Sachiko Kodama & Yasushi Miyajima

Barren Praries and Deserted Wastelands

This is the music of the sparse.

http://www.myspace.com/totemsongs

Architecture and Ruin

The world is young, we are gettting old.

What will we do when we begin to ruin ? More importantly, how do we treat something that is disintegrating around us ? More often than not, we try to encapsulate it in our panic - we clasp our hands together and hope to slow the sand from falling beteen our fingertips. This is merely an exercise in futlity, and knee-jerk reaction as a result of our conditioned tendency to attach.

It is interesting to think how to deal with this concept in an architectural context. What would the result be if we were to encapsulate an existing building in an attempt to prolong the inevitable conclusion of its disintegration ? If we were to de-construct a building would its phenomenon continue like memories of the deceased ? If we were to re-build an identitcal building to prolong its life by the length of its present existence, is it the same building ?

Something I have noticed within the psychadelic ethos is a connection to seperate realities and expansions of existence, it seems that this approach is intertwined with the investigation of memory vs physical nature. However, this exploration is invariably externally directed, an internal approach respects a scale that is impressionable on architectural thought.

A building adopts your memories. It reaches into your sub-conscious and attaches itself to the chronotopes of your past - forging new impressions and perspectives. By consequence, what happens when one structure adopts/envelops another ?

This man attempts to ignite similar discussion.

http://lebbeuswoods.wordpress.com/2009/05/11/locus-of-memory/

He is inspiring [although he has the advantage (?) of being closer to ruin than most of us]

High [Noon]an

These images are the works of contemporary Australian artist David Noonan. The layering/collage of images creates a complexity and depth that transcends into a dream, albeit a haunting one.

OP

Anomina Group were a US collective of the 1960s who dealt with the investigation of the psychology of visual perception. The latest scientific research formed the starting point for the majority of their artwork, which, through exploring optics, geometry and monochromatics, formed part of the movement of Op-art (Optical Art). Their artistic methods - modulations, repetitions, spatialization, transformations and subdivisions - foreshadowed what are taken as ground level rules in the current generative art trend.

In an artistic manifesto mode typical of the 1930s, the Anomina group were anti-gallery, anti-art competitions and did not believe in the commercialism of art. However, in a stance perpendicular to the likes of the Dada, Anomina did not stand for art for arts sake, or for the idea that any 'creation' might be art - but rather explored art as a tool which, alongside science, could move humankind closer to understanding the biological world.

A 1964 Time article on Op-Art, featuring Anomina Group, can be found here:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,897336-1,00.html

M I N D / M A T T E R ( ? )

A simple story based in philosophical antiquity from the 5th Century BC -

Assume two characters, 'A' and 'B', are having an arguement and A is in debt to B by, lets say, 5 dollars.

B comes to A and says:
"give me my 5 dollars back."

A replies
"What 5 dollars ? Let me ask you a question . . .
If we had a pile of pebbles with three pebbles and we took one away would we have the same pile or different ?"

B : "Well, different."

A : "Right, and if we added a pebble would we have the same pile or different ?"

B : "Well, different. "

A : "Aha! You see a human being is like a pile of pebbles, there's matter flowing in and out and each time the quantity changes we have a new and different person. Therefore it was not I who borrowed the money but someone else altogether so you can't possibly ask me to pay you the 5 dollars that the other being owes you . . . "

At which point B, frustrated, punches A in the face -

A: "Why did you do that?"

B: "Who, me ?"

The joke within the story is irrelevant, however the inherent arguement is valid - is it the mind or the matter that, well, matters ?

I Think Therefore I Am Part Deux

"A narrative view considers that individuals are both actively engaged with the external environment and are internally reflective and aware. As a result, humans are integrating multiple influences in the process of creating their own existential reality. This complex reality is continually being constructed and represented through one's personal narrative."

- Cathy J. Ganoe

See also, John Locke's stance on identity.

9 BOXES - 1999

www.lebbeuswoods.net

730

for shayna

I link therefore I am

Hypertext as the new Magical Mystery Tour.

http://www.altx.com/hyperx/sss/index2.html
http://www.altx.com/hyperx/ompha/preface.html
http://www.altx.com/hyperx/randompaths/index1.html

"In this ideal text, the networks [réseaux] are many and interact, without any one of them being able to surpass the rest; this text is a galaxy of signifiers, not a structure of signifieds; it has no beginning; it is reversible; we gain access to it by several entrances, none of which can be authoritatively declared to be the main one; the codes it mobilizes extend as far as the eye can reach, they are indeterminable . . . ; the systems of meaning can take over this absolutely plural text"
Roland Bathes, S/Z

Josh Mannis & The psychedelic influence

There is a definite psychedelic/ 1970's National Geographic quality about your work, would you say that is what your stuff is about (psychadelia) or does it go beyond that? What kinds of influences come through in your work?

