HNW and NATURE (15)

( Do you see any walls here ? )

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HNW and NATURE (14)

(In the sea, 10.000 feet down there is a single stone.

I will pick it up without getting my hands wet.)

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MY READING TRACES #4

(Jean-Luc Marion, Au lieu de soi. L'approche de Saint Augustin)

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HNW and NATURE (14)

(If only I could make your hear the sound of snow falling late at night  !)

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HNW and NATURE (13)

(Concentrate your whole self,

with its 360 bones and joints

and 84,000 pores, into Mu ! )

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HNW and NATURE (12)

(Alles ist einzig, nichts ist umsonst)

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MY READING TRACES #3

(Martin Heidegger, Erinnerung in die Metaphysik)

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HNW and NATURE (11)

(Vast emptiness, nothing holy)

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The HNW-Q No. 2: Joseph Gates

Dear Readers,

this is the second HNW-Questionary. I am proud, that Joseph Gates contributes to the HNW-Q, because he is one of the deepest, innovative, passionate, poetic and most versatile artist in the field of HNW and Sound-Art. He works in several different projects like Zionist, Vargrwulf, Peiiste (together with Bast), R.S.P. (together with Bast) or the deeply respected Noise-Art-Collective Black Leather Jesus to name only a few. But he also runs the best Noise-Art-Label on the planet called Human Ignorance (click here) well known for its beautiful designed, carefully chosen and deeply personal, challenging and always touching releases.

Gates was already featured on my blog with his groundbreaking HNW-composition Release (click here to read) in 2011. A review of his latest Zionist release entitled Hagalaz is in the works for 2012, because it is one of the best HNW releases this year. So don't miss this great composition, if you are a true HNW-enthusiast ! And please take a look at Joseph Gates' blog  !

The HNW-Questionary consists of 32 phrases to be completed in a playful, insightful, poetic, prolific and philosophical manner. The featured artist decides, which phrases he wants to accomplish. It is the task for the reader to perceive the voids and to think about the subtle interactions between Being and Nothingness, which are also important ingredients of the HNW-Artform. But, it is always important to see and hear, what someone is saying and what he is not saying.

The idea of the whole feature is to help the few real HNW-Artists to show and establish themselves as leading artists and to give them an encyclopedic space for their aesthetic and artistic convictions, conceptions and beliefs. It is a space to publish serious, original and important thoughts and ideas for the future of HNW as an important artform.

It is first of all exclusively for leading musicians, but in the future painters, writers and philosophers could also be invited to contribute to the seriousness of HNW and to the interrelatedness of HNW with other artforms. Maybe one day I will fill out this Questionary myself. I have several completed versions of it in the upper drawer of my mind. This HNW-Questionary was only conceived for the best. Consequently, my deliberately very elitist motto for this Questionary is: Light for the Best, Darkness over the Rest !

All lines in green ink are written and copyright by Joseph Gates (contact here and here  and here). All lines in italics and normal ink show you the HNW-Questionary written and copyright by me. This is the second HNW-Questionary brilliantly completed by Joseph Gates:

The HNW-Q No. 2:

[1] I discovered and invented HNW for myself, when I needed to create a sound that would provide me with solitude in my room, and push out any unwanted external influences on my personal space.

[2] The initial radicality of HNW would be preserved, if it was limited to a small run publication based out of California.

[3] HNW is a wide ranging and inclusive genre based around textural explorations within the electronic noise field, that has exploded with potential in the past ten years or so.

[4] HNW is not a secret club or fashionable trend.

[5] I embrace the acronym HNW, it is a symbol of personal progress and dedication in the face of an often uncaring world. Because it means different things to different people, it is something that endures beyond initial stereotypes and value judgements to provide an outlet for personalized and individual sonic expression.

[6] HNW is pure dedication to creating one's own personal space through sound.

[7] The sound of machines are heavily influential on the music that I make, as well as the sounds of natural phenomena.

[8] HNW helps the individual world to be revealed.

[9] Monolithic walls are nice to listen to, especially when coming out of an amplifier at full blast in the same room as you.

[10] The future of HNW would be up to the individuals who care enough to ensure that future.

[11] The death of HNW would be if it became a genre where everyone imitated exactly those who came before them.

