Visual Modeling and the Value of Seeing Differently
February 03, 2012
Comments (0) | More: abstraction, Art, creative act, emergence and structure, future society, imagination, intelligence, looking, mechanics of sight, model dependent realism, painting, perspective, physics, seeing, visual modeling
Twin Twin Postcard Edition
September 10, 2011
Pierogi Gallery organized by Matt Freedman
Sept. 9-16, 2011
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Sound and Vision
June 23, 2011
McKenzie Fine Art
John Aslanidis
Gilbert Hsiao
Laura Watt
As a painter, I have been greatly influenced by the power of the sonic experience, both in the act of deep, immersive listening and also the act of creating music itself. After hearing the works of the Minimalist composers (like LaMonte Young, Steve Reich, and Terry Riley) and the roots of their influences (like the idea in the Upanishads, the ancient Indian text which speaks of the entire universe being constructed of sound), as well as the ambient works and ideas of Brian Eno, John Cage, and Jon Hassell, I became interested in the common ground of painting and sound and their ability to perform a function, in my case, by creating conducive environments for meditation, contemplation and reflection. By implementing a sort of intentional synesthesia of sound and vision, my painting began to focus on the interaction of rhythmic, vibratory frequencies locked in a visual dance of pattern and structure. The sonic influence became apparent in the paintings in the symmetry, which is directly related to the stereophonic phenomenon found in our natural hearing. It also is present with the process. Just as a musician plays a performance in time, my paintings are made in a kind of performance also- line by line slowly applied with a squeeze bottle hovering just above the surface in a session of meditative concentration with little room for error. With sound, expirimentation began with a hand held tape recorder when I was seven years old. With two taperecorders I discovered I could “overdub” and my obecession with sound began. As a teenager I played bass guitar in various bands, composing fusion instrumentals. Then I began, and still am, creating experimental “soundscapes” with the mixing board becoming the significant “instrument”, manipulating raw sounds, either found or constructed, into ambient sonic environments. In addition to twelve solo albums, I have also done several collaborations, including with Angie Drakopoulos on the video/sound installations, “Aurorasis” and “Mythograph”, (excerpt under “animations” here), exhibited in Paris and New York. In 2007, I played bass guitar, guitar and did the engineering and mixing on the vinyl only release “A Jumpin’ Jackpot o’ Melody” by the minimalist art rockers, The Daycare Centre, which received airplay on alternative stations in New York, Canada and Europe. Through this synthesis, this intentional synesthesia of sound and vision, I have ultimately been interested, in a very scientific manner, in the basic, fractal or holographic architecture permeating the universe and how this is revealed through paint, sound and the conscious creative act.
Here are a few albums which had a profound influence fairly early on, defining a new way to “listen”: “Tantras of Gyuto”–Tibetan Buddhist chant, Music from the Morning of the World– Balinese gamelan, Brian Eno’s “On Land”, Jon Hassell’s “The Surgeon of the Nightsky Restores Dead Things with the Power of Sound”, LaMonte Young’s “The Second Dream of the High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer From the Four Dreams of China”, John Cage’s “Sonatas and Etudes for the Prepared Piano” and Steve Reich’s “Music for Eighteen Musicians”.
Comments (0) | More: angie drakopoulos, buddhist chant, daycare centre, gamelan, gilbert hsiao, john aslanidis, john cage, lamonte young, laura watt, mckenzie fine art, painting, sound, steve reich, synesthesia, vision
Comments (0) | More: abstract, abstraction, Art, artist, Daniel Hill, painter, painting
Comments (0) | More: abstract, abstraction, Art, artist, Daniel Hill, painter, painting
Comments (0) | More: abstract, abstraction, Art, artist, Daniel Hill, painter, painting
Comments (0) | More: abstract, abstraction, Art, artist, Daniel Hill, painter, painting
Comments (0) | More: abstract, abstraction, Art, artist, Daniel Hill, painter, painting
Schrödinger’s Kōan
February 04, 2011
“I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.”
