distribution points

ohman

Member
There's an idea taking shape in my head that says there is music that traces the entire arc of a movement in real continuous time, and other that works as a series of jump cuts, so that there are sections of the tape missing, you find yourself leaping from point A to B without having been lead there. What is your opinion on that
 

ohman

Member
And that the length of time between distribution points matters, for the sense of movement, the difference between a timbaland and a juan Atkins for example


Maybe parallels with robotics, and the move to full articulated limbs and range of movement from a geometry of straight lines

At one end of the spectrum the fluid unbroken line of Arabic calligraphy
 

Leo

Well-known member
There's an idea taking shape in my head that says there is music that traces the entire arc of a movement in real continuous time, and other that works as a series of jump cuts, so that there are sections of the tape missing, you find yourself leaping from point A to B without having been lead there. What is your opinion on that

This is what a good DJ does.
 

ohman

Member
you are definitely in vitalist territory. matisse had a thing (which related to his understanding of bergson) he thought that when he was drawing a line he was embodying the "elan vital" - the arc of the vital movement of the subject. hence all the drawings of birds/snails/splashes etc

1660234928321.png
 

ohman

Member
well its obviously a nutcase theory but i get you

language is also somewhat jump-cut: it can never be as truly fluid as music or dance

but even so there’s a spectrum: not exactly sure where to place them but nietzsche and your autistic mate are at opposite ends i reckon. in a way nietzsche is fluid; at the same time he doesn’t map out the argument but just sort of smash cuts from one thought to another. whereas your autistic mate maps it out in the tiniest detail: so detailed, in fact, that perhaps he approaches another kind of fluidity? four points is a quadrilateral. eight an octagon. keep going and eventually you get a perfect (fluid) circle

but you weren’t on about language were you. sorry

all this makes me think about science stuff i was doing. ways of sampling curves (more points, more accurate / fluid); compression (retaining the minimum info for the maximum effect

music: a sinuous violin solo in which every note is fluid with the next; the hand and arm mapping a continuous complex shape in space? versus like stockhausen who is very crude but by leaving gaps in the musical thought creates a very different feeling of movement?

or to put it in terms youll understand its like enya versus toxic by britney u kno

but srsly i totally get you. musicians talk about this a lot: the feeling of time. i remeber reading some borges ages ago and it was really pacy, leading into a fight in some seedy bar in the arse end of nowhere when suddenly this guy tosses up a knife and borges, does, this, thing, where, he, makes, time, slow, way, down just for a moment before it all kicks off. can’t remember how he does it but there you are
 

ohman

Member
my music listening is very informed by the progression between the straight line robotics as the assembly line 80s
to the much more articulated robotics of the 90s, in which the graph of possible movement has many more available nodes
 

ohman

Member
Very much so. So what’s great about the vocal cut ups in 2step, say, is that you’re taking the very fluid language of RnB singing and reconfiguring it into this morse code rhythmic langue. It becomes blocky, geometric.
cleardot.gif
 

ohman

Member
Time as motion picture vs comic book panel or that strobe lighting effect.

the 90s is rhythmically fascinating cos it’s taking that blocky 80s language but giving the dexterity of more fluid forms of music.

There's more distribution points filled in, points on the graph plotted


Not lego blocks, but particles.
 

Leo

Well-known member
well its obviously a nutcase theory but i get you

language is also somewhat jump-cut: it can never be as truly fluid as music or dance

but even so there’s a spectrum: not exactly sure where to place them but nietzsche and your autistic mate are at opposite ends i reckon. in a way nietzsche is fluid; at the same time he doesn’t map out the argument but just sort of smash cuts from one thought to another. whereas your autistic mate maps it out in the tiniest detail: so detailed, in fact, that perhaps he approaches another kind of fluidity? four points is a quadrilateral. eight an octagon. keep going and eventually you get a perfect (fluid) circle

but you weren’t on about language were you. sorry

all this makes me think about science stuff i was doing. ways of sampling curves (more points, more accurate / fluid); compression (retaining the minimum info for the maximum effect

music: a sinuous violin solo in which every note is fluid with the next; the hand and arm mapping a continuous complex shape in space? versus like stockhausen who is very crude but by leaving gaps in the musical thought creates a very different feeling of movement?

or to put it in terms youll understand its like enya versus toxic by britney u kno

but srsly i totally get you. musicians talk about this a lot: the feeling of time. i remeber reading some borges ages ago and it was really pacy, leading into a fight in some seedy bar in the arse end of nowhere when suddenly this guy tosses up a knife and borges, does, this, thing, where, he, makes, time, slow, way, down just for a moment before it all kicks off. can’t remember how he does it but there you are

are you having a conversation with yourself?
 

mvuent

Void Dweller
great thread.

Time as motion picture vs comic book panel or that strobe lighting effect.

the 90s is rhythmically fascinating cos it’s taking that blocky 80s language but giving the dexterity of more fluid forms of music.

There's more distribution points filled in, points on the graph plotted


Not lego blocks, but particles.
the one major exception from the blockiness of the 80s is turntablism, a development which allowed for a superhuman agility that no one quite knew what to do with. it's no coincidence that so many of the best early junglists (hype, gerald, aphrodite, etc.) were former b-boys. that foundation prepared them to lead the charge in the breaks science era.
 
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