Music and Holism

Cymatics - music meets Yves Couder?

A Gateway to the full Richness of Reality?

As soon as you consider the consequences of a Holistic World, the possibilities as compared with the usual strictly Pluralist standpoint actually explode dramatically into a host of new possibilities - not only into myriads of previously unconsidered alternatives, but also into the effects of sliding amounts of different components in all compound entities and processes, but crucially, in addition, into also including both rich joint interference patterns, and, in gradually varying mixes of different components, even how they produced consequent combined, mutually affecting, and sometimes, significantly, wholly unpredictable results.

Mere quantity changes are expanded into changing qualities, and even the emergent production of the wholly new! The traditional pluralist approach cannot deal with such in any meaningful way: we just have to accept them and find pragmatic ways of including them.

Only the holistic approach admits there is more than mere complication in the emergence of the new, and it isn/t a purely continuous process: sometimes it requires a major dissolution to even make possible a new direction of developments. And as, distinct from the old conceptions causality can act in both directions = from the old to the new, and from the new to the old. What is actually possible leaves the usual assumed combinations of fixed entities and eternal Laws well behind, on the foreshores of the Pluralist World: the majority of the vast oceans of the Holist World remain to be explored!

Now, perhaps surprisingly, the cornerstones all of Mankind's effective intellectual disciplines, ever since the Ancient Greeks, have been entirely dominated by the Principle of Plurality - a definition of the "nature of things" that always treated them all as qualitatively-fixed, which had originally been applied to the shapes of things, and related all existing shapes to combinations of individual Perfect Forms, that is as mere additions of various amounts of several of those always-the-same components. Indeed, the following major successes with such Shapes, enabled not only the construction of a powerful means of dealing with Forms in general, via Mathematics, but, was also exported to form the basis of a new reasoning with Statements of Fact, termed Formal Logic! And, within a generation, was also extended to the early attempts at Science.

Now, elsewhere, by this theorist, this has been rigorously contended as totally ignoring all Qualitative Change, and even the indisputable Evolution of things in a trajectory of qualitative developments.

For, absolutely nothing in nature is a mere Legoland-like constructional puzzle! 

Lego Moog

Clearly, the diametrically opposite Principle of Holism, with its tenet, "Everything affects everything else!" has to be much closer to the Truth, yet it hasn't been comprehensively applied to any of Mankind's Intellectual Disciplines, thus far! But, the flaws of Plurality have long been known, though never recognised as such.

The best early critique was formulated by Hegel, and converted from his idealist approach to a strictly Materialist one by Karl Marx. Yet, a comprehensive application to Physics has never yet been attempted.

Now, this is currently underway by the writer of this paper, but within his other interests, it rapidly became clear that the most appropriate area for a truly Holist Approach to be both demonstrated and even developed, just had to be in Music, and especially in Electronic Music!

After centuries of pluralistic structures in Music, particularly in the West, the forms began to "break the rules", though in a remarkable way still using instruments actually constructed to deliver the old pluralist scales. Yet, certain stringed instruments, without-frets, did allow portamento - sliding between "legal notes". And, an increasing awareness of Oriental music, (particularly that of India) revealed a much richer sonic world, with instruments expressly designed to make portamento an integral part of the artistic expression.

But in the 1960s the musical experimenters using tape loops and early electronic musical instruments, such as those used by Terry Riley with his "In C", also extended the variations to a much wider set of changes, initially at least, NOT totally under the control of the players.

Like the fractal mathematicians watching their constructions, produced by algorithms on computers, generated ever more unpredictable forms, so the musicians did likewise with combined cyclic sounds and very slowly indeed reflected another aspect of Reality.

And, in Physics, the French physicist Yves Couder, focussed primarily upon the properties of liquid media, devised analogistic experiments at the macro level, using a liquid substrate, and absolutely nothing else, to produce persisting entities called Walkers, which began to reveal qualities analogous to those occurring at the Sub Atomic level, including quantised orbits.

Now, those may not seem to be related to our thesis here, but they are! 