[12] HNW should be related to the genre of expressionistic painting to understand it better.

[13] Singularity and originality in HNW are key to the creation of something worth listening to (both for yourself and others).

[14] HNW should be called Static Minimalism, because someone feels like it should be called that.

[15] HNW should not be called Static Minimalism, because someone does not feel like it should be called that.

[16] The permanent repetition of the HNW-Mantra (No ideas, no change, no dynamics, no development etc.) leads to nothing.

[17] Volume in HNW is a factor in the creation of HNW.

[18] Distortion in HNW is a factor in the creation of HNW.

[19] My Unconscious is immersed in HNW.

[20] Narratives, Analogies and Metaphors in HNW are a part of the act of creation.

[21] Time and Space in HNW are limiting aspects to the duration and location of a piece of music.

[22] HNW can create a sound that is close to absolute Nothingness.

[23] My HNW amplifies aspects of my own person that cannot be expressed in words.

[24] Minimal Music and Cosmic Drones are enjoyable to listen to.

[25] Conceptualism is the wellspring of influences that creates the most exciting new aspects of HNW.

[26] The main ingredient of brilliant HNW is personal dedication and a certain level of honesty that can be both expressed and obscured (to positive effect) through alias.

[27] The purpose and concept of my HNW is to adequately create through sound an environment that is conductive to the forces and energies that I invite into or enact in my life.

[28] The distinction between ANW/HNW is up to the observer.

[29] The philosophy of HNW can change as often as the seasons, because inherently HNW exists on a plane higher than philosophical conundrums, into the realm of the ecstatic.

[30] My first words about HNW were that I was excited to find others making sounds in the same directions that I had been exploring.

[31] My final words about HNW would be thank you for listening.

[32] The phrase I would like to add to this Questionary is that self-awareness and personal responsibility are significant goals in life to strive for.

Cordial thanks to Joseph for the HNW-Questionary
and for creating his unique soundworlds !

SKG.

(Photos by SKG)

HNW and NATURE (9)

(Everyone is perfect and we can all use a little improvement !)

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HNW and NATURE (8)

(To study the self is to forget the self !)

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HNW and NATURE (7 A)

(Allow yourself to be done !)

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HNW and NATURE (7)

(You see, you are always unborn !)

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HNW and NATURE (6)

(Give Yourself Away to Mu !)

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HNW and NATURE (5)

(Just stop and look back to the origin of this self of yours !)

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MY READING TRACES #2

(Jacques Derrida - Spectres de Marx )

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HNW and NATURE (4)

(What happens when you become a Buddha ?)

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HNW and NATURE (3)

(There is nothing but the Buddha-Mind)

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MY READING TRACES #1

(Martin Heidegger - Besinnung)

Photo / Traces by S.K.G.

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HNW and NATURE (2)

(Your primary mind has absolutely no illusions, no desires or aspirations!)

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HNW and NATURE (1)

(There is nothing but the Buddha-Mind)

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The HNW-Q No.1: A View from Nihil

A View from Nihil

Dear Readers,

I am proud to present the first completed HNW-Questionary. I am glad, that the subtle and unique HNW-Master Andrew McQuaid from A View from Nihil was so kind to complete it. As you probably remember, Andrew McQuaid was already featured on my blog with his important and groundbreaking HNW-masterpiece "The Eternal Present" in February 2012 (click here to read). For me it is absolutely necessary, that he and no one else starts this feature.

The HNW-Questionary consists of 32 phrases to be completed in a playful, insightful, poetic, prolific and philosophical manner. The featured artist decides, which phrases he wants to accomplish. It is the task for the reader to perceive the voids and to think about the subtle interactions between Being and Nothingness, which is also an important ingredient of the HNW-Artform. But, it is always important to see and hear, what someone is saying and what he is not saying.

The idea of the whole feature is to help the few real HNW-Artists to show and establish themselves as leading artists and to give them an encyclopedic space for their aesthetic and artistic convictions, conceptions and beliefs. It is a space to publish serious, original and important thoughts and ideas for the future of HNW as an important artform.

