Tim Swalling - "A-Life: Artificial Life in the Creation of Music"
I rocked up late to the beginning of Tim's presentation. Quite quickly though I realised I'd entered a portal into a world where definitions blur and my ability to comprehend waned. I have admiration for Tim in his endeavour to do whatever it is he is trying to do, because quite frankly, I didn't get it really.
Jasmine Ward - I only understood Jasmine's talk because I have spoken to her about it previously. To my mind, I'm still confused. It seems she is trying to work out a way to promote the reduction of waste by glorying the sounds that waste makes. I asked her if she has any ambitions to develop a literal filter via MT to help clean up the environment. I mention this because if you have seen any of Emoto's work, you would know what I'm on about.
http://www.netmar.com/~maat/archive/aug1/consciouswater.html
Emoto has been conducting worldwide research on the effect of ideas, words, and music upon the molecules of water, and the descriptions below are taken from the book of his published results.
The photo on the left is of a frozen water sample from the lake at Fujiwara Dam, in Japan. As you can see, the water's structure is dark and amorphous, with no crystalline formations.
After the above water sample had been taken, the Reverend Kato Hoki, chief priest of the Jyuhouin Temple, made a one-hour prayer practice beside the dam. After that, new water samples were taken, frozen and photographed. As you can see (at right), the change is stunning--the ugly blob of the former sample has become a clear, bright-white hexagonal crystal-within-a-crystal.
The third photo shown here, also of water taken from Fujiwara Dam after the prayer treatment, reveals a shape that had never, prior to that time, been seen by Masaru Emoto in his over 10,000 water-sample experiments. As you can see, it is a heptagon, or 7-sided crystal.
I think that Tim and Jasmine could collaborate and maybe come up with something worth pursuing. I'm all about doing stuff that is practical and will serve a purpose to help the community. I mean, if they picked up on Emoto's work, then perhaps they really could develop some synth patch that used the water molecules from a spring, infused with a hint of MT, let it steep and the end product could be a meta-cyber anthropomorphic creature that purified the environment with every successive birth of its subsequent offspring and its future heirs...
Audio Arts
We recorded an acoustic guitar using two different microphones. It was interesting to see the difference that occurred in quality between the two. I look forward to more experimenting is this domain.
Creative Communication
It would be opportunistic of me I were to sit down and actually open up pro tools. I haven't done this yet. Scarey, because I have to record a band tomorrow. Hmm. Maybe parliament should enact an extra day in the week so I have more time to do everything on my 'To do ' list, which includes sleep.
Workshop
I reallly like Frank Zappa. There isn't one song of his I don't like. His dad used to be an experimental object for the US Army. When Frank got sick, his dad took him to the army doctor who stuck radium pellets up his nostrils to clear out his sinuses. I recommend you read his autobiographies. Frank and the Mothers of Invention, are without doubt, the biggest musical influence on my own life and compositions.