The Holist approach is much closer to natural Reality than Plurality, especially when phenomena occur in a Universal effectible and affecting Substrate. And, by far the most controllable discipline involving its propagation and receipt via a medium is MUSIC!

And, it has the property of being directly receiveable by the senses of human beings, especially those with a musical bent. This enables not only the discovery of the wholly new, but when the very instruments of production are directly under the investigators hands, variations can be made to listened to examples explored with immediate and direct feedback.

Now, Terry Riley and his colleagues were performing musicians rather than scientific investigators, so they were making primarily artistic decisions, as to exactly when they came in with their contributions. But, that meant that they did not have a complete idea as to how their contribution would affect the following overall piece.

Other performers since, playing the same "In C", decided to have a random number generator choosing when the various contributions would be added - you could just as easily have scientists choosing when to bring in certain elements to achieve certain sonic effects.  Clearly all three versions would be different, and reveal different "music"! But there can be no doubt that such investigations would go beyond what the more usual kinds of music would deliver.

More on this idea soon...

Art: The Articulation of Form

Bodies against time by Étienne-Jules Marey

With the wide acceptance of Form as the sole determinator of Content, on the one hand, contrasting with the alternative view, which makes all Causes as only due to Content-and-context, and, in addition, as the determinator of Form, on the other - we clearly have contradictory premises as to what is primary in determining the Nature of Reality.

The two positions boil down, in philosophical terms, to opposite stances, namely -

Form-first delivers to us Idealism, while
Content-first constitutes Materialism.

But, what Forms do we deal in, and under what system of rules do we use them? Rigorously, we have only the set of Perfect Forms - that is those initially observationally and pragmatically-established, and, thereafter, those rationally-developed via a Purely Formal System of Manipulations that we term Mathematics. But, is that, really, a viable means of revealing all of Reality?

It was, of course, the very-first coherent and consistent attempt, by the Ancient Greeks (circa 500 BC), but it was also a truly revolutionary move, for though literally NO Perfect Forms exist as such in Reality-as-is, the development was extremely significant for another key aspect of what was necessarily involved.

Let us, first, be crystal clear as to what these crucial Forms were.

The more obvious Forms were Squares, Circles and Triangles - but even more non-real entities were, what they, in turn, were composed of - namely "Lines of zero thickness" and "Dots of zero extension". What on earth was going on?

Josef Albers, 'Formulation Articulation I & II', 1972,

It came from, in fact, the already common practice of Simplification - employed in order to make things easier to consider, manipulate and construct into ever more comprehendable, complex systems. BUT, and this is very important, these "modifications" were of a very special type: they attempted to extract only the "truly key features" from real situations, and into pure embodiments of a kind of assumed to be driving-or-causing essence.

They were in fact Abstractions.

Now, Abstractions were not, even then, wholly new: they had been used for millennia to describe animals of the same species - characterised by common, easily-identified visual appearances, and attached-to each uniquely-named variety. But, what the Greeks did was significantly different! Their extractions were Perfect-Forms, not merely a commonly-applicable description. For, such were each individually considered as the unchanging essence of all things possessing that form, for though it NEVER occurred in Reality, as such, it could be used, effectively, for all occurring versions of that shape: it was indeed an Idealisation, as well as a simplification of what was being dealt with.

NOTE: Before going any further, we really must note both the advantages and disadvantages of all such Idealisations. For, as they were never enough to completely define any particular, real-world-thing, they, therefore, would definitely, at some point, fail in being "appropriate descriptions", once crucial aspects - omitted from any idealisation, came into determining prominance for some uninconsidered reason. But, on the other hand, such idealisations would be extremely useful, and could deliver reasonably accurate predictions, and even guide successful productions, whilever the idealised description remained "apt"!

So, in a particular sense, it was a very real advance, for though it was always an approximation of concretely-existing versions of this form, the general relations, extracted from manipulations with this Perfect Form, were indeed "just-as-true" of all such other concrete versions of it too! But, though all this was pragmatically validated, as was then usual, by, "If it works, it is right!", we have to ask what did actually determine that Form? Was it built-in from the outset by an all powerful creator? Or, were they the only possible shapes that things could take?

