Archiving Photography in the Digital Age

When you meet Narcissus along the road, shoot him. Use good film when you do.

I'm an analog sort of fellow myself. That is to say, I like to make pit-fired pottery, the original way to get things done. My favorite method of making an image is to do woodcut printmaking. I like to shoot photographs with film in the camera. Never mind the thousands of hours I've spent generating fractals on the computer or an equal amount of time spend digitally editing photographs and videos. I would rather listen to all my old vinyl albums on a turntable than use ear-buds and listen to digitally compressed music off my cell phone. Right now I have mp3's loaded on my I-phone. I don't have access to any lp's or a turntable.

So I'm a list of contradictions. Now that that is out of the way, there's a greater question riding the airwaves of various conversations regarding the value of photograph in modern day society. I'm currently reading a book about Eadweard Muybridge. I started it in 2009 after I bought it used at the library for fifty cents. I haven't even got to the part where he takes a “selfie” of himself and a couple of indigenous tribesmen in California before they (the Indians) were all wiped out in the “Indian wars”. So that's how informed I am on the topic. I've read a couple of books on film making as well, just to impress you with my lengthy knowledge about photographic film and film making. They were both books about film making before the twentieth century. It might have started with the work of Muybridge but like I said, I haven't gotten that far yet. So this is where we start.

Thanks to digital photography and the cell phone, I've seen more photographs of people on Face Book with them holding up the phone in the mirror of the bathroom (or public restroom) with the commode in the background in the past few years than anyone in history has seen before “social networking web sites” and digital photograph happened. Face Book is currently hosting the largest archive of digital photographs in the world. One gets a sense of this all being disposable reality. At least these are selfies with the commode in the background and not with indigenous people who are in the way of progress. This is the age of disposable reality, but one does hope they flushed first, then took the photograph of themselves.

Somewhere in between archeological digs of old village sites with pottery that was pit-fired and digital photographs of earth from satellites in space, there was a moment in time when there was concerned about creating work that would be available for future generations. Never mind that pottery has proven to be the most archival work that humans have created so far. Smoke soot and clay on cave walls comes in a close second. There is actual information that needs to be preserved for usage in the future. How to get that information to last that long and be in a physical form that can be accessed is a good question. One could look at what has lasted the longest already and see if that is a good model to work from.

I don't think that Narcissus was that much of a freak in human history. There is some merit to the idea of self-awareness, self-esteem, and self-consciousness. Dancers watch themselves in the mirror a lot. That is how they improve with their form. Spiritual growth happens through looking within. Self-replication is a form of species survival. (Okay, I just like that line so never mind.) When we follow history from what is known to be preserved from pottery and cave paintings on down through stone sculptures and oil paintings on treated canvas on forward to photography with film and the digital kind, there isn't a lot of hope for the modern technology in the archival situation. Photographic prints don't last very long. What good is it for Narcissus to take a selfie and then outlive it?

That conversation comes up a lot when discussing art and photography. This is a disposable society that treats everything like cigarette lighters; use them up and toss them. While there is a degree of appreciation for the lack of attachment to the fleeting digital reality that keeps sweeping over us on a daily basis, there is a lack of integrity in the greater scheme of things. So of this information might be relevant beyond the individual seeking instant gratification. I mean, don't let me throw a wet rag on the party here but some of this attitude is borne out of a response to the nuclear age where the push of a single button could reduce a good deal of the human population to radioactive dust in the blink of an eye. If that possibility became a reality then there isn't much reason to invest a lot of energy into creating anything that is going to be here 20,000 years. The pyramids in Egypt would be a lump of glass in the post-nuclear age.

Others have a different response to the importance of time. This is, after all, a conversation about time. That's what brought Eadweard Muybridge into the conversation to start with. He made important advancements in the camera in order to capture images on glass plates. He created ways to capture multiple images of the same subject to show motion over a period of time. Others took the idea and created cameras that could do the same thing through a single camera and invented film making. Narcissus didn't survive his own obsession of his reflection in the water. The rest of us may not either.

I watched several video documentaries about the preservation of photographs and digital art today and that prompted me to rejoin the conversation with others with this short essay. On some levels the technology of being able to create an image is advancing faster than the ability to produce that image in an archival manner. Even the crisis of the hour that occurred when the Star Wars movies were being released several decades after they were produced brought the issue to light. The film they were dedicated to and distributed was not very archival and the producers never bothered to have them preserved onto an archival film. There was just enough footage of the first movie from all the films in storage to recreate the first film. Another year in storage and the film would have been lost to time.