Psychedelic art was a huge pushing off point for me, although I'm hoping history will show these cultural references as bits of evidence being deployed in a much larger argument. In a broader sense, my big project is about ways in which an image can get over on and manipulate its beholder - in both the making and the viewing of a piece. The reverse is an image that grants permission, or seems to address a viewer as an equal, or as a partner in the process of generating the meaning of the piece. I guess these are also political ideas, in the sense that they are about how an artwork, through these modes of address, generates and determines the nature of a social space inhabited by artist - piece - viewer(s), and I think it gets at what we want out of an image in the first place. Drug culture, rock culture, art culture, political culture, and etc., are all metaphors I've used in the past, to act inside of, with the aim of theatricalizing these larger themes of the overbearing image, the permissive image, the fascist image, the leftist image, etc.

FULL INTERVIEW HERE

Pink laugh and a liquorice sentence

Synaesthesia comes from syn [union] and aistheses [sensation], in which a stimulus received in one sensory modality gives rise to an experience in another. One of the most common forms of synaesthesia is a sound/sight connection, where the person [synaesthete] ‘sees’ sound, or ‘hears’ visuals. Another is inherently knowing what colour different numbers or letters correlate to. Or knowing the personality of your appliances. Or knowing what a triangle tastes like. Or where in relation to your body 1999 is.

I love this video: it looks equally likely to have come from Sesame Street, or from an acid soaked nightmare.



And of course:

Fun facts: True synaesthesia is involuntary, women are eight times more likely to have it than males, as are those who have difficulty telling their left from their right(?)

Dreams

“Ἁνδρόνικός φησιν ἐν Ἱσπανίᾳ ἔν τινι τόπῳ λιθάρια εὑρίσκεσθαι περιερριμμένα πολύγωνα αὐτοφυῆ, ἃ μὲν λευκὰ ἅ δὲ κηροειδῆ, ἃ καὶ κύει ὅμοια ἑαυτοῖς λιθάρια. Τούτων δὴ καὶ ἐγὼ ἓν πείρας ἕνεκα ἔσχον, ὃ δὴ ἔτεκε παρ’ ἐμοί, ὥστε τὸ ῥῆμα μὴ εἶναι ψεῦδος.”

“Andronicos says that in a certain place in Spain one finds small, scattered stones which are polygonal and grow spontaneously. Some of them are white, others are like wax and pregnant of smaller stones similar to themselves. I kept one to verify this myself and it gave birth at my place, so the story is not a lie.”

Komakino and the Darklands

Im still trying to fully discover what this is all about. Originally I thought this was a store in Vancouver, but it appears that it's something much more than that. Is it a guerrilla store that vanishes only to appear in the next abandoned warehouse or underground bunker it finds? I have been trying to follow Komakino's (named after Joy Division's 10,000 limited press single) movements for over a year now, with a new store titled 'Darklands' in Berlin, something very transient is going on.

darklandsberlin

komakino

Kaleidoscope

Open Your Eyes

Audio Phenomenology

"Music expresses that which cannot be said, on which it is impossible to be silent."

-Victor Hugo, Romantic.

Krono[illogical] Experimentation

Kronos Quartet, covering psychedellic and electric innovator Jimmy Hendirx.

Playing on the brink of chaos, true avant-garde.

Goodbye Summer Haze

Goodbye summer haze...
those days of lovers and flowing fields,

burnt hilltops and dusty boots.

bottle in hand,

the swaggering man,

loosely bearing the weight of sky upon land.

Black Angels [and Death Song]

Also heavily influenced by the 13th Floor Elevators and the psychedelic ethos, The Black Angels (named after the Velvet Underground song - 'Black Angels Death Song') are a band emerging from a small scene in Austin, Texas. Mostly known through word of mouth and internet corridoors they are creating a devoted following amongst the festival scene. Singles such as 'Black Grease' and 'Empire' display their ability to blast face-melting riffs where as tracks such as 'Manipulation' and 'You On The Run' excrete layer upon layer of psych drenched instruments and menacing drone. Recenlty they have played SXSW and opened concerts for the Warlocks and BRMC.

Your Next (Mati Klarwein)

Mati Klarwein, Born 9th April 1932, his work remains unknown by many, even though he produced some of the most iconic images

of the 60's and 70's. Pigeon holed by critics as a psychedelic artist during this time, Mati's work is much deeper than that, displaying an enhanced perception of beauty that most of us experience only occasionally in our lives.

www.matiklarweinart.com

1965 Austin Texas

13th Floor Elevators, one of the first psychadelic rock bands were at the head of an exciting new counterculture. Their name, a play on the superstitions that led to many tall buildings not having a 13th floor at all, the Elevators pioneered the use of reverb and echo, sometimes dubbed 'acid-drenched guitar'. Another special aspect of The Elevators' sound came from Tommy Hall's innovative electric jug. The jug with a microphone held up to it while it was being blown, sounded somewhat like a cross between a minimoog and cuica drum. The band played most of their live shows and recorded their albums while under the influence of LSD, and built their lifestyle and music around the psychedelic experience. Intellectual and esoteric influences helped shape their work, with some worthwhile reading from Alfred Korzybski, and the psychedelic philosophy of Timothy Leary.

Dr. Timothy Leary

Science & Sanity - Alfred Korzybski

Their fisrt single, "Your gona miss me" was released in 1966. It was also the first song on the film "High Fidelity" in 2000.