It is first of all exclusively for leading musicians, but in the future painters, writers and philosophers could also be invited to contribute to the seriousness of HNW and to the interrelatedness of HNW with other artforms. Maybe one day I will fill out this Questionary myself (Thanks for your suggestion, Andrew !). I have several completed versions of it in the upper drawer of my mind. This HNW-Questionary was only conceived for the best. Consequently, my deliberately very elitist motto for this Questionary is: Light for the Best, Darkness over the Rest !

All lines in green ink are written and copyright by Andrew McQuaid (contact here  and here ). All lines in italics and normal ink show you the HNW-Questionary written and copyright by me. This is the first HNW-Questionary brilliantly completed by Andrew McQuaid:

The HNW-Q No. 1: 

[1] I discovered and invented HNW for myself, when .................

[2] The initial radicality of HNW would be preserved, if such things were possible.

[3] HNW is order.
  
[4] HNW is not disorder.


[5] I feel a strong sense of allegiance towards the acronym HNW, even if I realise it is no longer an accurate term for what I, or many other HNW artists, do.


[6] HNW is pure .......................................................................

[7] The sound of machines are .............................................

[8] HNW helps ....................................................... to be revealed.


[9] Monolithic walls are ...................................................................


[10] The future of HNW would be support and acknowledgement from the elite of underground experimental music.

[11] The death of HNW would be its acceptance by the great unwashed masses of the underground music world.



[12] HNW should be related to all underground experimental music to understand it better.

[13] Singularity and originality in HNW are as important as conformity and orthodoxy.

[14] HNW should be called Static Minimalism, because Static Minimalism is a broader term that must surely encompass HNW.

[15] HNW should not be called Static Minimalism, because HNW is a more specific term and hence more accurate in certain cases.

[16] The permanent repetition of the HNW-Mantra (No ideas, no change, no dynamics, no development etc.) leads to a ..............................

[17] Volume in HNW is ...............................................................

[18] Distortion in HNW is ..........................................................

[19] My Unconscious is .................................................. in HNW. 

[20] Narratives, Analogies and Metaphors in HNW are .............

[21] Time and Space in HNW are ...............................................

[22] HNW .............................................. absolute Nothingness.

[23] My HNW amplifies ............................................................

[24] Minimal Music and Cosmic Drones are also capable of fulfilling some of the main functions of HNW.

[25] Conceptualism is the ................................................... of HNW.

[26] The main ingredient of brilliant HNW is meticulous composition, above all else.

[27] The purpose and concept of my HNW is continuously evolving, but from late 2010/early 2011 till now I have been primarily concerned with investigating, expressing and glorifying order. I decided to follow this particular direction after becoming dissatisfied with producing what I had come to regard as negative music. That is, music which expresses a negative opinion, which up to that point had been a sort of defeatist nihilism mixed with a strong contempt for modernity. Inspired by personal musical heroes, I resolved only to make positive music; music that glorified and exalted, music that affirmed. The only question was what to take as my subject. But, I thought to myself, whatever I chose, it had to correlate to the sound form of HNW.  And so the right way only became clear through an intense listening to, and deep consideration of, HNW. It became apparent to me that one of the features that I enjoy most in HNW are the different textural patterns that reveal themselves when listening. I love how patterns appear out of the static aether, crystalising into perfect threads that transfix the mind with a clarity of structure that seems eternal, only to succumb to new dominant patterns, and this process leaves me wondering whether those patterns evolved naturally out of the static interactions, whether the composer put them there intentionally, or whether my brain, in its endless attempt to make sense of the world around it, simply constructed that order out of the static void.

I find this emergent order of HNW, and the ambiguities surrounding it, endlessly fascinating. And in many ways, I perceive parallels between this effect and my interpretation of the wider human experience (a case of apophenia, maybe). Furthermore, I have always defined HNW in opposition to what bores me most in experimental music, that is; self-indulgent improvisation, performance theatrics at the expense of composition, and pretentious chancers who produce half-arsed nonsense. In a word: disorder. For me HNW has always been deliberate and structured, and I have always considered it the antithesis of junk noise, free/improv noise, and anything that could be broadly described as fun or entertainment in experimental music. After this realisation then, I knew that order would be my positive purpose. For, as I understand it, order is the source of all wisdom and power, of all beauty, and of all life. Disorder is weakness, ugliness, death. And I have no desire to spend my time expressing these things. For there's enough of that about, and the age of nihilism is well begun, and needs no more proselytising than it has.

