LEVEL - Shalan relelased
Polymorphic, the groundbreaking net label , has agreed to release my LEVEL album, "Shalan".http://www.polymorphic-music.co.uk/php/releases.php?catNo=polyWeb007This collection of recordings consists of initial experiments that I conducted whilst trying to determine a coherent direction for the Level project early in 2004. At the time, I was concerned with producing something that was inherently digital, but that would illicit a strong emotional response from the listener; in direct opposition to the many critics of digital media who claim that it is "sterile" or "cold". The source material in most of my Level work comes from piano samples donated by friends, combined with a lot of processing, and manipulation, and usually involves sounds being dragged through several evolutions before I'm happy with the finished result. Shalan encapsulates a lot of the more recent Level methodology, and some of the recordings were "out-takes" that never made it onto the Spekk album, "Cycla". This was not because the tracks were not good enough, rather that they did not fit the flow of recordings I was doing at that time. For this reason, Shalan consists of several fundamentally different approaches - all "successful" in their own way, and all somehow fitting the remit that I had set myself for the project. Some fo the pieces were produced in the same batch of experiments that emerged as Cycla, and for that reason they have certain similarities.
From a review of the TRACE installations 2002
Si_COMM examines in order to experience. The results are often exhibited as sound works, which he calls 'presentations', or participated in by others as a kind of performance, which he calls 'events', but that is more or less incidental. He anatomizes experience, but not so much in the way of the scientist or the philosopher or even the metaphysician (who examine in order to understand or to systematize) as in the way of the mystic; to contemplate and perhaps identify with it. Mysticism is such an abused and misunderstood attitude to life that one hesitates to use the word. But it is the only serious word that adequately covers the aim and the activity. The aim is not to merely to 'create' something, to communicate, to demonstrate, to define or to discover. It is also to isolate for examination. Si_COMM's activities touch many areas where the principles involved - aesthetic or philosophical - are familiar enough; notably those concerned with random processes, recordings, digital events,recordings, environments. What is much less familiar is the way every activity becomes part of a cumulative mental, or one might say spiritual, dossier about human experience as such. It is a gradual amassing of evidence about what it involves to be a sentient being, evidence which is selective only to the extent that it is impossible to examine everything, at least all at once .The aim, in practical terms, is vast, quixotic and unrealizable, but it is the only meaningful justification of the activity....
CIL limited edition
The limited edition CDR of Si_COMM tracks, entitled "CIL" is available soon from Smallfish online - www.smallfish.co.uk. We are shipping copies to them soon, so contact their site for ordering. MP3 extracts from the CDR are available at my myspace site; www.myspace.com/sicomm
Level due for Release on Smallfish
Si_COMM minimalist side project, LEVEL has just agreed to release some new and exclusive tracks on a split 3" CD for Smallfish [www.smallfish.co.uk]. The first disc of the set, entitled "AEUS", will be released shortly, followed by a collectors disc later in the year, featuring the second disc and a set of original artworks in a presentation pack. Keep checking here and at the Smallfish website for details. The Cycla album, recorded for Spekk is still available,www.spekk.net, or directly from myself, e mail:whitelineBN@aol.com
The hebrew arts of sacred writing comprise the elements of a formative hyperlanguage, extremely different from our own, and the letters of their aleph-beit share these qualities — existing as ‘many dimensional’ spiritual archetypes arranged in scalarly self-referential lexicon. Hebrew is a living doorway which conserves these relations, and it offers us precious access into not only what is possible, but the opportunities which lie far beyond what was accomplished thousands of years ago. It is an inexhaustible vehicle of literal enlightenment, not merely the language of a given people on Earth.
It is our birthright to have access to learning-modes and knowledge far in excess of the sum of what human science and religion can offer. We will never claim this right in isolation, for it is in every case the sacred fruit of human unity in mutual uplift, rescue, learning and celebration.
We usually think of alphabets as the building blocks of language, not as languages in themselves. We know many languages that are made from essentially the same alphabet, and after all, what would "a" or "b" mean? Which is exactly the point to consider. What if "a" or "b" had a meaning in addition to phonetic value? Then each letter of a word would contain its own significance, as well as contributing meaning to the whole. What if "a" or "b" had spellings themselves, with recursive hyperlinks to the meanings of those letters, and the letters of those letters? And what if it were necessary to read a word from both directions, or in different permutations of letters to understand its meaning? The best description for such a language might be "hyperlanguage" since all its components are hyperlinked to other components in nested recursions. Formal definition of the word "hyperlanguage" may not exist. One of Google's few general descriptions may suggest why:
Hyperlanguages transcend human languages in the same manner which human languages transcend the protolanguages of chimpanzees.
From "3 Quarks Daily", July 2006
It hit me. I was becoming my 17-year-old sister. Though I was five years older, full sentences eluded me, and I had subconsciously decided that abbreviating all of my thoughts was fun. And cute.
Justine’s love affair with language — or rather, the anti-language — started gradually enough, and I think that’s why I never noticed it. At first, when my mom would ask Justine if she had a lot of homework, Justine would reply, “Obvi,” or “The usu.”
Then things got worse. Awkward became awk, actually became actu, typical became typ, amazing became amaze and hilarious became hilar. Something utterly hilar, of course, became TOPOSH — Top of the Pillar of St. Hilar — but there was nothing TOPOSH about the situation. As the older sister, I tried to do my part. Sometimes that involved throwing my sneakers at her, and sometimes it was as simple as, “Hey, Justine, you’re an idiot.”
“That is so rudabega,” she would say, before rolling her eyes and gliding out of the room.
