1.)

Shifting centers of interest and changing problematics

[We] regard facts not as simple, une-quivocal truths but as complex things, assemblages of meanings, opinions, theories and actions that would have to be acknowledged for their ability to separate and divide as much as for their ability to form common platforms for seemingly inevitable decisions. [Dingpolitik] – Heidegger recalled that the term Ding originally referred to a form of archaic assembly, and, recently, Bruno Latour has latched onto this genealogy to redefine “things” in terms of “matters of concern” rather than “matters of fact,” as quasi-objects and quasi-subjects that fall between the two poles of this dichotomy. (Lütticken) If this doesn’t sound too contradictory, Latour has nicely framed the notion of “construction” under the rubric of “things,” which in old English and German denotes a space for negotiation, shifting centers of interest and problematics. a.) The method for determining the function, organization and “construction” of space inside a given social group comprises one of the most visible modalities of collective and individual practice — “The handling of space is one of the means to this end, and it is hardly astonishing that the [artist/curator] should be tempted to follow in reverse the route from space to the social, as if the latter had produced the former once and for all. This route is essentially “cultural” since, when it passes through the most visible, the most institutionalized signs, those most recognized by the social order, it simultaneously designates the place of the social order, defined by the same stroke as a common place.” …If [we] describe an objective bound to disciplinary or institutional constraints, like history, curatorial practice or the “book form,” then we do so without the intent to prove or favor one solution over another. Instead, [we] regard these practices in writing and research as a model for critical inquiry and creative exchange, where words (whether they produce a revolution or an aversion of the eyes) concretely bear upon choices and perceptions we make in material life. [Medea-Material]

2.)

Spencer’s model of geopolitics is rather sophisticated for his time. He argued that increases in the size of a social aggregate necessitate the elaboration of its structure. Such increases in size are the result of migrations and joining populations. Although Spencer visualized much growth as the result of compounding and recompounding—that is, successive joining together of previously separate social systems he also employed the concept of compounding in another sense: to denote successive stages of internal growth and differentiation of social systems. Throughout Principles of Sociology, a theory of geopolitics and labor is developed. The mechanistic theory of the division of labor implies that the public is the product of necessary causes, and not an end which by itself influences activity. As the social milieu extends, the collective conscience spreads itself over more and more concrete things, and, accordingly, becomes more abstract.

3.)

Ludwig Wittgenstein compares, in a famous paragraph of his Philosophical Investigations, our language to an old town: its development can be traces back both to spontaneous generation and, though limited, to conscious planning. Wittgenstein writes of a labyrinth of narrow lanes and places, old and new houses, some of which have annexes from different times; and all this is surrounded by new suburbs where streets are symmetric and houses are uniform – likened to a contemporary metropolis appears as a linguistic formation, an environment that is above all constituted by objectivized discourse, by a pre-constructed code, and by a materialized grammar.

4.)

The regulatory, the operative and the distributive

Spencer employed the terms primary, secondary, and tertiary compounding, by which he meant that a society had undergone a qualitative shift in the level of differentiation from a simpler to a more complex form. These stages of compounding marked a new level of differentiation among and within what Spencer saw as the three main axes of differentiation in social systems: (1) the regulatory, in which structures, mobilizing and using power manage relations with the external environment, while engaging in internal coordination of a society’s members; (2) the operative, in which structures meet system needs for production of goods and commodities and for reproduction of system mem bers and their culture; and (3) the distributive, in which structures move materi als, people, and information. [Forms-of-Life] “…In order to get clear about aesthetic words, situations and contexts you have to describe ways of living.” [35]

a.)

The arrangement of information offers a faithful image of social structures. The layout is diversified with respect to function. Information is highly integrated — structured around the tendency to accumulate, fill, close off and position the space of writing, research and display in practice. Each post has a corresponding role to various functions of the arrangement — each referring to a view which conceives of the individual as a balanced assemblage of distinct faculties.

—————————-It comes to this. / this whole aspect of newer problems. (We enter the area of the whole work, / into the FIELD, if you like, where all the values and all / the lines must be managed in their relations to each other.) / It is a matter, finally of OBJECTS. what they are [and] how they are used. / …Every element in an open work / (the line, as well as the image, the sound, the sense) / must be taken up as an object of reality, / creating tensions [in the work] just as totally as those other objects which create what we know as / the world. …It’s hard to see / but think of a sea condensed into a speck / And there are ways frequencies of light, others that may be heard / The one is one sea / the other a second / there are electric stresses across condensers that wear them down until they can stand no strain / Are of no force as unreclaimed as the bottom of the sea / Unless the space the stresses cross be air – that can be patched / Large and small condensers / passing in the one instance frequencies that can be turned to sound / And the other, alternations that can escape so many waves of a speck of sea / or what / or what / or a graph / the curve of a wave beyond all sound / an open circuit where no action like that of the retina / made human by light is recorded otherwise than having taken / a desired path a little way and though infinitely emote to be uncontained forever / This science is then like gathering flowers of the weed / One who works with me calls bird seed / That are tiny and many on one stem / they shed to the touch though on a par with a large flower / that picked will find a base / I see many things at one time the harder the concepts get / or nothing / which is a forever become me or over forty years / I’m like another and another / who has finished learning and has just begun to learn / if I turn pages back a child may as well be stirring with me wondering at the meaning I turn to last / perhaps

2.)

