[-empyre-] Jeffrey du Vallier d'Aragon Aranita: "New Year's Resolutions for Digital Futures"

[Gabriela Vargas-Cetina]

Dear all,

I love Jeffrey's resolution.  At the beginning of 2005 I lost most of the
movement of my hands due to tendonitis, had to undergo therapy every day,
and among many other things could not play the guitar.  I had already
purchased some music software, but never found the time or motivation to use
it.  But in my health predicament, having run out of other options, I turned
to the computer, where with loops from Apple's libraries and sounds I could
record myself from the environment, one can make music with limited
movements of the mouse.

There were many full chords, power chords and arpeggio styles on my
favourite scales.  I went on to put together a six-piece variations group of
songs that I named "Therapy Loops," where all I sing is "oh therapy" because
that was all I could think about then.  Unfortunately I lost two of the
pieces because the computer died on me, but went on to mix them to score a
little film I made about trova music in Yucatan, to show at one of my
performances at the end of that same year:
http://homepage.mac.com/gvargascetina/iMovieTheater2.html

This opened a whole new palette for me, and now I use electronic instruments
along with my guitars and analog effects (see
http://www.myspace.com/gabrielavargascetina) to create music in a different
way.

Good luck, Jeffrey, with your art.  Taking this as an opportunity is an
excellent idea and good things will certainly come from this new phase in
your life.

Happy New Year to you all,

Gabriela Vargas-Cetina


On 1/2/09 8:09 AM, "Timothy Murray" <tcm1 at cornell.edu> wrote:

> Dear Tim and Renate,
> 
> If you'd asked me to write a New Year's resolution on digital futures
> even three months ago I may have presented a grand idea somewhere
> along the lines of furthering possibilities for dialogue and the
> exchange of ideas and perceptions between people of different
> cultures, particularly between Asian cultures and those from
> elsewhere. This is something that the recently opened MOCA China, a
> new museum of contemporary art in Hong Kong, which I helped build over
> the past nearly three years and for which I presently serve as its
> executive director, intends to do, significantly, through the critical
> examination and presentation of new media art forms. These
> possibilities come, however, wrapped in layers of complexities
> stemming from broad political and economic and personal realities.
> That's how it always is I'm afraid with the arts and with its
> institutions. Art embodies some of our finest notions about our shared
> humanity and about democratic ideals, but these notions come at a
> price.
> 
> I have a narrower view of things at the moment. As you know, I
> suffered a minor stroke several weeks ago but I have subsequently lost
> a good deal of my eyesight, save for a small central section of my
> right eye, which is not always in focus. Weeks spent traveling to
> specialist medical centres in the States, many, many hours spent in
> metal hyperbaric chambers, pneumonia, problems, angry calls about
> meeting responsibilities I picked up along the way but which I have
> ignored for now, many pledges and prayers to personal gods and ghosts
> have not changed things much for my eyesight. But lately I have begun
> to focus on moving on--dealing with this blindness.
> 
> Partly to kill time, I have been playing with digital processes for
> creating art, experimenting individually and collaboratively. It's
> something I used to write about and lecture on in university on its
> history and its process. I've gotten to know some of its leading
> figures, attended international symposia on digital art and visited
> media art centres like the Ars Electronica and the ZKM over the years,
> so I know what digital art is, or has been, but as a personal art
> medium, as a painter, I'll admit I did not fully embrace it, I had
> little to say with it.
> 
> At this moment I am not yet certain about the worth of my own digital
> work, it's different, it has meaning for me but I don't have its
> 'smell' locked down like the sweet scent of oil paint, the tinge of
> sharpness of polymers, the mustiness of canvas, and the feel and
> weight of 'real' art tools. I cannot feel the 'texture' of the art of
> the digital realm, nor can I reconcile the glow of digital art or its
> travel in time through light and sound with what I was used to working
> with over a forty-year engagement with art creation. My resolution for
> 2009 is, perhaps selfishly, a small one: to get over some simple
> mental barriers, prejudices about digital art that I have, because as
> an artist I live to create, to express my ideas about the world and
> about the highs and lows I have known, no matter what tools I use. I
> suppose my back is against the wall on this but I hope it somehow all
> works out.
> 
> Warmest regards,
> 
> Jeffrey
> 
> Brief bio:
> 
> Jeffrey du Vallier d'Aragon Aranita is an artist. B. 1954, American
> and French. Executive Director, MOCA China, Museums of Contemporary
> Art. Hong Kong.