A lot of work has been produced and left to face time alone in boxes in storage on very fragile media. How important this work is remains in question. If left to Narcissus, it is all valuable. In a world where half a billion photographs are being uploaded to Face Book daily, Narcissus wins the argument as long as there are funds to keep investing in more digital storage facilities and programmers to keep up with the databases. In the video, The Invisible Photograph: Part 1 (Underground), one commentator states that we can participate in this process for free. That isn't an accurate statement, but compared to the expense of buying a film camera, film, developing the film and making prints from the film, this does look like a free medium now. I can take a photograph with my I-phone and post the file to Face Book and have it seen globally to an audience of thousands in a few minutes. For someone who made a living by taking photographs on film in remote areas of the world, hoping the film would survive the trip back to the darkroom and a print onto a magazine editor's desk, and finally to print, this ability to produce and distribute work is mind-boggling. To have a show of photographs in a gallery forty or fifty years ago and compare that to what is being done today blows the mind.

I like these videos. It just gives me a little hope, after all.

The Invisible Photograph: Part 1(Underground)

The Invisible Photograph: Part II(Trapped)

Oliver Loveday © May 20, 2014, 11:30 pm EDT

More about the work of Oliver Loveday can be found at Loveday Studio.

Deconstructing the Impending Ice Age: A Logistical Narrative

Geologists, climatologists, anthropologists and astrophysicists examine dust to generate data. That may be all they have in common, even if it is a small overlap in the larger picture they each look at in their respective fields. Dust can be a fleeting particle with a finite amount of information that can be derived from it before examination corrupts the data. There is no room for warm fuzzies when data from three diverse schools of science is crunched down to address a single question – what is live going to be like twenty years from now?

Twenty years can be a long time in a reality measured in nanoseconds. The same time period is more fleeting than a nanosecond in a discussion about a 120,000 year cycle, especially when that twenty year period is at a major transition point in that cycle. We don't know and the data isn't all in regarding that question. Check back in twenty years and we might have enough data to express an opinion. The real knowledge of what the next twenty years will be like won't be discovered until much later. The implications behind the question suggests that there will be something different enough about the next twenty years to merit some projections based upon current scientific knowledge. That's a lot of weight that has to be carried by a few collective grains of dust over a vast pool of non-integrated systems of information collecting and analysis.

Climatologists know that there is a cycle of Ice Age periods and data collected over the past 25 years has revealed that these cycles function in a much different manner than had been originally thought. It doesn't take several hundred years for the transition to occur. It takes less than a decade. In some parts of the world it can happen in a 24 hour period. That became obvious when woolly mammoths were discovered in glaciers standing upright with grass in their mouth, frozen on the spot and entombed in ice for 120,000 years.

The data is there to support the theory that this planet hasn't always maintained its current orbit or axis rotation. The north and south poles aren't carved in stone. The gyroscopic function of a planet is subject to change. That change changes everything, should that change occur also. There is no data that would support the theory that there is a possibility for that to become a factor regarding what could happen in the next twenty years. That doesn't eliminate that as a possibility. That does eliminate any warm fuzzies from the discussion if one were to project that at some point in the future, even as early as twenty years from now, the Ice Age will have begun a new cycle with the anticipation that the next one is going to follow the same patterns of glacial activity that the last one did.

Given that this is still within the realm of possibility, one would anticipate a glacial landscape that would include the start of a wall of ice that ends somewhere along the banks of the Ohio River along the northern border of the State of Kentucky, with Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois once again under the ice. Climatologists study animal behavior as part of understanding climate change. It would be a lot easier to derive some data from animal migrations that would suggest whether or not the next Ice Age is going to follow the same construct, were it not for the fact that those animals have been forced into extinction or are so vastly constraint as to not be able to respond in a timely manner. We know the polar bears are moving somewhere else. We just don't know where yet.