Clearly, Idealism is a construct and NOT a revelation of natural essence! So, if this is the case, the Materialist alternative must always be employed to attempt to answer the question "Why?". concerning the reasons for the particular Forms of entities. Yet, in addition, it also must be fully explained why the idealist route, nevertheless, still enabled effective predictions and productions to be achieved.

Now, all this has been fully addressed elsewhere in writings by this philosopher. So, those, requiring that, are directed to SHAPE Journal on the Internet, and its many issues concerned with The Philosophy of Mathematics.

But here, the priority, as the title of this post asserts, is the consideration of "Art is the Articulation of Form" as claimed by the Italian painter and sculptor, Amedeo Modigliani!

Head by Modigliani

If Art was fully-delivered just by Form as such, it would mean something very different to what Modigliani suggested, and as a sculptor, myself, I was immediately sure that he had got-it-right in his "definition". For, basic Perfect Forms, as found in Mathematics, simply cannot say much more than is conveyed within the particular shape's formal definition.

But, just how one form transforms into another can display a rich variety of varying alternative causes: while in music a particular rhythmic pattern and tonal sequence transforming into something different can contain the subtlest of emotional or even causal content.

Perhaps surprisingly, while Form as such was never capable of explaining anything, the articulations between different forms could remarkably reflect the transformation of causes delivering that transition.

That may not seem much, but, to arrive at such a conclusion, would be incorrect! For, Art is not an indulgence or a mere entertainment (as in "Strictly Come Dancing" for example)! For, many millennia it has been an alternative means of communication of things not adequately dealt with by other means.

In a sense it is the oldest-holist-attempt to deliver aspects of a changing Reality - indeed, the very opposite of pluralist forms and even explanations!

It can, at its best, capture Reality-in-transit, and perhaps this is because it subordinates Form to "Time"?

Forms are fixed patterns, often extractable only by stopping the flow of Time and taking a "snapshot" of the revealed (if momentary) pattern!

From Ghost Moments by Michael C Coldwell

NOTE: My son, Michael Conflux Coldwell, is a photographer and musician, and he addresses the seeming limitations of "the photograph" by choosing as subjects situations wherein significant, over-time changes are there in the frozen-yet-haunting content. And, in a recent exhibition delivered many such photographs, as well as a movie, accompanied by his own music and sounds, which dramatically converted photographs into suggestions or even repositories of change.

AM by Conflux Coldwell

Now, Art attempts to remedy any simplifications by building "time-perceptions" into the art-work: it is why Music is so transcendental, because it directly uses Time, itself, to express what it is attempting to communicate. But, even static, unchanging Works-of-Art, nevertheless attempt to enforce a trajectory of perception, as the observer is led-through the work over time.

As a sculptor myself, I, like Modigliani, attempt to deliver two time-based perceptions for my audiences: I deliver changes via the varying positions of observers as they move around the piece! But, I also communicate change, precisely as Amedeo describes it - as the articulation (or changing) of one form into another - via various sorts of micro trajectory across the surfaces of the piece.

As a young convert to Sculpture as an artform, it isn't surprising that my first serious piece was a re-creation of a Head by Modigliani, and my favourite sculptor very quickly became Henry Moore!

Oval with Points by Henry Moore

The People Are Many And Their Hands Are All Empty

Oh, what’ll you do now, my blue-eyed son?

Oh, what’ll you do now, my darling young one?

I’m a-goin’ back out ’fore the rain starts a-fallin’

I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest

Where the people are many and their hands are all empty

Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters

Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison

Where the executioner’s face is always well hidden

Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten

Where black is the color, where none is the number

And I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it

And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it

Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinking’

But I’ll know my song well before I start singing’

And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard

It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

Bob Dylan

Richard Wolff quotes this great song in his latest update on Trump and Capitalism... Worth a good listen this one.

The Red Eye Portal

The Red Eye Portal

New blog from Shape Journal contributor Mick Schofield. News, Views and Reviews from the Left of Field.

Diagrams on the Science of Music

One of my many music theory diagrams - this one showing the family of C tunings on the guitar. More images and possibly some papers to come...