The ‘discourse of information’
____—-corresponds to
____—-a structure of
____—-assembly that is always abstract
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3.)

The entire modern environment is thus transposed onto the level of a sign system, namely INFORMATION, which is Naturalization, concealment, superimposition, décor and context. …we are surrounded by information whose form comes into play as a false answer to the self-contradictory manner in which the object is experienced.

Jean-Philippe Rameau
Treatise on Harmony

01.

BOOK ONE:
On the Relationship Between Harmonic Ratios and Proportions

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36.

On the different ways in which the relationship between Sounds can be known to us 4
On the origin of Consonances and on their relationships 5
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On the source of Harmony or the fundamental Sound, 7
On the Unison, 8
On the Octave, 8
On the Fifth and the Fourth, 13
On the Thirds and the Sixths, 15
Summary of the contents of this Chapter, in which the properties shown in the
preceding Demonstration are represented on a single String, 17
Remarks on the properties of the Harmonic and Arithmetic Proportions 20
On the origin of Dissonances and on their relationships 27
On doubled Intervals, and especially on the Ninth and the Eleventh 34
On Harmonic Division, or on the origin of Chords 35
On the inversion of Chords 40
On the major Perfect Chord and on its derivatives, 40
On the minor Perfect Chord and on its derivatives, 42
On the Seventh Chord constructed by adding a minor Third to the major Perfect
Chord and on its derivatives, 42
On the Seventh Chord constructed by adding a minor Third to the minor Perfect
Chord and on its derivatives, 44
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On Composition in two Parts 317

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2.)

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1.)

Discourse Monument

Thinking, doing, re-assessing, re-doing, re-considering, and then finally attempting to bring into being something that grasps the multiple realities encountered in the process of creating, and then aiming to situate the result within a transdisciplinary contextualized setting, in which the intimation and implication of design can be questioned and renegotiated as a socially responsive and critically aware act.

—————————-…The book was distributed to individuals with the command to rip out a page and distribute them. In this way, the pages are ripped out one by one, distributing the knowledge, and diminishing the book as an object. The intention with the performance, the book, and the deconstruction of the book itself, was to create a discourse monument. The act of constructing an alternative discourse through interaction and dialogue symbolically represents the process of an alternative discourse being monumentalized. The monument therefore, lies not in the book itself, but in the production and reproduction of discourse surrounding it.

2.)

Michelle Christensen and Florian Conradi
Negotiating National Belonging, Discourse Monument
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2009

3.)

The book is based on a four-hour interview, and illustrates the personal conflict of feeling proud of a pacifist choice, but equally guilty for not fulfilling the requirements of a ‘good Israeli citizen’. The form of the book emphasizes the individual negotiation process of positioning ones sense of national belonging to Israeli society, as he shifts back and forth between feeling proud and guilty, within the interview.

1.)

Pierre-Yves Macé
Miniatures

For Farimani’s 13th audio program, French composer Pierre-Yves Macé offers recent electroacoustic compositions for various set ups, including excerpts from 2010′s unreleased work for piano and tape Minatures.
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http://www.pierreyvesmace.com

2.)

La table des Cordes
Melancholia / Vue d’exposition, Module 1
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Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2009

2.)

Micro-Exhibition 2
Brandon LaBelle

The power and poetics of sound partially reside in weaving together the private and the public – sound disregards these distinctions by transgressing the boundaries of bodies and spaces. Such transgression might be said to create a horizon of sharing, dislocating the constraints of difference and allowing possibilities for new forms of collectivity. Exploring these themes the workshop will generate a process of acoustical sharing, where sounds are passed back and forth amongst participants through translation, interference and mishearing.
Each day of the workshop students were asked to produce a sound of 1 to 3 minutes based on a theme or set of instructions. The following day these sounds were then passed along, so each student gave their sound to another while receiving a sound from another student. The new sound then became the basis for a further sound.
The first day was based on making a “personal” sound – opening up the sonic imagination to the private space of the individual, to memory or fantasy, making sound a kind of portrait of the individual. This was followed on the second day by the idea of field recording and environmental sound: each student received a “personal” sound from another, and was asked to make a field recording that complemented this personal sound. Students had to locate an existing sound environment, which they felt was echoing or complementing the first sound, to be recorded. This was followed again on the third day by the theme of “synthetic” sound – students further passed their environmental tracks to another, and in response, each had to use this sound in a synthetic way in order to contrast the environmental: ideas of noise, disruption, abstraction and silence were introduced as means for treating, contrasting and fictionalizing a fourth sound. As a final sound, participants were asked to make a “voice” sound in response to the synthetic work: to describe, narrate, sing, or speak over the synthetic sound work. The inherent abstraction of the synthetic work created an opportunity to explore ways of describing sound, of listening and making sound in response based on language. As a final gesture, the sounds were returned to the first student, and offered as a gift.

3.)