What might it take for you to live a long active life as an experimental artist? Patience, perseverance and joy in what youre doing, certainly. Following your own inclinations while testing those of others, certainly. Recognizing creative fuel wherever it emerges and generating it when emergent processes are at rest, certainly. Actually learning to hear/see your work Writ Large in nature is another important factor. Helping people learn a metaphorical approach along with the literal will never be an easy task because it goes against the grain of our educational system. But people like that exist everywhere and just seem to come out of the walls when you give them an opportunity or design an environment where that is what is encouraged. Expect the unexpected, especially the rain of ironies that play out as you navigate the decades. In 1968 when I got my first regular teaching gig with Ohio State University, I taught an electronic music composition class in a classical studio (no modern synths, just a collection of audio gear from the closets of the departments of physics, electrical engineering and TV & Radio). As I did in teaching myself the Moog, I used an oscilloscope to demonstrate the connections between what people were hearing and what was going on in the circuitry. I noticed how mesmerized students were by the imagery apart from what I conveying technically. In a nutshell, studying the students taught me that there was something metaphysical about the sound/imagery in its own right. That recognition sent me down the path of experimenting with new design twists to discover the psychophysically shared ground of the eye and ear so I could compose music that worked for both the ear and the eye simultaneously. Strangely enough with plenty of gigs on the road I was able to turn that ear/eye integration into an income generator in and out academia. Nevertheless, it has taken decades (over 3, more like 4) for the sound/image game to become mainstream and its still mostly fake razzle dazzle (better than nothing) in presentation. This post from Benton C Bainbridge, a NYC experimental artist triggered this train of thought. This and his remarks below are the sort of creative fuel I was referring to earlier. Too bad I cant be in two places at once; Id love to hear/see what theyre doing. youtu.be/dLS9qKSWfdw
Posted on: Fri, 12 Sep 2014 19:21:02 +0000
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