Now, bearing that in mind, it remains to be said that, order is surely present in all corners of existence, and so the theme of AVFN need not be limited to abstract order (Order), but can range from ideas of cosmic creation and destruction (Primordial Sea), to human thought and perception (The Eternal Present), and beyond. And indeed, it ought to be pointed out that, there are many different and contrasting, often conflicting orders, so it should be said that I have an interest in, and a bias towards, the philosophy and metaphysics of archaic man and his particular understanding and expression of order. These are the ideas, then, that currently inform the purpose and concept of my HNW.

 

[28] The distinction between ANW/HNW is unnecessary to me: HNW had already become an inaccurate term, but, to me, that doesn't render it unusable. Genre titles are often inaccurate and quite often they say more about the early history of the style than it does about contemporary practice.

  

[29] The philosophy of HNW can change ................................

  

[30] My first words about HNW were .......................................

  

[31] My final words about HNW would be .................................

 

[32] The phrase I would like to add to this Questionary is ..............

(Photo and copyright by Frédéric Brenner)

Cordial thanks to Andrew for filling out

the HNW-Questionary !

SKG.

The Interview #1/2012: Joseph Nechvatal

Joseph Nechvatal 

(American artist and philosopher)

My dear readers,

I am proud to present an interview with the american artist and philosopher Joseph Nechvatal. After several other books he has recently published a book entitled "Immersion into Noise"(University of Michigan Library 2011), which is one of the deepest books about this highly overlooked topic. On April 12 he has also opened a solo exhibition in the Gallery Richard in New York. Here he will present a new version of his Noise Symphony. If you live nearby please take your time and your chances to visit this highly rewarding presentation of his most recent works. Mr. Nechvatal was so kind to answer my questions via e-mail in March 2012 and to provide me with some reproductions of his most recent works and a photography of himself.  All answers are written and copyright by Joseph Nechvatal. The questions are all mine.

Here you find a link to a talk delivered by Joseph Nechavatal in 2012 here as a video at the ZKM: http://zkm.de/media/video/joseph-nechvatal-immersion-into-noise

This is the interview:

[SKG] Dear Mr. Nechvatal, you are an artist and a philosopher, how would you like to introduce yourself to audience ?

[Joseph Nechvatal] Since 1986 I have worked with ubiquitous electronic visual information, computers and computer-robotics. My computer-robotic assisted paintings and computer software animations are shown regularly in galleries and museums throughout the world. From 1991-1993 I worked as artist-in-resident at the Louis Pasteur Atelier and the Saline Royale / Ledoux Foundation's computer lab in Arbois, France on The Computer Virus Project: an experiment with computer viruses as a creative stratagem. In 2002 I extended that artistic research into the field of viral artificial life through my collaboration with the programmer Stéphane Sikora.

I earned my Ph.D. in the philosophy of art and new technology at The Centre for Advanced Inquiry in the Interactive Arts (CAiiA) University of Wales College, Newport, UK where I served as conference coordinator for the 1st International CAiiA Research Conference entitled Consciousness Reframed: Art and Consciousness in the Post-Biological Era (July 1997); an international conference which looked at new developments in art, science, technology and consciousness.

I presently teach at the School of Visual Arts in New York City (SVA). My book of essays Towards an Immersive Intelligence: Essays on the Work of Art in the Age of Computer Technology and Virtual Reality (1993-2006) was published by Edgewise Press in 2009. In 2011 my book Immersion Into Noise was published by the University of Michigan Library's Scholarly Publishing Office in conjunction with the Open Humanities Press. 

[SKG] You have worked in several fields of artistical production, what do you see as your main field ?

[Joseph Nechvatal] Painting.

[SKG] When was your first contact with Noise ?

[Joseph Nechvatal] My childhood was set in a rather peaceful suburban setting. The distant sound of the train is the only noise I can recall, other than occasional thunder and other sounds of nature. My first cultural aspect of noise occurred at age 17 when I attended The Jimi Hendrix Experience concert December 1, 1968 at the Chicago Colliseum and sat in the very last row—far far away from the stage. Hendrix appeared miniscule. However the speakers were located just behind my head and his grandiloquent feedback was ear-splitting; an intensely pleasant, if disjunctive noise experience.

