribe battling the giants of the lost city are fantastically animalistic! Rhythm, action and the physical are all linked by the vibrations of bass-notes. That tribal beat is contagious and life-affirming ('The visual goes toward death', Sterne.) The static or visual-based sciences cannot understand that. Poetry or music is not really their thing, is it? This link to traditional Arabic decoration shows how simple orthogonal shapes - lozenges, rhombuses - and circles, squares can be stretched and pushed and made to form myriads of patterns. The resulting patterns are in dynamic equilibrium owing to the geometrical base. The relation to 'Dynamic Anatomy' (Burne Hogarth) is obvious. [Call out to Ochoa. You have my email address. We seem to have similar wavelengths, so. ?]
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Post by neilnv2 on Mar 14, 2024 6:49:05 GMT -5
THE MELTING ACID FEVER STREAKIN' THRU MY MINDĀ MAKES IT OH SO DIFFICULT TO SEE YOUĀ AND OH SO EASY TO TOUCH YOU....MANKIND GONE FROM THE CAGEĀ ALL THE YEARS GONE FROM YOUR AGEĀ At firstĀ I was irridescentĀ ThenĀ I became transparent
Finally
I was absentĀ lyrics from Paul Kantner 1970 concept album
There's another video of 'Starship' featuring animations of flowers, spaceships etc. Perspective animation converts physical reality to the visual, and is quite a good example of the domination of image (over sound.) It's impressive, but, frankly, the only illustrations worth anything are Grace Slick's illustrations from the original album sleeve. She's now become a painter, and her romantic vistas of (her then paramour) Kantner on a surreal trip are infused with the hippy spirit
From ontology (physical reality), we then have Metaphysics or what the mind craves as spirit. As normal, it's virtually impossible to separate spirit from Kantner's dictums on 'balling in the park' and so on. The hippies want to be free to take acid (LSD mind-expansion) and frolic in the park; then take their babes to outer space and gaze out the portholes at the Jupiter sunset.
This is what got them in a whole heap of trouble with 'old B movie actors' and the like but, I mean, they're just being physical and getting real, while LSD is one way to access a spiritual dimension. What exactly is wrong with that (to quote from BWS's 'Young Gods and Friends')? Linda Perry 20 years later was doing it, another way-out weirdo.
Perhaps that is part of the 'conundrum' (of thinking in seeming contradictions, like the fact that Armatrading is another louche lyricist who also appears to be a doctor of pop or rock. Is this also part of the interdisciplinary area covered by Ochoa?) It is weird rather than straight, yes, but 'the straight world' is the domination of the visual that has no physical reality.
It is very persuasive but gives you zero in the way of spiritual joy. Kantner's tracks have a driving hippy enthusiasm that puts one in touch with the louche 60s vibe that so much echoes satyrs and nymphs gamboling in the woods. It's not possible to separate the carnal aspect from the spirit. That's not to say hippies we're brainless, it's simply the impossibility to disentangle Dionysus from Apollo IN A PHYSICAL REALITY.
The confused ontology of visual domination is to blame, not the hippy freewheeling frolics. Kantner has integrity and carried on with this vibe until his body literally gave up a few years ago. That doesn't affect the spirit. The problem with our modern world is that images are not associated with the physical; to go back to the other music-video (by Ocnarfeara), it gives you nothing you don't know already, and takes away with extraneous hatcheries of flowers and so on. What you already know is the vive of the 60s era, which comes from the physical reality of the 60s era. You gey that from mementos such as the 'Blows Against the Empire' sleeve illos and notes.
Even Harlan Ellison, the doyen of TV pulp writers, eventually switched-off and advised people not to have 'The Dreams a Nightmare Dreams'. In this story, the dinosaurs are killed off when a space vampire sends them nightmares that suck their wills dry. This vampire is still there, and only the dreams of a few are keeping it at bay.
