The world after 800,000,000 years
Feb. 17th, 2005 10:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusThe lecture I gave on Tuesday at Future University was about sound and music, but mostly about frames; how a lot of 20th century art was about repositioning frames. Someone asked why I was so interested in John Cage, and I described how I'd first encountered Cage -- at a Cage festival in Rome. It was under the Capitol Hill, in the open air. David Tudor came out to play the piano, but instead of opening the lid and playing notes, went round the back and ran a microphone up and down the strings. Cage and Tudor literally framed the piano for me in a fresh way that evening; they put a frame around the back instead of the front.
I illustrated the lecture with the piece I made (in collaboration with Florian Perret, currently teaching in China, as you'll see if you follow that link) for MoCA's Digital Gallery a couple of years ago, Suffusia. I picked Suffusia because it shows a lot of different frames. There's the slide projector screen, the framing device of the people watching (a masai tribesman, a woman scratching her bum), the looming presence in the background of Mount Fuji. By zooming the Flash file and dragging it around, I kept changing the context of the zany lecture depicted by changing the framing. A whole vista of topics opened up: context, irony, the relativity of meaning, whether the boundaries between different contexts are hard or soft, hostile or friendly, and so on.
The newest piece for MoCA's Digital Gallery is by Aya Takano. It's called The World After 800,000,000 years. (Switch off pop-up blocking when you go there, and switch up the sound, which, like the sound on Suffusia, has been compressed too much and is a bit woolly.) The plot is... well, I'm not quite sure. Aya says "After 800,000,000 years mankind was included too, all the creatures whom we knew fell for a while. However, the follows the way of the evolution agein. Curious things were done, and it evolved even to the creature who was about the same as the human being of the spider present." You just have to click through it, making sure you hold the mouse button down for a while (stuff happens). I like the alternative world it takes me into, a world where dreamy skinny girls seem to be the only remaining humans and sexy whimsy rules the planet. (No, not you, Lord Whimsy.) Wait 800,000,000 years for the real thing or live it now in Flash.
Speaking of Flash, I'm happy to hear that the first couple of Flash animations -- in which Click Opera readers animate Otto Spooky songs -- are nearing completion, 'Robin Hood' and 'The Artist Overwhelmed'. Expect to see something by the weekend or shortly after that.
Finally, as part of this journal's ongoing mission to convince everybody that Japanese women are the coolest people in the known universe, here's the Paris Hilton video by Mu. (As for Paris Hilton herself, I really have no idea who she is, what she looks like, or what she does. Let's reposition the frame to the song about her.)
I illustrated the lecture with the piece I made (in collaboration with Florian Perret, currently teaching in China, as you'll see if you follow that link) for MoCA's Digital Gallery a couple of years ago, Suffusia. I picked Suffusia because it shows a lot of different frames. There's the slide projector screen, the framing device of the people watching (a masai tribesman, a woman scratching her bum), the looming presence in the background of Mount Fuji. By zooming the Flash file and dragging it around, I kept changing the context of the zany lecture depicted by changing the framing. A whole vista of topics opened up: context, irony, the relativity of meaning, whether the boundaries between different contexts are hard or soft, hostile or friendly, and so on.
The newest piece for MoCA's Digital Gallery is by Aya Takano. It's called The World After 800,000,000 years. (Switch off pop-up blocking when you go there, and switch up the sound, which, like the sound on Suffusia, has been compressed too much and is a bit woolly.) The plot is... well, I'm not quite sure. Aya says "After 800,000,000 years mankind was included too, all the creatures whom we knew fell for a while. However, the follows the way of the evolution agein. Curious things were done, and it evolved even to the creature who was about the same as the human being of the spider present." You just have to click through it, making sure you hold the mouse button down for a while (stuff happens). I like the alternative world it takes me into, a world where dreamy skinny girls seem to be the only remaining humans and sexy whimsy rules the planet. (No, not you, Lord Whimsy.) Wait 800,000,000 years for the real thing or live it now in Flash.
Speaking of Flash, I'm happy to hear that the first couple of Flash animations -- in which Click Opera readers animate Otto Spooky songs -- are nearing completion, 'Robin Hood' and 'The Artist Overwhelmed'. Expect to see something by the weekend or shortly after that.
Finally, as part of this journal's ongoing mission to convince everybody that Japanese women are the coolest people in the known universe, here's the Paris Hilton video by Mu. (As for Paris Hilton herself, I really have no idea who she is, what she looks like, or what she does. Let's reposition the frame to the song about her.)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-17 02:04 am (UTC)In a totally different mood, but going along with the idea that japanese women are the coolest in the world, you might be interested in the works by Frederic Boilet, whose main subject is, of course, japanese women.