Astrophysics is a much thinner bit of cosmic dust in the big picture, but that big picture doesn't take a lot of space dust to become data. The stars go through cycles of heating up and cooling down. There's a lot of them out there and we don't get a lot of dust from the cosmos, not that we can screen out and sift through as such. That brings it back to a point of relevance much closer to home, the sun. It is entering a 50 year cooling period. That's what some scientists are saying. All it takes is one small boulder to impact the planet to cause a huge amount of change on the planet. We know this from the data that has been collected from previous events. There's a lot of dust in sedimentary rock that proves that point. We know the mathematical probability of such an event occurring again. Recently there was an asteroid that passed close enough to this planet for it to be observed via orbital satellites. Computer models can work up the orbital paths of large objects and know when they will coincide with our orbit. What hasn't been finalized is the discovery of every asteroid out there. We don't know.

What we do know is that there are a lot of things happening all at the same time that could contribute to radical climate change. Enter into this discussion a new book by David Archibald, The Twilight of Abundance.

http://www.iwp.edu/news_publications/detail/research-fellow-david-archibald-to-release-new-book-the-twilight-of-abundance

Professor Archibald got a quick interview on Fox News recently to discuss his book. It is obvious that Fox News has a different agenda than Professor Archibald from the interview, but that is of little merit in the larger picture. It happened. There was an interview. That is enough. I'd like to hear more about the scientific process that the data was derived from that lead astronomers and astrophysicists to the conclusion that the sun is cooling down. That isn't Fox(worthy)News, so that didn't happen.

http://video.foxnews.com/v/3466714510001/age-of-abundance-over/?intcmp=obnetwork#sp=show-clips

There's a lot of questions that come up with this interview and book. Add them to the on-going discussion regarding the transitional technology needed for the human species to survive on this planet into, during, and beyond the next Ice Age. I've been a participant of that discussion for the past 40 years. My life's work has been based upon concerns regarding the transitional technology needed for humanity to survive and remain inhabitants of this planet. It is a precarious relationship at the most optimistic end of the spectrum.

There won't be a Noah's Ark that will come along and save us all. There never was one in the first place if science is integrated into the conversation. That can be a perilous place to move the conversation for those invested in non-realistic mythos. It is unrealistic to suggest that all the species of animals on this planet could have ever been boarded up on one boat and survived for forty days. That isn't the important merit of that myth when one discusses transitional technology. The first check mark regarding the story is the fact that one man was able to intuit the need to build a boat at a locality that would later be under water after the ice melting at the end of the last Ice Age floated the basin of what was to become the Mediterranean Sea. He was chided and ridiculed prior to the event. He survived and left a mark on history because of his efforts. No one knows if he was the only one that had this insight and attempted a similar effort. It's a big sea and there were a lot of people living in the area that is currently submerged from that flooding. What we do know is that humans do have the ability to foresee events in some manner and act to survive those events. That is a very important bit of knowledge to ingest in the overall discussion about what is about to happen.

The discussion hasn't been limited to what we will be eating in 25 years, although that is an important part of transitional technology regarding the Ice Age. One event that I brought forth in the fall of 1990 was the Sacred Run for the Return of the Buffalo as part of my vision (that role of envisioning what can be done to make the world a better place to live for the next seven generations) and I was able to continue this as an annual ritual for a number of years as a contribution to the current list of rituals that are being done within the Native American communities across the North and South American continents among indigenous peoples. That ritual, shortened to “The Bull Run”, was discontinued as an annual event due to factors beyond my control, but there are indications that it will be revived and continued once those forces at play that deter it from being held are no longer present. We'll see.

Equally important to me in my work is the need to provide a way to convey important information over a long period of time that can be accessed in a manner that transcends language or cultural confluences. This need is a reversal of the physical “Noah's Ark” anxiety. Invested with the ability to imbed information in literary works, visual art, and audio recordings, I have considered this challenge to be of some merit. Succinctly, I am attempting to convey the spiritual information regarding the process of liberation from the self-imposed limitations of awareness that are a function of self-centered ego aberrations. I am attempting to do this outside the current framework of culturally divested schools of thought without leaving any of the information conveyed through those schools of thought out of this archival project. Then we raise the bar a little higher, just to make sure we surpass any construct of possibility, and endeavor to make an object that will not only survive for 100,000 years, but will contain information relevant to the situation then that can be accessed from the physical object.

