Hum•drum
Modular Intermedia Print Work
+ - ~
A mind works in amalgamations, operations of addition, but foremost, subtraction. A reality cannot be built without first calculating a difference: there cannot be “this + that” without “this - that.” These bound volumes pull focus on this primordial cognitive action, in what I am calling a subtractive work. In it, a cleaving away of sense and understanding from an amorphous block of space-time is met with its own violence, that of our creations, assembled and compiled many times over, with which we sculpt an effigy to illusions. The resulting struggle is of an external reality imposing itself upon this book’s recalcitrant world—a world wherein the usual tools for sense-making are ineffective.
With the aim of decorticating the layers of summation to expose the skeleton of our realities, phrases were arranged through a stochastic process to be ordered differently in each printed copy. Using the software Max/MSP to code probabilities and random variables, obtaining degrees of unpredictability forces the reader/listener to consider the operations that they are making while building an understanding of the work. The primary focus becomes the relations between phrases and between paragraphs rather than the ensuing narrative.
The same stochastic model used to order the phrases is synchronously creating the adjoining sound element of this work. It is therefore also different per printed copy. An underlying bed of sine and triangle waves oscillate at flipped 180º phases and at varyingly small differences of frequency (heard as low accelerating and decelerating pulses) which emphasize the subtraction between the elements. Above this sonic stratus, clouds of languishing violins come and go, like voiceless, indiscernible echoes. In this midst, the rusty churn of a trudging cello chases an antsy, effervescent saxophone. The latter acts as our mind does on our perceptions—it yearns for legibility and won't shy away from lying to conform. The whole soundscape is a tethered subordinate to the hand that writes, a rhythmic dictator that we must revolt against, but that we cannot and will not survive.
Humdrum is the ineffable non-illustrative, left as a remainder to subtractions. It is a title committed to its own irony, a title of Sisyphean insistence. It frames a work that spotlights the interstice between mediums and between disciplines through Relational Modularity. A corrupted and dismantled univocity, as neither literature nor sound art, both affixed and unfixed.
Max MSP Documentation
The Build Process - From Software to Bound Pages:
The Max/MSP patch (pictured left) renders the organization of the phrases for each printed volume through a stochastic process, employing probability within randomness to expose the subjectivity of linearity. Each composed phrase undergoes one of four transmutations. As the words are arranged, the adjoining sound piece is synchronously produced. The patch (pictured right) organizes the sound in a similar fashion to the phrases, basing its temporality on the way the writing comes out. It uses spectral morphing to intertwine sounds, thus blurring their borders and consequently dissolving them from a preexistence.
The cover artworks are pyrography on paper, each a transposing permutation of the last, sequencing like a Markov chain. The printed pages are cut and assembled to make the handmade bound presentations of this work.
Additional Documentation
