This page is dedicated to exploring how we can integrate sound and REG technology to better our understanding of the nexus between technology and the human mind.
This project proposes to use these technologies to offer the participant an opportunity to play with the subconscious mind. Participants will also be able to use the technology as a means of entrainment and synchronization between two states of consciousness.
In combination with other applications this could also be used to gauge and study the subconscious during altered states of consciousness.
Resonance Synthesizing REG
Open source sound editing software such as Audacity will be modified to incorporate input from a Random Event Generator. The REG will receive and interpret a mix created by the participant. The REG will randomly generate a note, effect, tempo etc. using the participant's mix to determine points of generation. In effect, the REG will generate a complimentary track or rebuttal to the participants original mix.
Gauging the significance and determining the meaning of the subconscious track is left in the hands of the participant as the REG responds to the participant's conscious intent.
Spatially Illustrating the State of NOW
with Binaural Beats
Apply binaural beat technology to abstract natural sounds using a similar method of classification as Karlheinz Stockhausen created for Momente. Allow participants to assign/choose sounds within classifications. An REG will generate a track using Stockhausen's methods. This track will consist of sound and silence creating a musical piece generated by the subconscious.
The participant will then be able to take this further and compress the musical piece to become one sound absent of silence and repurpose this new sound for another musical piece generated by the subconscious. The aim is to facilitate the participant in generating several tracks of compressed subconsciously generated sounds to eventually generate one final musical piece incorporating silence and compressed sounds. The participant will have to classify the compressed sounds in order to personalize their experience when creating the final musical piece.
The abstract sounds will need to fall into certain frequency ranges in order to be interpreted as binaural beats. Either create a grouping that will effect the frequency level of the abstract sounds or provide abstract sounds that fall within the required frequency range.
In the video on color/sound, Stockhausen hits stride around the 9:00 minute mark. This is exactly the sort of thing that we all like to do in audacity and other DAWs--but also tape, and I think Stockhausen's thought experiment is informed by his experiences working with tape. When we speed up or slow down "moments" in digital, we definitely hear artifacts, and the end result is different than what you get if you slow down tape. Perhaps these are free "random events"? Burroughs and others would insist (again , working with tape) that the a fundamental tone not only remains when you cut silences out of tape (to compress the event), but that it can really be heard and known. Maybe we ought to be taping human-machine REG experiments?
In terms of silence, it not only can be thought of as the negation of sound, but also the everything in between. So then cutting out the silence brings it to that clear level of grokkability. The sound then becomes silence because it is no longer individuated, it is not broken up by silence. Cutting out the silence in between sounds delivers the essence of the silence. However, you can not perceive the silence without the sound, silence must also be sound.
Now we can move infinitely in any direction. Apply this to binaural beats. Cut the silence from a piece to make an essence of silence, then combine this essence with another compressed piece and so on and so forth, with silence in between. Could you somehow simulate the within to without to within? Would a musical piece made of compressed silences with silence in between, arranged into another piece or track give us multiple layers of perception that we could move through or along with? Multiple silences arranged to fill the silence in between silence. Perhaps then we could spatially illustrate the state of Now. hehe :P
What if we randomly generate sounds based on a group structure similar to Stockhausen's Momente. We would randomly generate silence too, which we would then cut out to add to a larger composition made of these essences of silence with silence in between. I guess this would be more art than an application, unless participants were able to assign the sounds that were randomly generated. Then participants could create their own randomly/subconsciously generated state of Now. Which of course would be an individualized experience.
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