The most archival object that could be used over a long period of time is pottery. It is more resistant to acid rain than most stone would be. Stone carving is till a major way of preserving information over long periods of time. Cave painting has also served humanity in this manner longer than we are aware of at this moment. Imparting information upon a cotton canvas via oil paint or acrylic is less certain, but more intuitive in the range of spectrum opportunities. These are pigments derived from the earth after all. The lack of fire in the process as would be the manner of preservation via pottery is duly noted. The use of gum Arabic as a binder for watercolor on paper takes this information storage to another level. The chances of survival are less probable. Getting that information down and making it accessible for those that would see the merits of making copies that would extend the existence of that information further into the history of the future makes it more effective on the working end of conveying the information in the quickest manner possible, as there is a lot of information to be conveyed. There are limitations but they become less a function of reality in the long run if they are continually preserved through duplication. The continued process of canonization of spiritual information is a common practice among humans. Just don't anticipate it being as good as the original work. (That's a joke, I think.)

The final point in this deconstructing process is the need to impart a familiarity of this information to the largest number of people possible over a broad spectrum of humanity at this moment. That process is borne out of the understanding that many of these people will participate in this process further into the future via incarnate beings. That point isn't limited to any construct regarding reincarnation. There isn't any concern for what a person believes. That is their spiritual challenge and human reality transcends belief systems that would impart limitations upon their spiritual growth. There is little impetuous to support this process in a social environment that is invested in a materialistic, ego-centric construct. However altruistic (or not) a person might be, the Universe recycles, and I am participating in that process over a large span of time. So is everyone else. It isn't a choice. The choice is how that person integrates into that process. The model of deconstruction imparts an awareness of choosing without implying the outcome of individualistic choices. There will be participants.

end of transmission

Oliver Loveday © April 28, 2014 12:30 pm EDT

http://www.lovedaystudio.com/

Where Love is enough

The faint savage spectrum of air across the sky invading the edge of unintelligible resonation of frequency as I peered into space without regret and fathomed the further derived silence of wavelength function between the pulse pulsation pause punctuation peak point paladin pattern place placated while the sky drum emitted nothing

And in the sunlight of yesteryear we were dreaming clear blue atmospheric mythos like pilgrims on our way to Granada while the singers inhaled in unison and for an instant it all became unified concrete against the compounded texture of vibration

Or was it just how the oboist pursed his lips against the horn and dreamed of sounds yet unheard like this moment when the reed failed and panic emerged across the stage and I laughed so hard as the camera zoomed in and he remained unaware of the spotlight which is how reality leaves us so often

Mozart Symphony No 41 K 551 C major Nikolaus Harnoncourt

and in the midnight

and in the midnight

as if in the sky we are becoming again

unified against the skin of forming

“Blue Eagle & Ruby Throat Dancing”

Watercolor, pastel

18 x 24 inches | 45.7 x 61 cm | Cason 120 lb cold press

December 31, 2013

And the eagle is dreaming into the space between ochre and blue mud earth while the ruby-throated hummingbird dives beyond the limitations of atmospheric control or was it something you said right before I lost all connection with desire and expectation while units of splashed pigment exploded against the fabric of reality textual in spalted spray

“Don’t Mention It”

Watercolor, pastel

18 x 24 inches | 45.7 x 61 cm | Cason 120 lb cold press

December 31, 2013

shaking off the wonderment of fusion between heaven and earth tribal and discrete immaculate as the parrot rises up airborne in midair Phoenix rainbow splash frozen in stillness as if the very air stopped to ask where the ladder of nobility was going at a horizontal slant and we looked up at the clear sky searching for the slightest hint of assurance that all is well while reality blended into a multi-hue of myriad radiance between the whiteness of untouched beyond where nothing is more real than all that had been assumed as real and the sky melted and undulated before the units of chromatic invasion while we gathered around the possibility that for an instant we had become less than the self-imposed captivity of association by guilt of the faint savage spectrum of air across the sky invading the edge in an extended loop of repetition over and over until it was enough for now again this time around love and light

“Midair”

Watercolor, pastel

18 x 24 inches | 45.7 x 61 cm | Cason 120 lb cold press

December 31, 2013

where love is enough

and love is enough

three times

Oliver Loveday © January 1, 2014 1:30am EST

“3 Sentries Later”