Hyperlanguage
Originally a recording commissioned to thematically relate to the PROBE CD released by VIVO of Poland (www.vivo.pl) in April 2004. After being approached by Ben Green to record a new work for Resonance FM, we decided to construct a piece which would compliment these recently released recordings, and further elaborate on some of the themes set down in the sleeve notes for PROBE. PROBE examines the notion of an impending new species of Posthuman beings. These bio-technological entities from our deep future, will bear only the merest trace of their human origins, and will no doubt greatly exceed what we currently understand to be the limits of human performance and intelligence. Far from being a sci-fi fantasists' dream of transcendence, these theories hint at a very real possibility for the future of mankind. Given that language appears to evolve alongside the great leaps of human cognition and intuition, how might the language of these Posthumans be constructed? What will language become? Language is both a system of communication and an information processing tool. The roots of human language appear to have emerged during a period of information overload. The existing communicative methods of primitive "proto-languages", a series of semi-coherent vocalisations, social/emotional interaction, and pre-verbal physical gesture used by early Man were "overwritten" in response to an overload, or chaos that arises when the informatic capacity of this previous set of languages could no longer cope, or had reached a new level of complexity. Given that hominids continually acquired new skills, for example- tool making; their lives increased in complexity. The early hominid mind could no longer cope with the richness of it's life solely on the basis of its perceptual continuum, and language began to take a whole new evolutionary leap. In relation to the human brain, evolution on a biological level has reached its peak ( the head of an infant could only become so big in order to pass through the hips of its mother, and to retain the capacity for mobility – a vital factor for survival) , and after all of the physical mechanisms for increasing intelligence are exhausted, nature has conspired to increase human intelligence by using a technological, rather than biological strategem. We are currently poised on the brink of ever more rapid transitions in technology, and our interaction with it. The human communications landscape is incrementally increasing in volume, speed and capacity, as we strive to reach out into the Universe, and connect with each other in more complex, accelerated ways. To an extent, for the first time, it is We who are being transformed by our technology, and not vice-versa. As we speak, successive generations of young children are being thrust into the fast lane of cutting edge communications technology by their rapid (and somewhat remote) interactions with mobile phones (and the new accelerated language of "texting"). The mass usage of Computer games, and Personal Computers (particularly the World Wide Web), have led to the common utilisation of ever more complex and abbreviated terminologies. The internet in particular is a breeding ground for new language, as knowledge and ideas are transmitted globally at high speed. The Net has its own unique semantics, particularly, hypertext and hyperlinks, which we see as the foundation of a HYPERLANGUAGE – a revolutionary new spoken (if such a term will exist) mode of communication for the deep future. The recording project – HYPERLANGUAGE, is an artistic speculation - an analysis of our potential relationship with highly advanced communications technology in the deep future. Given that tool-making generated a major shift in thinking that led to the foundations of spoken language – it should come as no great surprise that new technologies and cognitive structures (the evolution of the mind), should seed the development of a new kind of universal language – a non- verbal HYPERLANGUAGE that is communicated at vast speed and capacity through rapid transmission systems that will greatly exceed anything we could possibly imagine at present. What we present here is an imaginary switch point at some futuristic information exchange, inhabited by fragments of human vocalisations, hybrids of what we currently understand as language, fused with digital information, and all of the inherent noise that accumulates in an overloaded system. The evolution of a new form of language, its trajectories and impact from a psychological, developmental, emotional, and educational perspective are deeply interesting to us.
Si_COMM with S.E.T.I & N-SPACES
NETAUDIO FESTIVAL, SEPTEMBER 15th & 16TH 2006 AT
CANDID ARTS Centre,3 Torrens St, London, EC1V 1NQ
Tel: 020 7837 4249
http://www.netaudiolondon.cc/HYPERLANGAUGE - PRESS RELEASE Man/Machine Osmosis – it is now generally considered that human intelligence is being transformed into a “cognitive ecology” consisting of minds fused with networks, computer terminals, telephone systems, and other methods of high speed communication. We live in a world where old structures of representation and knowledge are fading away, and are being replaced by new, yet still barely formed theories of knowledge, imagination and social construct. We live and survive now not in one place, but in hundreds of places, physically separate, yet intimately connected. We inhabit not only this or that small physical territory, but also the immense, undefined realms borne of virtual technologies.
Alongside this transition comes the inevitable evolution of language – a Hyperlanguage used by the man/machine super-organism. Out of the internet comes a “swarm being”, a distributed being replicating itself across the networks, it is irredeemably social, and unashamedly comprised of many minds. It conveys the logic of both Computer and Nature, which in turn conveys a language beyond our understanding. Hidden in these high speed networks is the mystery of the invisible hand – control without authority.
Si_COMM , S.E.T.I & N-Spaces address the issues of how this language will come about – fundamentally – what will it sound like? How will it arrive? How will it evolve?
Sporadically over the last two years, these experimental artists have individually researched processes to facilitate the birthing of a hypothetical Hyperlanguage, based upon current digital technology. In a darkened room – a laboratory of sorts - the artists sit opposite each other, transfixed at their terminals, linked only by light and sound – creating and fusing raw digital information, each feeding from the other, not knowing what language will emerge, yet somehow still communicating by sound and gesture. This is a profoundly altered and unpredictable state, where neither origin, finish line, nor boundary exists. This world which we used to see as linearly, evolutionarily, and organically defined, we now conceive of as being made from collisions, and overlapping. Human language here is not seen as disappearing, but is merely being reconfigured to usher us into a new era of decentralised existence, a composite of man/machine intelligence
WWW.MYSPACE.COM/SICOMM
