zoo entries

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: : : I'm about to freak on this list, yo! : : : : idm (intelligent dance music) : : : What is, please? : : idm is one of the many genres of techno. there are many artists/groups out there that have been placed in the idm category, when you line them all up it gets fairly broad. idm acts span the gamut from The Orb and FSOL (Future Sound of London) to Orbital to Autechre (pronounced aw-teh-gur with an English accent). Orb/FSOL is the "unstructured" end of the spectrum imo, and Autechre is at the "highly structured" end. I started out my cd collection at the unstructured end, not knowing anything about idm, and eventually ran into Autechre, who have been described as the "Kings" of idm. Some other really fantastic acts out there are Arovane, Boards of Canada (they're from Scotland), Plaid (their latest one is outstanding). Some day I'll have to post a list of my favorite stuff. Also, groups like Orbital are lumped in here because they'll have samples of people talking that sound "intelligent". Professors and philosophers and so forth. It really spans a wide range of stuff, but its all electronic music. I like Orbital btw, but they aren't my favorite. There is one guy, Amon Tobin, you should check out. Some really amazing music for sure. Matt Guest turned me onto him and to Arovane and Boards of Canada. : : There are also other genres that are related, the one I care about the most is Ambient music. This is another one that I think spans a fairly broad range of music now. It started with Brian Eno with an album called Music For Airports. I really like a lot of the stuff Eno has done since then that is in this vein. It is pretty strongly related musically to the idm stuff I like. I think Eno has been an influence on a lot of the musicians I've been listening to, although I don't really know for sure. : : : : minimalism (in music, design, architecture, art and as a way of life) : : : Bill's Reindeer art - white paper, black magic marker. What music do you define as minimalism (IDM?) : : Actually to me Bill's stuff really isn't minimalistic at all, although I think your basic idea is right on the beam. I think Bill is on a whole different vibe. I wrote to him in an email recently: : : "i think of you staring into emptiness and coming back with a million intersecting forms, all of them True. " : : I think Bill's stuff taken as a whole definitely shows certain patterns repeated over and over again, and this is the essence of what minimalism is about. Its also the basis for chaos theory, that in all the apparent disorder certain patterns emerge, like random movements of water end up forming things like clouds over and over again. But minimalist art usually tries to show the Big Picture in one piece of art at a time, extracting the repetitive form and hanging just enough stuff on that form to reveal it. : : Anyway I think Bill's art isn't really minimalist in that sense. But what you are saying about the purity of two colors, black and white, that is definitely an interesting thing. I've always been attracted to "two color" printed layouts (like maybe in an ad or a brochure or a poster). Maybe it is about the revelation of the form underneath, I don't really know. Maybe its just that I can process two colors easier than I can process thousands. : : Maybe Bill would disagree with me, not sure. Bill's ideas are very rich and very layered. There is one artist who laid a pile of bricks in the middle of a room in a gallery and called it art. His name is Carl Andre and the work is (or perhaps was) at the Tate Gallery in London. They are very serious at the Tate, so it must have been a shock to a lot of people to see it there! The work is called "Equivalent VIII", done in 1966. You can find info about it if you search around I'm sure. Anyway this whole minimalism thing is a very established school of thought, these ideas have been around for a while. I'm definitely way into this kind of thinking, but I'm also as Bill says an armchair quarterback with all this stuff, I definitely am no expert. I think Andre is considered one of the seminal artists in this area. : : As far as music goes, yeah a lot of the stuff I really really like I think you could throw in the minimalistic category, a lot of the electronic music in the idm category would fit nicely. My favorite tunes are often the ones with simple patterns that repeat, almost like lullabies. Here again minimalism in music is well established, especially with modern classical music. Philip Glass, John Cage, Steve Reich. I've got lots of Philip Glass and Steve Reich cds, I've actually had the pleasure of seeing Philip Glass perform twice, both times with Paula. We saw him at buddhist fundraisers both times, one in Atlanta and one in Boulder CO. : : I have a cd set that is called _OHM: the early gurus of electronic music_. Some of the stuff on these cds is totally amazing, extremely creative. I've really had a thing for Sonic Youth over the last several years (although I don't own a lot of their music yet), and some of their influences are minimalist composers. There is a tune on one of the cds called Pendulum Music by Steve Reich, performed by Sonic Youth. In the liner notes Reich says he had this old tape recorder with a microphone plugged in and he let it swing by this speaker and it made a "whoop" sound when it did, so he got this idea for a "sculpture phase piece". The track isn't the most compelling one in the collection, but its interesting as I follow the trail of ideas and people around just how many people are connected in some way or another. There is this whole undercurrent that has to do with most of the stuff on my list that in some way has touched a whole lot of people, and