Here's a link to his website: http://www.boilet.net
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-17 02:12 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-17 02:15 am (UTC)I'm not sexy? (snif)
Date: 2005-02-17 03:25 am (UTC)Ah, found it (For crying out loud, Nick--no one looks good from that angle!)
W
Mu
Date: 2005-02-17 03:37 am (UTC)Re: Mu
Date: 2005-02-17 03:56 am (UTC)The tribal drumming got eaten by Mu, like probably everything else in this world if we let her. I like this album a lot better than the other one.
The girl looks voracious. Nick, i'm listening to this song like 5 times a day and i have had to reconstruct the real paris hilton through it (like you, i had only a vague idea of who she is)
mario
Re: I'm not sexy? (snif)
Date: 2005-02-17 06:03 am (UTC)Objects.
Date: 2005-02-17 06:05 am (UTC)Re: I'm not sexy? (snif)
Date: 2005-02-17 06:18 am (UTC)(Blast--shaved my chest for naught...)
W
Re: Objects.
Date: 2005-02-17 06:29 am (UTC)Re: Objects.
Date: 2005-02-17 07:05 am (UTC)Re: Objects.
Date: 2005-02-17 07:15 am (UTC)Besides, there's no need to pretend that you don't take physical appearance into account. What's wrong with being attracted to black hair, a slight build, and pidgeon-toedness! Everyone has their preferences. And they are "the coolest," actually.
Patrick
Re: Objects.
Date: 2005-02-17 07:33 am (UTC)1. That people are not objects already.
2. That they don't want to be objects.
3. That you can't be simultaneously an object and a subject.
After all, an object is simply how I, a subject, must inevitably appear to others. Seeing myself as an object is seeing myself as others see me. It is a social virtue to internalize the way others see me. That, if anything, is the 'depth' of Japan; deep inside is not 'my personal convictions, which you will discover by quizzing me'. It is, rather, an internalized model of the outside world, the social world. Scratch the surface and you will find a deep version of... the way things look on the surface.
Oscar Wilde put this more wittily. "It is only the shallow who do not judge by appearances."
Re: Objects.
Date: 2005-02-17 07:53 am (UTC)Re: Objects.
Date: 2005-02-17 07:56 am (UTC)Momus, I am thankful that you've had consistently tasteful album art as of late. It allows me to be certain that I will enjoy the music contained within before I get my hands on the album.
Patrick
Re: Objects.
Date: 2005-02-17 08:06 am (UTC)Yes, if you believe the classic work by people like Ray Birdwhistell, David McNeill, or Albert Mehrabian, who attempted to quantify such things, words convey relatively little information compared to non-verbal cues (http://members.aol.com/nonverbal2/nvcom.htm) such as body language or tone of voice. Not understanding the verbal language may help to focus attention on these normally fairly unconcious channels of communication.
One needs to be aware that these forms of communication vary from culture to culture. Misunderstandings can also arise in non-verbal interactions.
Re: Objects.
Date: 2005-02-17 08:07 am (UTC)Re: Objects.
Date: 2005-02-17 08:20 am (UTC)'Journey' had a naked Kahimi illustration and the music inside is glorious Midieval Prog Pop.
Patrick
Re: Objects.
Date: 2005-02-17 08:22 am (UTC)Re: Objects.
Date: 2005-02-17 08:33 am (UTC)Re: Objects.
Date: 2005-02-17 08:37 am (UTC)Re: Objects.
Date: 2005-02-17 08:58 am (UTC)http://members.tripod.com/demae/images/AI_GA_NAKUCHA_NE.jpg
Oh, if only I had photoshop skills to place Momus' face under that wondrously frizzy fro.
Patrick
Re: Objects.
Date: 2005-02-17 09:03 am (UTC)Re: Objects.
Date: 2005-02-17 11:08 am (UTC)But Mu is actually a scary girl though, super-scary, it feels like she would really chop your wee-wee off if you pissed her off. But it's also playful scary, and she would dress up like Lorena Bobitt while doing it. If you hear all of her music you'll see she's totally like Godzilla, though in a comic overacted kind of way, with the growl noises and cardboard buildings included
mario
Re: Objects.
Date: 2005-02-17 11:26 am (UTC)i'm so happy about finding another Akiko Yano fan that i had to do this
had a tough time finding a momus pic with the same facial gesture, so he/she looks a bit more serious here
mario