The domination of the visual (over sound) clearly replaces the physical with a very convincing illusion. This clearly includes the visual-based sciences as outlined above. Those who are content to live with that should realize that the physical (ontology) cannot be disentangle from the metaphysical or spirit.
Apollo is a spiritual vision only existing alongside the gay, louche Dionysus. Apollo is the god of poetry as well as reason, for reasons that moderns just don't get.
Apollo and Daphne. The god pursues the nymph and Daphne, standing-in for Artemis, is transformed to a laurel that is illuminated. See BWS 'Artemis and Apollo'.
Footnote I was looking at Medium.org on philosophy, and there are some broad distinctions that are generally recognised. You could also say that 'argument' uses the brain and that is philosophy. More exactly, Dec13 posted 'Semantics and Metaphysics' in discussing 'Love and Affection' and the words' relations to 'touch' (ie you can love a screen that you touch but it doesn't touch you.)
The basic argument above is ontology but, since it refers to Nietzsche, has metaphysical concepts or gods in Apollo and Dionysus. The hippy stuff could easily also be ethical. The entire modern era relates to epistemology (knowledge), of which Robin James's 'The Sonic Episteme' is one.
How much of what we are told is knowledge is semantics whereby words are used for 'reality' that is a visual illusion? So, even though I don't talk about epistemology, I am talking about what is real - physically and musically and rhythmically and actively - and so it has to involve these other areas.
Philosophy is argument, and I am putting it ontologically as that is the argument which obviously could branch out.
Nietzsche This is partly aimed at Ochoa, who may have left-wing leanings (even if not as far as Robin James.) I can't be sure, and it may relate more to the anti-capital tendency (which Nietzsche also occupies.)
Since Nietzsche is associated with right-wing leanings, it may be worth setting-down what I see in him. For a start, he was a great Greek scholar and changes the face of Western philosophy from Schopenhauer's arrant pessimism
The tragic drama was the audience responding to the presence of chaotic Dionysus with life-affirming joy. The static Apollonian order which the West 'inherited' is therefore countered in Nietzsche.
Then, I would think Nietzsche is influenced by the Byronic hero, as most of rhe romantic movement was. Byron was scathing if the "drivelling idiotism" of fellow romantic Keats, and there is a type of action-oriented romanticism that Nietzsche probably approved of (Byron died on Missolonghi fighting to overthrow the Ottomans.)
So, Dionysus seems to be a counter-culture to the 'drivelling idiotism' of Western modernity. Modern Man is the vacillating intellectual, as was pictured in Jean-Luc Godard's 'Le Mepris' (1967). In a similar way, Nietzsche critiqued 'Hamlet' as an intellectual who couldn't make up his mind.
My interpretation of this is that Hamlet is zn Apollonian type who glimpses Dionysus from afar (the Ghost.) This makes him aware that chaos and fate are his inevitable lot. The tragedy makes aware the unthinking power of Dionysus to Hamlet, the man of inaction (thought.)
The counter-culture of Dionysus is anti-modern and hippy; the fragile balance between extremescof zest and harmony. To Nietzsche, Aeschylus and Sophocles were classical, Euripides favored too much the reason.
This sense of balance is contained in music (sound) and not in vision (Apollo, sun.) There is an ontology of a group expression of sound and the otherness found in music (pitch, bass, rhythm.)*
As far as Nietzsche's other philosophies (The Will to Power etc.), I find them highly debatable, but argument is OK, right?
* Awhile ago I mentioned the 1935 serial 'The Lost City', which has Black tribesmen screaming in high-pitched wails (under attack from the giants of the city.) The screaming is so animalistic it could easily be thought racialistic. This fits well with Ochoa's description of Bogas as 1) racialised and 2) imitating animals. If music is imitative, which it is, the group expression of otherness is a type of music. The fact that some would think it racialistic is more a comment on their visual fixation. There are probably other examples. (The muezzin's trills also add Arabesque color. Trills and shrill screams sound fairly similar. The musicality expresses or calls to the group using mainly pitch and rhythm.)**
** There could be something in this. Much of Nietzsche's writing is not for the societal or political so much as for creative intelligence (Kanye West 'Stronger'). This can easily include the group, insofar as the group is not completely identified by Apollonian order - as we are.