I seem to be attracted to a lot of them and to their work. : : I remember one time I took this psychological test, one of those really basic "this is going to tell you a few broad personality traits" kinda tests. I'll never forget something it said that I didn't know about myself at the time. It said that I was a "person who needs order". This was quite a revelation to me at the time, my life was in such disorder. Everything was always a mess, I was always late to everything. I had no sense of boundaries from an emotional standpoint. It was a bit of a turning point because I knew that it was true. I think I've been following the trail of Order ever since, in small ways here and there. I find that all this stuff about order in all its various forms, and order in chaos and all that, it all makes me healthier the more I delve in. And whatever I get to do that involves design (mostly web sites these days) is strongly influenced by minimalist thinking. : : When I first read Bill's post and then read all the other posts, I kind of stopped and thought about it. I had no idea what I was interested in. It was a little disheartening at first - I spent a few minutes staring around my little office wondering what the heck I was going to write, if anything at all. When I started putting it all together it was shocking how much of it was so incredibly RELATED. wow! Thanks again Bill!!! And thanks Jason for asking about some of this stuff. : : : : programming, java in practice and also history and general, fundamental ideas : : : Does minimalism come in to play with programming? : : Well as I mentioned above I've been following the trail of order. One thing that programming does is it helps you to order your thoughts. The forms, the logical processes found in programming have to become a part of your thinking if you are going to be any good at it. There is a whole language to it that you have to learn. And once you learn one language, others are easier to figure out because you have done it before in another environment. So it affects the way I think, allows me to pare things down to their essence more quickly, and find the form that all the seeming madness is hanging itself on. I'm hoping that this will translate one day into story telling or writing in general. Its interesting, the more programming I do, the more I can see the flaws in poems I've written. : : : : : : linux : : : Redhat, mandrake, slackware ??? : : Linux is just something that I'm really interested in because it is an operating system that reveals the computer. Windows for instance I think shields people from what computers can do, how they can talk to each other and so forth. Linux is an interesting as a movement as well. All that to say that I have yet to install Linux on a computer. I have a new laptop that has plenty of hard drive space, I may end up using a bit of it on a partition and finally dive in. Probably Red Hat. : : : : chaos theory / indeterminancy found in order, mandelbrot, etc : : : Does any of this spill into other "forms" (i.e. primitive spirituality, rituals, or rites) ??? I'm going to look up "mandelbrot" : : I think chaos theory tries to describe systems, tries to find order in things that appear to be random. But I'm not sure it contains a vocabulary adequate to describe rites and rituals. I've always found that you have to participate in that kind of thing to really understand it. That is certainly true of Christianity, I don't think there is any way to study it from the "outside" and really get it. My wife could probably speak to this better than me since she's studied rituals and myth and cultures. Although I don't know if she knows a lot about chaos theory. : : : : zen : : : : the tao : : : : martial arts history and practice : : : : chinese philosophy / the three elements / i ching etc : : : These all fit together, eh? : : yeah : : : : energy in and around the human body : : : What are your thoughts on auras? : : hm. i think there is something to that, people have been painting them over the centuries as halos i think. but the new age take on them, i don't know too much about that. i guess there are a lot of connotations to "auras" these days that aren't too positive. i do believe that there is energy in the body and that there are people who can work with it. i think you can pull energy from the earth through the soles of your feet, and you can move energy through your hand into another person. stuff like that. having studied kung fu for a year i learned a few things here and there. : : : : structure : : : Yes, quite! : : : : attachment parenting : : : Parenting children? Ideas? More, please... : : http://www.askdrsears.com/ : : : : dream language / dreams and art : : : : haruki murakami (jason knows this guy) : : : Tracing dreams is a lost art, but the initiation cost is high - perpetual sunglass wearing and life without a shadow... : : or you can go back to sleep when you wake up in the morning. you'll probably remember what you dream from that point on. i think the conscious mind kicks in and is a lot more aware of what is happening. most of the dreams i remember are ones i have in late morning. : : : : finding essence in the spaces between ordinary things : : : Right freakin' on! : : : : play / silliness / random behavior emerging into patterns that are fun : : : John, you are the master... : : : : the site linked below somehow melds a lot of stuff that i'm interested in all together, programming, design, structure, minimalism, indeterminancy and play. you can definitely waste a lot of time there if you aren't careful. : : : Do you have any zoo entries? : : zoo entries? : : thanks for asking all these cool questions. it is fun thinking about this.

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