-Richard Feynman
In many eastern philosophies, the brain is not the center of the human body, the heart is. The heart is at the center, with all other nodes of perception or cognition radiating out like the spokes of a wheel. In our society today, the brain is firmly in the central position with conceptual capacity being rewarded, psychologically and financially; so much so that the possibility of locating a center other than the brain is quite difficult. At first we may wonder why would the heart need to be in this position? And how? In the heart lie our moral compass, the intelligence of intuition, and our inherent capacity for compassion. The fruits of our cognitive abilities are wondrous and powerful indeed, but without a firm basis in compassion, we cannot implement the wisdom to know the proper means to employ these tools. There are many examples of this situation, when technology has apparently overtaken our better judgment: perhaps the best example being the fact that nuclear weapons exist on this planet in the first place. Our abilities to synthesize and manufacture complex chemicals to perform a myriad of tasks and releasing them into the ecosphere without proper testing of the consequences on human and other life being one of many other examples. And soon, we may be confronted with artificial intelligence. We may be able to make an intelligent machine or custom engineer our babies to order, but should we? In many of the ancient traditions it was known that the mind and the heart must work in unison. In the Zen tradition of Buddhism a kōan was the tool used to reconnect with the wisdom of intuition by shutting down the brain with trick questions that make it freeze, momentarily ceasing it’s endless computing and opening up space within. Now cliché, a very well known example of a kōan is “Two hands clap and there is a sound; what is the sound of one hand?” Or “Close your eyes and picture clearly your face; now can you picture your face before you were born?” I have found that many theories in modern physics can successfully function as a contemporary version of the kōan. There is Schrödinger’s cat for example. Imagine a cat placed into a steel chamber with a vial of hydrocyanic acid and a very small amount of radioactive material. If the radioactive material decays it will release a hammer to smash the vial of poison and kill the cat. But in the course of an hour, the radioactive material has equal chance that it will not decay and the cat will live. Since we cannot see the cat, is it dead or alive? Here perhaps it is not so much the question that freezes the mind, as is the answer: the cat is both dead and alive. This thought experiment forces the mind into the paradoxical world of quantum mechanics, where the cat is in a state of superposition and only when the box is opened and we can observe, does the wave function collapse and we see it either dead or alive. Trying to ponder superposition or indeterminacy can push the mind into a convoluted exercise of mental gymnastics, bringing it to the edge of it’s usual functionality. I have found contemplating these concepts and others within contemporary physics to cease, however briefly, the locomotive that is mind, and for a moment stand in awe, quietly staring into the vast silent space.
Comments (0) | More: compassion, eastern philosophy, quantum physics, Schrödinger’s cat, superposition, uncertainty principle, Zen Buddhism
Some Thoughts on Cezanne
January 19, 2011
After teaching a painting and drawing class on the upper west side once a week, I would stroll through central park after class ultimately to be pulled into the Metropolitan Museum of Art like a helpless fleck of iron before a mega-magnet. Wandering through the Met, very often I wound up in another magnetic field; standing in front of a Cezanne. What is it about this painter that died a hundred and five years ago (born 172 years ago today) that is still so compelling? I’ve read the books, and know what people have said about him and know what he said about what he thought he was doing, but still something is there itching, something unanswered. He was a very scientific painter in a way, with a disciplined methodology; he observed intensely and recorded honestly. But the inquisitive depth of his perception transcended seeing the plastic world; he looked into the world before him and found that world looked back. In this reciprocal space, he painted not only what he saw and how he saw it but painted through what he saw to arrive at an essence, something elemental and essential. He slips through the barrier between the observer and the observed. What remains is not a depiction, the subject but a catalyst for deeper realizations, a means to an end to truth in structure through light and color. Often we see an artist representing nature, but with Cezanne I feel as if nature is expressing itself through him. There are theorists that talk of nature having an inherent intelligence that we could communicate with if we only knew the language. Cezanne ignores the Cartesian divide and realizes that he is nature. He has made himself a conduit- the sensations of which he speaks picking up super subtle vibrations and tuning in to nature’s radio. In a way all of his paintings are of this- and only taking on the illusion of a still life, landscape, or portrait. Perhaps on some level he knew this and realized all he needed was Mt. St. Victoire, a bowl of apples or a tree. His words give us a clue: “The Landscape becomes reflective, human and thinks itself through me. I make it an object, let it project itself and endure within my painting….I become the subjective consciousness of the landscape, and my painting becomes its objective consciousness.”
