Wollongong show 5/6 7:30

For those in the local environs.......

Terumi and I will be playing at what promises to be an interesting art opening/happening. If in the Wollongong area, a good time to catch us.

Clocks and Clouds consist
of Terumi Narushima on Meta-Slendro reed organ and Kraig Grady on Meta-Slendro vibraphone.

Fri. 5/6 7:30 255 Keira St.
Wollongong

From Artaud to Partch

Quote from Artaud's 'The Theater and Its Double' (p.95 of my Evergreen book edition)

"MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS: They will be treated as objects and as a part of the set.
Also, the need to act directly and profoundly upon the sensibility, through the organs invites research, from the point of view of sound, into qualities which present-day musical instruments do not possess and which require the revival of ancient and forgotten instruments or the invention of new ones. Research is also required , apart from music, into instruments and appliances which, based on special combinations or new alloys of metal, can attain a new range and compass, producing sounds or noises that are unbearably piercing."

Elsewhere Artaud talks about them being of human size and dimensions.
Partch must have found himself if pretty full agreement with this, except for the concentration on metal. Still many of his percussive instruments were more than capable of being piercing. If would have been interesting if the theater community would have picked up on his work before the music one. Probably the development would have been of little difference. In fact his work still exist as theater secondly even though he was on the forefront of those who took Artaud and ran with it. He still deserve more notice from this direction.

Artistic fashions/trends as a whole

I really have never understood movements especially from the inside out. From the outside, they can be greatly entertaining. Not so much if one has to or feels forced to participate to be legitimate. For the growth of an art, the last thing that is needed is everyone investigating the same idea, and even more so for so long. Imagine all the poets in the world congregated at the same bluff and each writing poem after poem about the landscape. Sure a few would bring something unique. It does seem though a bad idea considering all the other bluffs in the world that are being ignored because of this. More often the bluff seems arbitrary if not shallow and/or a trivial choice. We find little out about a forest by everyone taking the same path in. How many pictures on flicker are needed from the same spot. Such situations resemble prisons.
It is not a matter of individual ego. It is just more expedient to have many people investigating many different branches that the present has unveiled. Some will naturally find themselves drawn to some like areas but not everyone in a niche and/or its pseudo-opposite. The more paths taken seems the best way for a whole art to grow wider, if not also upward.

More meanings of the 108 secret Anaphorian signs that cannot be shown

More meanings of the 108 secret Anaphorian signs that cannot be shown
62. The path that is apparent only after much time and reflection.
63. When a crystalline formation informs an array of thoughts
64. That prophesy attained through grasping the waves of balance between opposites.
65. What we call and identify as personal guides
66. What is separated to be reconfigured into a better bond
67. The most individual trait that is most useful to others.
68. The study of the sparks that lead to an awaking from an oppressing hypnosis.
69. A relentless force set upon working on that which has been spoiled.
70. The pleasing glimmer at the end of a task.

Cudamani-

Probably the most important composers collective and/or communal music making organization (well more than music!) on the globe at the moment. anything but your standard Balinese Gamelan.

Inuit Singing/ 2 examples

Randomness

The man replied,”Things as they are,
Are changed upon the blue guitar.”-Wallace Stevens

I have a small blank black book where I have kept a record of practically every I Ching hexagram I have thrown since 1977. Perhaps I am somehow deceiving myself, but every time I have thrown it, it seems to make uncanny sense. More than once when it seemed to stray, I have found I tabulated it wrong. It is more than the traditional method too. I use a variety of multi-sided dice that I pick and choose from, depending on the subject. The configuration attempted to coincide with the probability found in the yarrow stick method. Why did I pick dice? It seemed to fit my (post) western concept of chance. Las Vegas. A place I loathe. but where the power of chance is worshipped.
Funny thing though when I have used a computer to throw the I Ching ithey NEVER seem to fit. One wonders whether the programs are all defective or ‘limited’ in someway or there is more influence one puts into the results than one realizes when going the corporeal route. Perhaps my ‘attitude’. Tarot, which I have less experience with, my experience has been pretty much the same. I suspect some aspect of randomness is intangable.
Musically I have used random methods primarily when I was investigating the nature of inversions of chords. To sustain a chord on some of my faster decay instruments I would ‘randomize’ the members of the chord, learning that it worked better to play the extremes less often with the middle more. I am sure that what I do is less than what a mathematical producing might give me, yet musically the result fits as good or better. But there is an interesting symbiotic relation going on here that I think could and should be explored more. What I am doing in these instances is only because of what I have heard machines or methods do. One could say I am informed by these random generators. As there are different random processes, it seems that they each could be used as an exposure to activate similar activity within a performers ourselves. To some extent I am sure this has already happen. One wonders if a Feldman could have happen without the input of his friends exploring various random applications musically and also visually. Intuition relies on what it is presented with. It seem the process could go back and forth.
It partially leads me out of a dilemma I was having.
“ What is the difference between a piece that uses a random method and one that says it is, but doesn’t”. One could put all types of other things to replace random to be fair, but I think I made enough problems with others asking these types of questions. There is still the aspect of partisan attitude associated with method and process that becomes meaningless if one cannot tell one realization from another. We don’t need such emperor clothes, the phenomenon is or should be enough
We can see that the process can be much more interactive with other processes in a deeper sense than when one thing literally mirrors another. Our tools can inform us and in turn we can inform them.