Yourself?

Sensitivity

So I've been leading an almost completely musical existence. Listened to this wonderful performance by a drumming group at the Esplanade, who played Djembies and Digeridoos. It's so interesting to hear a performance based only on rhythm, and the only "notes" being those of the digeridoo player (who has marvellous circular breathing!). He managed to play for 3 mins plus, without taking a single breath. Amazing dude. And the really good performers were really good. You had this urge to just shriek and dance in the middle of the Esplanade library, which wouldn't be very cool. But they attracted this huge crowd, and the beat was infectious.

I was walking along the Esplanade passage from City Hall, and they had this purple wall exhibition, with beautiful collages of women in various poses and this Techno trance beat going on. Techno is just my thing, but it's not always, because the really bad ones, from those just starting out DJs, are just mixes of existing tracks with the catchy beat of the moment. But the really good ones are the ones that mix moods, sonic colours, bass beats, fills. It's a totally different level of expression, where the bass notes change in tone to fit the mood of the track, there's panning at places to give a sense of movement, ritards, a tempos. DJing is about all this colour, about orchestration, rather than focusing on the minute like oooh i can wiggle my fader and make cool beats. It's about big ideas, big big big ideas cobbled together from little ones. I love techno. It's so cool when someone is so skilled he can express himself in his music, and make use of all the options available to him

I never really understood photography. Or at least, I'm not good at the modern photography. My style is more similar to that of Cartier Bresson, capturing of moments that just flicker past. Probably due to my own laziness. Once I've got the shot, I won't go back and tweak and admire it. Nothing good comes from a bad photograph. And I think the finder at the back for all the digital cameras is actually a bad thing for new photographers today. It's harder to develop a loose style and a heck care philosophy when you're burdened with the images of your failures. I always cried after a photoshoot involuntarily, because my eyes would get so dry peering into that finder, examining the composition, the framelines, the settings, as compositions change moment to moment. My eyes would get red and raw and tear. It was intense. Now I'm more relaxed. I don't have to capture every good moment. I don't have to be prepared all the time. Just let the actions flow by. But I admire the photographers of today, like the one at the esplanade passage. They have expanded the language of photography and blurred it with design. Who says images have to be restricted to a setting, a back drop, a subject? They have melded the image with design. The texture of a photograph is nothing more than an element in a grand design, just like a line or a geometric shape or a shading. And the photos by themselves are great.

And well music. I think music was probably the first skill I developed at RI. Seperating out instruments in a symphonic band, and their positions based on the sound. Instead of hearing them as a section, I forced myself to hear them as individual voices and after a while, it was possible to just focus on one voice and hear him/her perfectly and mute the rest. Then there was this TCS show about how people can affect the subconscious by inserting frames in between the video presentation, and I had to see it for myself too. So I trained myself to see the artifacts on TV. All those individual frames at 24 frames per second. TV and Movies never became the same again. When you examine the individual frames, you'll see that they're really bad. But it was a useful skill when watching Evangelion, cos of all the flashing images sequence. It's good to take in a few at a time. And then my uncle gave me a set of good headphones, and while listening to the band at school, and orchestral recordings on MP3s (back in the days of napster), I learned to listen out for distortions and dropped sounds.

What is this reality we live in? Most people don't know what they want until it's shown to them. Most people are happy with whatever they have because they've not seen better. Are they any worse off if they do not pay as much attention to the details as we do? No. They are happy where they are, and it would be foolish to move them. But an eye for detail is something that connects us to the greats of the past and the greats of the future. There is a subtext in all great works that make them great. Something that may not be obvious at first glance. 80 percent of the structure of something, is probably based on convention, limitation and is probably written in 20% of the time. But that 20% extra, that not many might appreciate but is the artistic signature of the artist, that is the statement made by the artist, might take 80% of the time to do. And it is a statement that will live on for years in the books and collections to inspire future generations.

posted by Downhere. @ 8:47 am