Monday, July 23, 2007

For the PhD, I have been writing essays asking questions and attempting to answer them, I am going to post the two most recent and in the next few days post section of the others with links to PDF's.

The two most recent look at the idea of internal and external experiences. More to the point do you use headphones or speakers? I think that the first essay which will be below, is kind of stiff and I am not sure I actually asked any relevant questions, the second one is more useful to me because it made an effort to look at the idea holistically....

Anyway below essay 1
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Alexandra P. Spaulding
Essay for External
20 July 2007

Internal or external, sound or vision. It’s kind of a baseless argument to make because I couching the argument from an extremely biased point of view: my research. For the sake of argument though argue against the use of headphones (internal) in one essay, and argue for them in another.

Within the context of my own research I believe that the work I am trying to do fits into a certain kind of ineffability, that which exists out with our ability to speak about it in any language, English, French, German, or Martian for example. Part of the conundrum in writing about the nature of these experiences is I feel I should have a definitive idea of what they are, or what they mean. Well if I knew that, I would already have the PhD, no? Besides knowing that alludes to a definitive knowledge, and as LaCan said ‘There is nothing known which can’t be articulated’. We must not know then, because the Oxford English Reference Dictionary defines the ineffable as the ‘the unutterable, the thing of which we can not speak’. What the fuck is that, what does it mean, and why should it matter if you hear it through headphones or speakers?

Maybe it’s best to take it back to the beginning and briefly lay out what it is I think I am doing. My research is interested in the experiential relationship that the viewer/listener has to the work. As an example when I was eighteen I saw James Turrell’s piece Meeting at PS1 for the first time, sitting there in that room watching the sky turn darker through the hole in the ceiling I had a lot of reactions, one being it was a bit dumb, but secondly and far more importantly that something was happening and I had no facility to explain it. It was cool, and that’s what I told my friends when I came out but I couldn’t tell them anything else, I could explain it to them or myself and that’s when the work started to become ‘ineffable’. Merleau-Ponty stated ‘the moment we catch ourselves perceiving, we have stopped perceiving’, yes that’s true but the moment we stopped being immersed, or swimming in the work is when we begin to disseminate it, we struggle for the things to say to clarify what just happened to no avail. In order to experience we must perceive our own perception.

So back to headphones or not, this essay is taking the stance against them for one very particular reason-they aren’t special anymore. Everywhere you go for the most part in the western world people are plugged in and removed from the world around them. The iPod like the Walkman before us creates and introverted anti-social sphere limiting not just what you can hear but your interaction with those around you. If you are listening to something and it occupies not just your ears, but your brain, and the actually physicality of your head your gaze is focused inwards towards your own thoughts, or thoughts which may not necessarily concern themselves with the present in front of you.

The act of wearing headphones is pedestrian as well, the last thing I want to do when I go to a gallery is stand a half a foot away from the way with my head at a funny angle listening to a pair of crap headphones, might as well be standing on the bus listening to Depeche Mode with my own headphones which tend to be of better quality sound wise.

Part of this research has been to champion the very nature of immersive ineffable experiences¬- this is of course doesn’t mean wearing robes and purple Nikes, but rather the idea of considered contexts. The word experience tends to allude to something out-with the norm, and my hope is not to disappoint, and in a way it’s absolutely crucial then that the element of control favours myself. Headphones for the very most part have limited ability when it comes to certain high and low frequencies, which handicaps creation before you even begin. More importantly though it’s their very inclusive nature, which is constrictive, in some way what was most informative in experiential installations was the reactions of others. Not the daft ones but if you are lucky a collective unspoken resonance can be created.

From a purely practical point of view, as a creator I only have control over the things I create, I just feel like iPod art has the danger of not asserting itself strongly enough to overcome it’s technology and as such would be perceived in a very particular way, practically deciding the nature of the experience before it’s been had, and truncating the possiblility for anything beyond it’s restrictive context.

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