one-minute vacation
 
an old artist's statement

Note: This statement is now deprecated, but I leave it here for historical interest.

For an also already out-of-date, but more contemporary, self-accounting, please see the essay Sound, Art, Music.

I create this work for myself. Making it I evoke particular modes of being in the world. Memories of the circumstances of particular recordings. Pleasure at serendipitous juxtapositions. Joy of discovery. Hypnotism in the face of slowly changing textures and patterns.

For many years I didn't understand what artist friends meant by process. This project is my first serious act of artistic expression as an adult. Doing this, I have finally learned what it means to have process: to evolve expertise through disciplined intention.

For now, I focus on identifying the self-imposed constraints that allow me to make coherent work.

Art for me is the ephemeral moment of insight and humility. It is epiphany and private thanksgiving. Gratitude not for a thing, but for being witness to and vehicle for creation.

This work is also for you, personally. What you bring to it will make it resonate (or fail to resonate) in ways that I can encourage but not control. I may only provide an opportunity for you to experience something new.

All I have is an offer.

What is it, then? What is it that I think that I am doing?

First. I want to recontextualize the sound around you. There is beauty and interest and emotive force in the sounds that you live with every day. I seek to remind you to listen without judgment, to listen with new ears, by putting a frame around some of that sound,RIP Joseph Cornell. If you find yourself hearing music when you least expect it, I have succeeded.

Second. With composition I often aim to evoke specific emotional colors. When my conciousness is heightened (by travel, or when I am aware of engaging in my creative process, as when wandering the city with microphones), I am more attuned to the mercurial emotive character of the environment. I seek to re-create for you some of these shades.

Third. I want to provide an environment for different thoughts. Ambient, drone, and rhythmic musics in particular, but art in general, provides a context for my consciousness to wander in ways I don't permit it to when struggling with the day to day. I seek to give your thoughts space to wander through less familiar associational landscapes while you listen.

Fourth. I want to take you on a trip. Not to the landscape I visited; those moments are gone forever. To a world we collaborate on. I provide the soundtrack. You bring the narrative.

I hope that I achieve some of this. I hope that I get better. I hope, most of all, that I continue.

 

grand canyon haiku
sound, art, music
audio restoration at the cathedral
on leaving
how to use this site
an old artist's statement

(diy advice here)