[SKG] I have read on Wikipedia, that you have worked with LaMonte Young, what have you learned from him ?

[Joseph Nechvatal] To look for non-popular times and forms of composition.

[SKG] In April 2012 you will show your newest artworks in the Gallery Richard in New York, can you tell the readers of my blog, what the main focus of this exhibition is ?

[Joseph Nechvatal] I will present, in a solo show at Galerie Richard, a series of new paintings entitled nOise anusmOs, some accompanied by a digital video. The nOise anusmOs exhibition will take place from April 12th till May 26 th, 2012. Following the opening on April 12th from 6 to 8 pm, I will present the world premier concert of the immersive surround-sound re-mastered version of my viral symphOny at 9:30 at Harvestworks (596 Broadway, #602 New York, NY 10012). nOise anusmOs and viral symphOny are being presented in association with the recent publication of my new book Immersion Into Noise. The theme of nOise anusmOs is a linkage of the human retina and anus to the cosmos. nOise anusmOs suggests that this includes the connectivity of the noise universe with the inner humman in a spirit of imaginative artistic audacity and erotic spirituality. In nOise anusmOs the viewer can imaginatively re-place him or herself within a Dionysian flux of cosmological nature. Other influences on this show are American transcendental black metal and avant-garde saxophone music.

Joseph Nechvatal, autOmata saturnalia, 66x44” acrylic on canvas 2011

[SKG] In your groundbreaking and infinitely rich book "Immersion into Noise" you have tried to give a new formalization of the highly overlooked "phenomenon" of noise. What is the main thesis and the philosophical alignment of this book ?

[Joseph Nechvatal]  On a planet that is increasingly technologically linked and globally mediated,  how might noises break and re-connect in distinctive and productive ways within practices located in the world of art and thought ? This is the question I have set out to explore in Immersion Into Noise. For many people, if anything is representative of the art of noise, it is ambivalence. Ostensibly, everything is permitted in art today - and thus nothing is necessary. As a result, art and entertainment are said to have merged. For me, however, perhaps surprisingly, the denial of this merger and the answer to the question posed above is to be found within the challenge of style. In writing this book I have come, counter-intuitively, to see the style of cultural noise as the necessary (and thus valid) art of today - precisely because it does not cave in to the supposed need for immediately legible, spectacle. Indeed it restores art's repsonsibility of resistance.

[SKG] When I saw your book for the first time I was immediately intrigued by your artwork on the cover, can you explain a little why you have chosen it for the cover of your book ?

[Joseph Nechvatal] The painting, sOuth pOle, seems to be calling out and sucking in at the same time.

[SKG] In your book you have introduced several new concepts for a deeper understanding of noise (i.e. hyper-noise, beatific noise, visual noise, immersive noise consciousness to name only a few) what do you see as your main inventions and interventions in the field of noise-theory? What is the "carte" (in the rhizomatic sense of Mille Plateaux) you liked to construct creating your concepts ?

[Joseph Nechvatal] Some claim that art, as entertaining-spectacle, participates in the dumbing-down values that have proved useful to big business, values that address all communications to the lowest common denominator. I tend to agree. Therefore my feeling is that today art must indict—or at the very least play the role of the noisy jester who unmasks the quietly persistent lies of the powerful. Corporate and government propaganda is often designed to deceive and victimize us—and if art cannot rebuff and contest this by fueling the political will and imagination of resistance, I wonder why we need it at all. So for me, an intricate art of noisy resistance is increasingly valuable to an analytical social movement based on skepticism as it strengthens unique personal powers of imagination and critical thinking through self-perception, while undermining market predictabilities. Such art noise counters the effects of our age of simplification— effects that have resulted from the glut of consumer-oriented entertainment messages and political propaganda, which the mass media feed us daily in the interests of corporate profit and governmental manipulations. This look at self-perception is the impetus behind this book.

