Re: [-empyre-] boundaries, or not

[fizzion <fizzion@optusnet.com.au>]

on 8/8/03 3:17 AM, Glenn Bach at gbach@csulb.edu wrote:

> fizzion wrote:
> 
>> The natural world exists on many different sensory planes, all integrated
>> for/by our senses. Technology allows us to listen to the stars and to the
>> sounds of electrons. So many possibilities, so many stories to tell.
> 
> This is what attracted me to microsound, or at least the metaphor of
> microsound, in the first place: the idea of a music of the spheres,
> micro evoking macro.  String theory as (highly simplified) poetic image:
> matter at its most fundamental level is simply a vibration of energy.  A
> note struck, a chord.  How cool is that?  I haven't yet read anything
> about membrane theory, but that, too, might serve as a fertile metaphor.
> 
Funny you should mention energy, the idea of energy has been a focus for me
for the past 20 years, mostly expressed through drawing in traditional and
digital media. I have been attracted by cosmology and physics and to other
more subtle energies/phenomena most of my life, blame sci fi and art school
and a rabid curiosity about everything.

Simultaneous code generated sound + visual material is something I would
like to work with, ideally using actionscript in Flash, however actionscript
doesn't have a sound API feature yet.
An amusing aside; a tech assistant and I (at a teachers college) once set up
a room full of Apple IIe's with an audio code program producing random
twitters and bleeps - the next class walked in on an electronic aviary,
wonderful cacophony. Strangely not one student asked what was going on, they
just sat down and killed the programs - sad.

I am particularly interested in the act of listening and would like to hear
if anyone else has focussed on this aspect of music/sound making and
experience. 
1.
There is the way of listening for instance where music is like wallpaper,
ambient background, mood enhancing, mood suppression, happy cow milking
music. 
2.
There is the more focussed way of listening where perception of sounds is
brought to the forefront of conscious awareness so that all of the
subtleties of the instrument, expression, interpretation, history, memories
of emotional events etc, come into play so that you find yourself joining
more with what is being expressed to the exclusion of most other phenomena
present at the time. Morton Feldman mentions something about listening in
the book of his collected writings, he talks about the subtlety too, how
each time the performance is different.
3.
And there is physical music, I remember hearing a Gamelan orchestra where
the base gong was so powerful that it literally made my guts squirm (a
peristaltic groove no less) listening with my body, like the ocean listening
to the moon - tides.
4. 
and so on ...

It is also fascinating to me how the mind can single out particular sound/s
from a multitude of sound input, this kind of audio processing is sheer
magic.

I am wondering what kind of pickup mike/instrument you would need to listen
to electrons; a geiger counter maybe?

Cheers, Barrie