Pencil, conté crayon, charcoal, pastel, oil pastel, watercolor and ink

12 x 9 inches | 30.5 x 22.9 cm | 50 lb acid free Canson

December 31, 2013

http://www.lovedaystudio.com

https://www.facebook.com/Loveday.Studio

Street Legal

We were riding fast with all the windows open heading for that slice of horizon just between sky and mountain were freedom collides with inexcusable containment frozen in concrete limitations of social expression while the road disappears at the edge of vision and we are riding street legal with all the tricks as the asphalt singed the rubber and the radio crackled news of reasons to never turn back and you only have so many years to reach the space where the shackles of reality can’t touch you before it ends again and you have to start all over again and the gas gauge drops another notch while the horizon stays just beyond reach like a rainbow hiding a pot of gold and we sing all the songs we can remember the lyrics or make up our own and let the wind carry the damage of living too fast too free and somewhere in a dream of splash right before the street united the hard won experience of knowing better but never caring with a touch of bittersweet wisdom that you only go around once before you go around again and the wheels keep turning and the sky keeps yawning deep blue sparks of horizon into the ghetto mind of carnival sideshow sensory gratification while the Candy Man just smiles from his rocking chair by the door and the lucky get what they need and the sky dreams of black and white reality airplanes looking for love while the pencil marks render dark smudges of motion beneath a white stick of oil pastel and the ink marks the space between centrifugal motion of brush and surface splash again the paper as the pigment of watercolor sings of going up Third and cutting across Vine which can’t happen any longer or at least not in downtown Knoxville where they destroyed the waterfront where the black people used to set up for market and the Candy Man left for Venus on a freight train heading south and all the bored and frustrated housewives have hope that the Candy Man will come back and give them that treat of excitement again but the road keeps singing and the street songs keep flowing past the gutter and into nothing beyond the empty silence of what is and what will be isn’t how it was any more and the fingers smudge the greens and blues of freedom into a sky above purple mountains as the fuel gauge blinks an E

Oliver Loveday © November 14, 2013 5:20pm EST

“Street Legal”

Pencil, conté crayon, charcoal, pastel, oil pastel, watercolor and ink

12 x 9 inches | 30.5 x 22.9 cm | 50 lb acid free Canson paper

November 6, 2013

"Street Legal" video of the creation of the art work.

For more information about the work of Oliver Loveday, visit Loveday Studio.

Crazy at the edge

Crazy at the edge of nothing where the howling winds scream across a barren landscape of unforgiving mystery as shadows move about where there is no light to block knowing the demons all by first name and breaking waves of madness lights the spark of splash between patterns of insanity and the darkness while the suffering pain of painful keeping the focus on the doing and ignore the pain remembering hours of long distance running when I ignored the pain and keep moving keep creating keep doing the work while the pain fondles the energy of what I have left to offer and I remember how my father never accepted that I became an artist he didn’t even know what this is to create but sometimes he would look at something I had finished when he was visiting and tell me it was good as I wondered if he even looked at it or was just saying it to be polite which was different as he was seldom polite to me but that was part of getting past where I came from and becoming who I am while the demons encroach and the pain reminds me that I’m still human out here on the edge with the insanity of creativity as the winds howl and I can’t go back oh how this hurts but it has always hurt like hell in this reality but I keep slamming into the next motion of making marks in the work while the pressure in between each flash of inspiration reminds me that it wasn’t just my father that didn’t want me to be an artist but all those that strive to stop my voice from singing out here against the deafening wind and I am inspired to keep going just to push back against that resistance to the voice in the pain of knowing that the suffering isn’t there to stop me from creating but is there to remind me that what I am doing is real and this is it this is who I am this is how it feels when one steps out into the unknown and makes it real again once more in spite of the resistance and I succeed in spite of the negativity that lurches in my insanity until that moment when it is all too much and I will lay down in humble surrender to the mortality of impermanence with one last flash glint eye light reflection before sailing into the unknown unfettered by flesh and bones but until that moment let the haters eat this victory against their immobility of spirit once again in freedom I sing in freedom I renounce all tethers in freedom I reside again

Oliver Loveday © November 6, 2013 2:30am EST

Visit Loveday Studio for more writings and art work by Oliver Loveday.