[SKG] In the introduction you write that your book tries to "restore (...) art's responsibility of resistance"(9) - what is your definition of "resistance" ? And could an original and ante-dialectical affirmation in the deepest possible sense (cf. Nietzsche, Derrida, Deleuze, Heidegger) be in the end more resistant that the "negation of negation" you speak of in  the first chapter of your book ? 

[Joseph Nechvatal] My focus is on signal-to-noise art relations, those relations that signal anti-social interruption, resitance, damage and frustration as sources of psychic pleasure. This concentration directs us towards an understanding of art noise as an art that distorts and distrubs crisp signals of cultural communications.

[SKG] For me it seems that noise-art is the only "art" in which the form/content relation seems to be radically subverted or melted away, what do you think about this ? 

[Joseph Nechvatal] I don't know. But yes glitch awareness/appreciation potentially removes us out of our quiet and glib indolence and points us in the potent direction of expanding thunderous intensity. I believe that a post-Pop noise art is critical to us now because its glitch counter-mannerist excess can problematize the popular simulacra and make livelier the underground privateness of the human condition while remaining immersed inside the social network that engulfs and (supposedly) controls us. This glitch consideration offers us a personal critical distance (by skip, by stutter, by gap), and thus another perspective on (and from) the given social simulacra.

[SKG] Noise seems to be "present" in anything, which is capable to open a space of an-archic and nomadic singularities, what could the political implication of NOISE-ART / ART-NOISE be?

[Joseph Nechvatal] The idea is to shift the political / social vortex away from outdated symbolic allegiances and towards sensate dynamic forces of change. 

[SKG] In your book you have conceived “noise art as a vacuole of noncommunication” (15) using a term coined by Gilles Deleuze what does that mean ?

[Joseph Nechvatal]  My art of noise is postulated as a realm of antisocial cultural purpose directed toward the revolutionary transformation of an irrational social reality that insists on calling itself rational. I argue this with the support of Gilles Deleuze’s notion of the vacuole. This concept of noncommunication comes from Deleuze’s Postscript on Control Societies. Deleuze’s notion of control is connected to information-communication technology—a concept he pulled out of the work of William S. Burroughs. A vacuole is like a sac in a cell’s membrane, completely bound up inside the cell but also separate from it. Vacuoles play a significant role in autophagy, maintaining an imbalance between biogenesis (production) and degradation (or turnover) of many substances and cell structures. They also aid in the destruction of invading bacteria or of misfolded proteins that have begun to build up within the cell. The vacuole is a major part of the plant and animal cell.

[SKG] In several chapters of Mille Plateaux Deleuze and Guattari have created and used the concept of the “War machine/ machine de guerre”, but – if I am correct – you never use this concept in your book. Do you think that this concept cannot be used for a theoretical formalization of subversive noise/art ?

[Joseph Nechvatal]  Deleuze and Guattari have produced so many conceptual tools. I'm sure that this one could also be used to theorize the art of noise, but it did not appeal to me because war does not appeal no me.

Joseph Nechvatal, autOmata retinal, 66x44” acrylic on canvas 2011

[SKG] In Mille Plateaux Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari have also tried to formalize their idea of micro-perceptions, abstract machines and a rhizomatic unconscious, to you feel close to these ideas, when you designed your idea of an immersive noise consciousness ?

[Joseph Nechvatal]  Yes I certainly do. The philosophic rhizomatic theory of Deleuze and Guattari, at a general level, supported my connectivist approach towards theorizing the noise experience, as rhizomatic theory encourages philosophic non-linear and non-restrictive interdisciplinary thinking and hence reinterpretation, which in this case proceeded from the point of view (not a point of fact anymore, but an orb) of immersion into noise. Noise music often delivers a rhizomatic Dionysian jittery quality packed with levels of complexity, if not indulgent Dionysian chaos. Noise art is properly concerned with ideals of self-transcendence. 

[SKG] When I read your tentative to formalize an immersive consciousness in your book, I asked myself, whether it is possible for a consciousness to be really immersive. Shouldn't the idea/concept of consciousness be substituted with another concept like Da-sein, Original Self in the Zen-Buddhist sense, or Abstract Machine? Could there really be a fundamentally anarchic and passive consciousness or is not consciousness in itself a noise-filter ? 

