Saturday, November 11

Hello World

"The sensory weight of a unit is affected by its proximity to other units, their centres and their boundaries. Metaphorically, sensorially, every observed particle of energy, whatever its form, has a gravitational field or, better, each seems to bend the space in its vicinity. The signifigance of any event is not constant; it varies with location, with circumstances. It is relative. Therefore, when apparent duplication occurs, there cannot be sameness but only similarity.

If a musician sounds three brief notes, perhaps repeating middle C upon a piano, the three notes cannot be the same. The first will have surprise, even shock if unexpected. The second note, anticipated or not, will produce some resonance in the listener who is carrying a memory of the first note. Whereas the first note was a sound and, if brief and staccato, not fully comprehended as a note, the second note can be savoured, studied and recorded in its fullness. This applies even more distinctly to a third note, which becomes confirmatory. Timing, the relative length of notes and intervals to the intrinsic time of the audience, perhaps their very heartbeats, will suggest whether the third note is a repeat, an echo or a full stop. By inversion, current (published 1980) experiments in the fine arts are exploring the subdivision of a current experience, such as a sustained musical note, a sheet of color, a 'wrapped' landscape, into the discontinuity of the observer's timescale: his beginning, his middle, and his end, which is all one. Ultimately this becomes a passive vehicle for audience participation and is not unrelated to traditional programmes for meditation, both philosophic and religious."

- Krome Barratt in "Logic and Design"