Urbanomic Documents

The first one, here, is a Meillassoux, Hecker, Mackay conversation at the edge of cognitive possibility contingency.

The series is introduced: “These Documents aim to expose exploratory, informal processes of transdisciplinary research and development, through working papers, sketches and conversations relating to projects in progress.”

(I’m going to grab the opportunity to ask: Does Urbanomic have the worst-organized site on the Internet? If this document hadn’t been waved at me on twitter, there is simply no way on earth I’d ever have found it.)

Meta-Rhythm

Urbanomic’s Robin Mackay in conversation with Lee Gamble:

Robin: Do you think this reflective distance in your work is a sign of the times, where what had seemed like the unstoppable force of dance music has reached the end of a cycle? Do you see a sort of hiatus where no one’s really sure what’s next, apart from reprocessing what’s come before?

Lee: I agree with that in a sense, but I also think it’s a tricky argument. We see historical scenes in hindsight, and that helps us to frame them favorably. That said, it’s obvious that there have been surges of great ideas at specific points in the history of electronic music. I think these accelerations can’t be sustained, and more often than not, they’re aligned with the emerging technologies of the time; it’d be wrong to say that people themselves are inherently more or less creative at certain points. There may be peaks and troughs, but I don’t align these to a lack of ideas.

The wave has a sonic profile of its won.

Underlinings (#1)

Meillassoux (here, p.829):

… when you think, you must pass by way of language, and thus you must use a certain number of linguistic units. For example, the declaration ‘I love you’ (in English) has three words, eight letters, five vowels, etc. — it produces a series of implicit numerical counts. But these counts are a matter of pure chance, of a simple dice throw, in regard to the meaning of the phrase. There is no link between the meaning of the phrase ‘I love you’ and the numbers 3, 8, and 5 — no link, that is, apart from a purely chance one. However, what is proper to the poem is precisely to contest this purely chance link between thought and count, by associating the meaning of the verse to the enumeration of the syllables necessary to formulate it. …