Where Nietzsche's dictum on 'stronger' could come in to a group is that the 'will' of a group has to be expressed in order for it to have any bearing on reality.
Nietzsche does explicitly say that the 'goals' of the group will are not important; it's the will itself regardless of how good or bad the goal ('Beyond Good and Evil.) This ties well into a musical ontology, since it is always a balance of forces. There is harmony (Apollo), there is rhythm and there are varied pitches (Dionysian expression and looseness.)
Nietzsche was not in favor of political order or Prussianism (he called himself a 'descendent if Polish aristocrats', possibly as a joke on the branding of visionaries.) The virtues of Dionysian looseness and expression bear some relation to Black music and the street-vibe of Black districts. Rhythm, action and the physical are primal forcescthat supply a group with the will to be what they are.
But this type of society is not verbal (words) so much as sounds (pitches, colours.) But the point is, political words do not give you (the commune) power. Without the vibe there is only feckless indifference.
Nietzsche's dictum could apply to communes that suffered and became poor that were able to rebound (Detroit) because these communes were not governed by the social and political agents of the federal state.
There is a strong limit to Nietzschean philosophy based on the presence of disorder and chaos that makes it almost anti-political. Blacks cannot take much solace from this, so it's not as if I'm being pro-Black so much as anti-society.
The type of traditional communes resembles that described by 50s r&b artist Lloyd Price in New Orleans. There was still segregation but the dance-halls became desegregated by common 'will'. This is a Nietzschean thing, and is very easy to ally to an ontology of sound
Harmony becomes the enemy when that is all there is, and this certainly applies to the (unmusical) harmony of neoliberalism described by Robin James. Music and sound go beyond individual in the unity of a group in a fairly tribal sense. But the unity this describes is driven by primal rhythms that can never be controlled by a political or social order. It is much more medieval in nature.
'The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music' 'The true man wants two things: danger and play' (Nietzsche)
(As a sidebar, Nietzsche is a fairly misunderstood philosopher and one might think I was taking liberties? The superhuman and the animal, for one thing, I relate via sounds (pitch, music.) I think it's fair to either over-interpret or under-interpret so long as you don't misinterpret. The over-interpretation is based on the musicality of animal sounds.)
An example is posted Mar10, on 'Steppin Out' the lyric 'your arrow' the spontaneous mastery of pitch is animal (sound). Or you could say, the superhuman mastery of pitch.* This type of reference points to the cosmopolitics of a physical reality that is bypassed by 'politics' (words, images) as well as by the visual-based sciences. Sounds can relate to a group in a physical sense that may echo reality on a primal level (Dionysus.) Music is a balance of forces which gives power to a group (the audience); subjects, objects or performers and listeners. This expression is an over-interptetation of Nietzsche but I would say not contradictory. * Grace Slick also has masterly use of arabesques and ornamental pitches in live performance, in case anyone thinks this is limited to Blacks (Slick has a spiritual affinity to Spanish music for some reason, and Flamenco is Eastern or Arabic, possibly Moorish, see egĀ Footnote Lyrics are partly verbal, partly rhythmic. Stagger Lee breaks-up one line with 'Broke the bar (Oh Stagger Lee Oh Stagger Lee) Tender's glass' Even more so, arabesques give syllables free melodic rein.
Grace Slick's track 'Be Young You' has the line 'The tongues of some men are made of silence And your eyes will listen" Meaning possibly sounds that aren't words. Or breaks of words (pauses, rhythms) that enable you to think (imagine), like fairy tales told to kids (ears.) Words can be used to nullify imagination (I won't mention Simon and Garfunkel here.)
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