“Orb Overlap”

Pencil, conté crayon, charcoal, pastel, oil pastel, watercolor and ink

12 x 9 inches | 30.5 x 22.9 cm | 50 lb acid free Canson

November 4, 2013

“Other Matters”

Pencil, charcoal, pastel, oil pastel, watercolor and ink

12 x 9 inches | 30.5 x 22.9 cm | 50 lb acid free Canson

November 5, 2013

The Rotund Found Sound Mantra

You found me as the depletion vibration decays into wisps of reverberation and memory lulls in the finer things while pondering the nature of wind blowing through the pines or children singing in the park and really I came into the scope of found sound quite by accident in a rotund kind of way while staying for a few months in a small dwelling on the top of Copper Ridge in the northeast corner of Hawkins County in 1983 with the porch taken over on one end with my welded steel sculptures which would cause this sounding that would travel through the wood structure of the dwelling into the living space which was mostly open in the middle so the floor could act like a sound board and I would sit in sudden exile from family awaiting the divorce hearing with separation anxiety crawling through my skin like acid and I would hear these amazing sounds that would induce a tranquility that defied the time and place of my reality so I traced the sounds out to the porch and discovered that the wind was causing one sculpture to rock back and forth and tap another which would tap another like wind chimes so I held my ear against the wooden handrail around the porch and tapped and heard and thus began experimentation into a well established discipline of found sound and experimental music via the discovery that tapping a hollow log made an interesting sound which became the first drum among humans forward to Zen Buddhist music of Japan or the random noises of the Dadaist as a response to the inhumane nature of technology before during and after World War I so the message is to not think about it too much or better yet to not think about it at all and just experience it without the slightest thought and I recorded these sounds starting later that fall after the divorce by suspending a few smaller works of welded steel sculpture from the roof frame of a open shed and duct taped a microphone to the wood going to a mono-aural cassette tape recorder my mother had rescued from a trash container and that was how I started getting this sound reproduced that I heard in that house and the sounds would continue to induce a state of tranquility each time I listened to the tapes so I knew there was more than just noise going on so I worked to improve the process but it was always blind luck as I had no way of knowing what the sounds were until after I recorded them and played the tapes back so a lot of the process became intuitive by nature and I would make tapes and send them off to friends who were under-whelmed with the sounds and idea behind them which probably had as much to do with the poetry spoken-text ranting and chanting in the background as I tapped away at my sculptures but I didn’t mind because I knew I was onto something and the tape recorder wore out or really I don’t remember what happened but I knew I could come up with better equipment and really make this happen so I approached a friend who was the director of a dance company about doing a recording of this manner which could be used as the sound for a dance piece and she loved the idea and just happened to be dating this guy who owned a small recording studio with an 8-track recorder so I went in and set up my frame with my sculptures and tapped out two tracks then added some piano and chant before doing the spoken text for the last two tracks and it was all done spontaneously as I couldn’t come up with anything to write before hand so I just went in and winged it and the finished piece came out as “Spiritual Warrior” which was featured in the New Year’s Eve celebration put on by the Knoxville Arts Council on December 31 1987 so I got interviewed by the local paper and television and had my 15 minutes of fame before receding back into the woods and making a few dozen copies of “Spiritual Warrior” and sending them out to all the public radio stations that I had an address for so the tapes got radio air play for a year or so before they wore out but no further fame or claim or funds came from all of this so it all went dormant for many years until I started trying to get the same sound through a miniDV camcorder with a portable mixer and lapel condenser microphones but something wasn’t working and the best I could get was the ambient sounds coming into the camera microphones which left out something altogether and I still know there is a way to get this sound again but another divorce and more financial hardship and a few years ago a friend gave me a digital video recorder that is really a great audio recorder as long as you don’t mind the two stereo microphones being less than an inch apart but the sound blows through and over to the computer and a bit of digital editing and new things happen along with some of the sounds digitized from those old cassette tapes and even if the dream hasn’t come full circle and manifested with this idea of being able to create that sound again I keep working with what I have and add more to it like mixing fractal music together with found sounds and intentional sounds coming from a musical instrument which is a harmonica this time and suddenly this idea comes to me one day while doing a load of laundry that was sloshing about in the washing machine that a neighbor had given me in May 2013 before she moved to hospice (and later died of cancer in July 2013) to turn on a track of fractal music that I had done a few months earlier with which ever program I used at the time and I had just recently discovered that this freeware program that I had downloaded a few years ago because it would play FLAC files that I was downloading off of newsgroups from the Internet would also convert midi files to wave files if I had a set of sound fonts so I had done a search and found a free set of sound fonts so the midi is now a wave and sounding like mechanical versions of real live instruments so I fired up the computer with this fractal file set up the Q3 digital recorder and grabbed a harmonica and jammed with the washing machine and computer and loved doing it so much I did the rinse cycle also and a few weeks later like you know I forgot to do this the next time I did a load of clothes but got it the next time after that and I’m just letting it all hang out there and have a good long piece playing on the computer so I’m blowing two harmonicas in the key of C and D so I can get all kinds of chords going and mix it up with the fractal while the very quiet Maytag Heavy Duty set on regular cycle (no one has asked me yet what brand of washing machine I used for these recordings but I’ll tell you anyway because this machine is way too quiet for sound art recordings so check before you buy and get one that makes more noise like the one we used to have back when I was married and living in a house trailer because the wife could sent the kids to the living room to watch Saturday morning television and that washing machine would make so much noise that they couldn’t tell what was going on in the back bedroom but never mind….) and I walked outside at one point so when I broke that 14 minute file up into three tracks the second one has the sound of the door slamming when I went outside and played the harmonicas through the window for a minute before coming back in and going into the kitchen so the sound had to bounce through this apartment before I came back into the living space and started kicking a 5 gallon plastic bucket to make it spin on the floor which sounded great until it spun and rolled over into the box that had been the shipping carton for Styrofoam cups that I rescued from a trash spot on a sidewalk recently which had a wine bottle shipping box on the top of it with the cardboard spacers still in it and a sheet of cardboard from a cereal box on that which the digital recorder was sitting on so this created something of a sound chamber that gave some reverberation and the bucket hit the box and the recorder fell over and I kicked the bucket one more time before blowing low on the harmonica for a minute as the washing machine chugged along and started to drain so I set the digital recorder on it for the last minute or so which became the fifth track in The Wash Machine Tapes there about the time I kicked the bucket and then I did another edit on the full track of the day starting out with some fractal music at the front for about 25 seconds after punching the gain up on the 14 minute audio track and doing a little echo so it sounded different than the more raw first offerings and then mixed in several audio clips culled from previous projects like a mix of chanting that was the first effort to get the sound I wanted for “Voices (a desert song)” and a couple of clips from field recordings of the foot bridge over Turkey Creek in Wildwood City Park in Morristown Tennessee and the retired water turbine from Douglas Dam that Maggie and I did during a stop-over to shoot some photographs of the blue herons in the river that day and then I threw in the 8 minute sound track or one of the several edits that I have on file from that project of the video “Energy Cantata” which ends with some spoken text from the poem “Homage to Artaud” which I also did as part of the spoken text for “Spiritual Warrior” so it seems fitting that it shows up in “Wash Day (remix)” as it is the theme for all of this as this whole process of finding sounds that induce that state of tranquility has kept me alive and of course you know the last two lines of the poem are a statement that I won’t commit suicide as I endure the pain and suffering that torment me through this reality of being an artist much like Artaud had to endure but the bastards gave him shock treatments and left him in the care of Catholic nuns during the war against humanity that time that war and now we wash it all away once again to the sound of a washing machine given to me by someone who died sober except they had to medicate her towards the end to keep her from screaming but that doesn’t count and we survive like my neighbor survived because after all she did a lot of damage with drugs and alcohol in her life because she was a professional gospel singer that toured the country during her early adulthood and they did what they had to do to endure just like a rock star does it and now her washing machine is the backbeat mantra that we survive to so here’s the poem and now you know this is about saving my life and surviving your mileage may vary love

