Bryce and I walked around Harriet and Raspberry Islands on October 18. Here are some notes on our conversation (in two parts) with links to the sounds:Bryce Beverlin II
Harriet Island Park
PART ONE (listen)
Sound/noise artist and physicist of neural networks inside the hippocampus. There’s not much overlap. What are the ionic channels doing, mutations that relate to epilepsy from the neuron scale to larger structures; the micro- and macro level are connected. What does it mean to have a seizing network? How to model such layered complex levels?
In what sense is the environment such a system with a potential seizure in its prognosis?
Scales (big to small): Biology, chemistry, physics. Biophysics is the current Wild West.
How do you discover new ways of thinking? You are in strange territory so do you confirm old paradigms or invent bizarre new ones? There are multiple ways to describe phenomena so discovery is a test of the conceptual language as much as identification of the object itself. Rupert Sheldrake’s Morphogenetic Resonance is one example.
Art is about inventing new ways of thinking as much as new expressions within a learned context.
Everything vibrates so is music the metaphor that unites?
Dynamic (living) Systems: the whole is determined by the nature of the parts;
Hierarchical Systems: the parts are determined by the nature of the whole.
To be sustainable is it enough to be aware of many small decisions that can add up to a solution? Awareness alone may not change behavior sufficiently. Orders of magnitude: turning TV off Standby Mode or recycling the plastic cup. The time could be better spent making phone calls to political leaders to change industrial practice. Building a swarm takes special conditions.
We should be careful of what we wish for (cholesterol and CO2 are not demons in themselves). Change causes ripples, for better or worse. Simplistic public policy denies contradictions and complexities.
Maintaining subtle interplay between living things is like a responsive large improv. What is the Adjacency or Connectivity Matrix? Relationships are critical and affect cause-effect of the whole. A game of chess is simplistic by comparison. What are the most sensitive parts of this structure, small changes in parameters can make big changes.
How do we get beyond simplistic thinking, especially with educational methods that emphasize easy binary answers. Where do you learn problem solving and flexible attitudes? Critical thinking is crucial to sustainability. Indoctrination is more efficient.
There is a difference between Sustainability and Perseverence. Even nuclear winter would not cause total extinction; some part of our genetic code would survive (because we are clever and perseverant).
Panic mode thinking and fear among the masses do not lead to wise decisions. We should not be paralyzed by apocalyptic predictions.
How might art or artistic thinking save us? Does art need to embody new metaphors discovered by science so we can experience them? Does a didactic folk song have more propaganda power for change? How can we create greater awareness of subtle mechanisms? How do we live with unpredictability without exploitation? Is art at the level of the stem cell; pure abstract potential to go in any direction and become meaningful through its use?
Interdependence is necessary for sustainability.
The brains of young people are more plastic than older ones; go for new paradigm changes in kids.
Balance of diversity and efficiency; would we live better if we recognized the intelligences around us of other species? What is the law of diminishing returns when you standardize things? Monocropping is vulnerable to disease.
Where you spend your money is critical. Where your food comes from is critical. We never hear from politicians about food, only the food industry. The health of the system as a whole is more vital. How do you build a nation after devastating a culture? Is creating culture an artistic domain?
Developments of businesses, going to fill niches, taking up space will happen slowly and inevitably because of the laws of thermodynamics; heat and noise spread evenly: “If it’s there, use it.”
PART TWO (listen)
The power structure of a stage, the focal point of a performance for many people to witness the few. Global listening (soundscape) vs. intensive directed (performance) listening. The success of focused listening throughout history is to the detriment of environmental awareness; some sounds are more important than others.
BB II’s work in sound: improv, noise, soundscape, John Cage influence, for selfish interests, the fun of creativity. The desire to share with others (perform or record) is to acknowledge what others have done for me and offer it to others. Often involves percussive junk materials, influenced by nature (turbulence in ear canal, shimmering trees that shake and pause, observation of animals), pushing boundaries of extremity (sensory overload, a wall of amplifiers in your face with strobe lights and smells commands attention, inescapable). This provides a ‘ping’, a stimulus to test responses of the audience.
Is this ‘self-expression’? In Buddhism there is no Self to Express. Maybe it is self research. Performance is an opportunity to be totally present. Maybe that practice carries over into everyday life, lived with more awareness. Listening Practice is as important as the sophistication of the objects themselves.
We find it hard to listen afresh for the first time; we usually recall our previous hearing and build associations and memories. Music is a political word for Sound, it comes with an agenda. Composed music is often less complex than the organization of environmental sounds. Composition is stripping away as much as introducing anew. The potency comes from distilling the experience.
Does music exist outside any performance of it (the score vs the performance)? We focus on the paper, the idea, beyond our actual hearing; focus on the consumption end as much as on the supply side.
When is music? Not What is music? Is nature musical? (Beware of anthropomorphizing.) It sucks to be a bird; they aren’t free at all, and their sound-making reflects that. Ask a bird if they would rather be human and give up the ability to fly. Would you give up thinking in order to be another kind of animal??
Socializing categories of sounds: Me; Me + You; Us. Music and language across species share all these uses: solo, dialogue, herd. Composing these relationships through sound (rather than thinking in terms of sound only) is one approach to music.
What’s the function of a record label? Can one be sustainable?
Sonic architecture: Storm sewers go from the sidewalk to the riverbank and act as potential resonators (a contrabass flute); exploiting their sonic potential would bring awareness to their existence. Is astonishment and pausing for reflection a sufficient reaction to create change? Breaking habits, routine and ignorance is always worthwhile. It creates wonder.
Orders of magnitude; people have different perspectives on how radical something is; the context of perception. Small changes from the norm can seem huge to people unfamiliar with the parameters. Experimental art can appear rootless and way out to those who don’t like to explore.
Our physiology hasn’t changed much (eyes, ears, trees, etc); many of our observations could have been made millennia ago (and those people weren’t distracted by our new knowledge and technology). Traditional Chinese Medicine is based on detailed observation.
Given all the available resources, how do we even know what behavior is sustainable? The best of intentions often gives rise to the opposite effect (Soweto started as a good project, removing National Park predators results in the faster demise of other species too).
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