Argh! I started writing a very long comment here and it got erased 'somehow' - I don't know how. I was talking about the difference between Western and Indian/Arabic scales - the former based on a well-tempered scale that's fundamentally digital, and the latter on 'natural' harmonies. The former increasingly dominates musics around the world - thanks to colonialism etc.; the blues and jazz have stood against this to some effect (think of Albert Ayler for example). Anyway, within Second Life and the microtome sliced digital human project, there are deep gaps between one layer and another. So what 'works' visually is a kind of suturing or covering over the difference between layers - you definitely do this, and I do to some extent. I find these works of yours really powerful by the way - Alan (reading essays by Alain Danielou)
[original notes made 2nd May] This is interesting - the deep gaps between layers and the idea of suturing or covering over the difference between layers - again this could be seen as a kind of healing, but instead of pixel 'healing' this kind of healing we do with our perceptions, a cognitive healing or healing via cognition. It's something I'm very interested in - jumping the gaps, healing the gaps, filling in the gaps - the point at which it works and the point at which it fails - e.g. below 12 frames per second in film & animation, we start to notice the gaps. (Apparently, this isn't persistence of vision, as people used to think, it's to do with something else, something in the brain.) And as you say, there's an analogy with the gaps between notes in music and the digital scale, etc. Our hearing heals these gaps too - I've been experimenting with gaps, or inserting gaps, in recorded speech - the idea came from some neuroscience research (link below) - it's something i'm working on in my Out of Touch series, although I haven't developed it very far yet.
Yes, it is interesting how there are such deep gaps between the layers in the sliced digital human project - and, if I remember rightly, I even widened the gaps in my (re)animations because to save myself some laborious work, I only took copies of slices every few layers, just enough to make the animation work visually.
Would be interesting possibly to think of a standard photograph as a single layer, implying thickness as well. This could be trivial or lead to something...
And the gaps seem so characteristic of the digital; it's what permits layers to be manipulated independently. In this sense the digital 'escapes' the world. A French philosopher, Clement Rosset, had a term for the real - he called it 'idiotic,' because the real is inert, immobile; the digital at best is a slice of it. Of course the digital is embedded in the real as well...
Argh! I started writing a very long comment here and it got erased 'somehow' - I don't know how. I was talking about the difference between Western and Indian/Arabic scales - the former based on a well-tempered scale that's fundamentally digital, and the latter on 'natural' harmonies. The former increasingly dominates musics around the world - thanks to colonialism etc.; the blues and jazz have stood against this to some effect (think of Albert Ayler for example). Anyway, within Second Life and the microtome sliced digital human project, there are deep gaps between one layer and another. So what 'works' visually is a kind of suturing or covering over the difference between layers - you definitely do this, and I do to some extent. I find these works of yours really powerful by the way - Alan (reading essays by Alain Danielou)
ReplyDelete[original notes made 2nd May]
ReplyDeleteThis is interesting - the deep gaps between layers and the idea of suturing or covering over the difference between layers - again this could be seen as a kind of healing, but instead of pixel 'healing' this kind of healing we do with our perceptions, a cognitive healing or healing via cognition. It's something I'm very interested in - jumping the gaps, healing the gaps, filling in the gaps - the point at which it works and the point at which it fails - e.g. below 12 frames per second in film & animation, we start to notice the gaps. (Apparently, this isn't persistence of vision, as people used to think, it's to do with something else, something in the brain.) And as you say, there's an analogy with the gaps between notes in music and the digital scale, etc. Our hearing heals these gaps too - I've been experimenting with gaps, or inserting gaps, in recorded speech - the idea came from some neuroscience research (link below) - it's something i'm working on in my Out of Touch series, although I haven't developed it very far yet.
Phonemic Restoration : The brain creates missing speech sounds - http://asj.gr.jp/2006/data/kashi/index.html
Yes, it is interesting how there are such deep gaps between the layers in the sliced digital human project - and, if I remember rightly, I even widened the gaps in my (re)animations because to save myself some laborious work, I only took copies of slices every few layers, just enough to make the animation work visually.
Would be interesting possibly to think of a standard photograph as a single layer, implying thickness as well. This could be trivial or lead to something...
DeleteAnd the gaps seem so characteristic of the digital; it's what permits layers to be manipulated independently. In this sense the digital 'escapes' the world. A French philosopher, Clement Rosset, had a term for the real - he called it 'idiotic,' because the real is inert, immobile; the digital at best is a slice of it. Of course the digital is embedded in the real as well...
Delete