Homage to Artaud

I would not mess with your horizon.

I would not eat your only landscape.

The birds are listing in a vision.

The whales are moving through a gulf.

Dogs are penned up in my memory.

Flames are marring my frantic signal.

I would not crack beneath your awe.

I would not explode beneath your awning.

Oliver Loveday © 11/04/81

The Wash Machine Tapes via bandcamp.com

Maggie next to the retired water turbin

One of the foot bridges over Turkey Creek

It's a Maytag Heavy Duty washing machine.

A Question of Identity

The most important rite of passage in tribal culture and spirituality has always been the quest for identity. A person’s identity is their gateway into reality. A person’s identity is also a gateway into their spirit, so it is equally important to know who “I Am” while at the same time protecting that identity from others that would seek to do harm or take advantage of the person. There are many ways and methods for becoming aware of one’s identity but the most common method for males has always been solitude in nature. Buddhism was born after an individual in India spent time meditating while sitting alone at the base of a tree. Jesus of Nazareth spent forty days and nights in the wilderness, fasting and praying alone. The vision that resulted in Protestant Christianity came to Martin Luther while he was meditating in personal chambers. (Okay, I always love to mix it up a little with that pivotal point in Western Culture, which is historically accurate and a prime example of the spiritual importance of scatology.) While there are similarities between men and women in the experience of becoming aware of one’s identity, there are some gendered-based differences, the primary one being that a woman doesn’t appear to have to isolate the same way a man will because of the difference in gender-based ego function. A woman’s sense of self is stronger and thus able to integrate social stimuli during the formation of identity. Should this not occur then the same methods are available to a woman that are utilized by a man.

In breaking down tribal culture and identity functions over recent human history (say, the past 2000 years) there has been a lot of attention given to discontinuing any tribal ritual that would help establish and utilize a spiritual identity. A soldier vows to protect his country and its citizens but not his sense of self. He becomes a nameless and faceless warrior in the battle to protect, defend, and further the advancement of the rulers and powers that be. Military training is designed to reduce him down to a primal killing machine. Any sense of spiritual identity or integrity would incorporate a basic respect for all life and this impairs his ability to respond to commands that are in conflict with his sense of identity. The rites of passage that encourage the awareness of identity are also designed to be ego-deflating, but in the opposite direction. While ego-deflation is designed to create a sense of helpless servitude to the powers-that-be for a soldier, the tribal warrior goes through ego-deflation at a social level whereby his awareness beyond other people is of equal importance to his identity. A spiritual warrior is subjected to challenges that generate a sense of inter-connectedness with all his relations. “All My Relations” includes any function of awareness. The stars become relations. The grass, insects, rain, wind, and beyond are all integrated into an interpersonal and transpersonal relationship. All of life is sacred. To break a People’s will to maintain personal identity the opposing force must discontinue the rituals.

The first course of action in doing this is to “convert” the spiritual leaders to whatever spiritual or religious practices the invading forces follow, which is generally a dehumanizing religion that has very little regard for life. When the goal in following a religion is to have a better life in the “here after” then there is little attention given to the quality of life in the “here now”. That has serious consequences on the moral judgments a person will make. A fear-based reality is easier to control than one based upon awareness of self and the infinite possibilities of the Universe. The need for control of the masses and thus the warriors of a People is paramount for a conquering hero. So converting the spiritual leaders to the invader’s religion is the first stage of controlling the people beyond military force. Should the spiritual leaders refuse to convert, they are executed in full view of the public. Eventually the survivors succumb. The longer range procedure is to take over the education of the youth. As generation after generation loses touch with their indigenous spirituality they lose all sense of self as individuals and as a culture and become servants to the political, religious, and economic forces that control them.

One’s identity is established in the caste system of the invading culture. The indigenous people are always at the bottom of the totem pole. Their identity is now based on their station in life with respect to their relations with the conquerors. The better they are at serving those in power the better they will be rewarded. They will never be as good as but they might appear to be almost as good as their conquerors. Identity is based upon securing approval and an overwhelming fear of disapproval. Each generation is subjected to the process of destroying one’s sense of self in favor of servitude to a social and religious ideal of imperfection and unachievable perfection. “To Thine Own Self Be True” means to be greedy and self-centered to a person has been disenfranchised from their indigenous spirituality. Their social interaction is reduced to that of keeping up with the Joneses and comparative assessments of success based upon material acquisitions.

When an individual steps out of the social norm and seeks to establish a spiritual identity that person will encounter rejection and social ridicule. Every effort will be made to break the person’s will. It takes a great resolve to remain steady on the course during this process. As difficult as it is for a person to engage in a vision quest or walk-about while a member of a supportive tribal community, that effort is far more difficult while the person is attempting to function in an acculturated society that has given in to the fear-based reality of a conquered people who have functioned on the premise that success is dependant upon imitating the conqueror. One distinguish that is important to make between those who follow the course of an acculturated society and an individual who has made the commitment to seek and arrive at a spiritual awareness of self and identity is that the person who is subservient to society will view reality through his/her ego and assume that everyone else sees and understands the world the way they do while the spiritual warrior does not impose personal perception upon others. That means that while the person embarks upon a spiritual journey outside the acculturated society he/she grew up in, everyone in that society will assume that after some effort that person will give up and succumb to societal pressure just like they did.

And then we all die and go to heaven. Your mileage may vary.

Oliver Loveday © May 26, 2013 2:30am EDT