[Joseph Nechvatal] I have come to hold that our consiousness is what we know so we are fully immersed in it even as it is a partial noise filter. By noise consciousness I mean, our miscellaneous neurological/ ontological sense of the gradient unity of sentient self in internal discord with its surrounding milieu, that mental property of atmospheric self-attentive awareness, cognisance and feeling that allows us to experience a sense of nexus with our ostensibly unified surroundings, albeit laced with vicissitudes. I have observed (in myself) that noise in art tends towards unconstrainment while being based on a routine sense of shifting-self

[SKG] What is your definition of perception and how can it be formalized without a foundational and self-centered subject ? 

[Joseph Nechvatal] I think that hearing and seeing is not an activity divorced from consciousness.

[SKG] What does it mean for you to be a really vibrant or resonating body/mind ?

[Joseph Nechvatal] In my view one of the most important characteristics of immersion into noise is its sense of encompassing being within a field of vibratory enshrouding: an intertwined embossed shrouding that places us at odds with the closed, cliche, visual-audio signal and resituates us within vibrancy.

[SKG] Do you see a (rhizomatic) connection between Noiseperception in a trans-subjective sense and the Unconscious ? Would noise-art really be helpful in the creation of a BwO (Corps sans organes) ?

[Joseph Nechvatal]  Yes if it is an art of noise that served (and/or reflected) a surrounding process where the self is experienced as capacity rather than existential identity, and where the evaluation of self has been revised from bounded to boundless is what I am after. Such noise consciousness represents a paraNoise Vision paradigm shift which relativizes other recognitions of self-consciousness. It is pertinent that, in A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari describe this shift towards boundlessness as one's becoming a body without organs (BwO) in terms of our self-shifting representational planes emerging out of our field of compositional consistency. According to them, the body without organs is an insubstantial state of connected being beyond representation which concerns pure becomings and nomadic essences. Deleuze and Guattari go on to say that the body without organs “causes intensities to pass; it produces and distributes them in a spatium that is itself intensive, lacking extension.

It is not space nor is it in space; it is matter that occupies space to a given degree—to the degree corresponding to the intensities produced”. According to Brian Massumi, the translator of A Thousand Plateaus the body without organs is “an endless weaving together of singular states, each of which is an integration of one or more impulses”. These impulses form the body's various “erogenous zone(s)” of condensed “vibratory regions”, zones of intensity in suspended animation. Hence, the body without organs is “the body outside any determinate state, poised for any action in its repertory; this is the body in terms of its potential, or virtuality”.

[SKG] For Deleuze / Guattari the Unconscious works like a machine in a world of pure immanence; has Noise-Art / Art-Noise the ability to open up the minds of the most stubborn transcendentalists and to open up new “lines of flight /lignes de fuite” ?

[Joseph Nechvatal]   Yes such scenarios suggest a merging of awareness, first into a more restricted, and then an expanded, intense statement, which is the principle of entering noise art. Thus, it is possible to say that such states of manifestation are distinguished according to the degree to which potentiality is energized through restrictional noise. To apply the noise model to consciousness would suggest that a possible criterion for making qualitative distinctions is the degree to which the potential states of consciousness are unfolded and experienced as a noisy aggregate.

[SKG] When I think of two classical Zen-Koans like “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” or “Who listens”? – I asked myself whether you can relate to this, in the sense, that only a radically transformed human sensorium can be really immersed in noise ? Is not the condition of possibility of noise-perception in the widest and deepest sense of the term related to the transcending of the subject-object-model towards an immanentist and an-archic model of the self – maybe the “superjet” Deleuze wrote about in “Le pli. Leibniz et le baroque” following Whitehead ?

[Joseph Nechvatal] Even though Otto Kernberg pointed out that the splitting of the subject from the object is “the crucial mechanism for the defensive organization of the ego” at its most basic (pre-oedipal) level, the subject/object question pursued in my book does not appear in any stable binary positioning of easy subject/object opposites as I recognize, as Stephen Talbott points out, that the subject/object set functions more along the dialectical lines of the magnet, where the north pole exists only by virtue of the south pole (as is the contrary). Like the supposed subject/object opposites, neither pole exists in isolation.

[SKG] In your book you never mention the work of Martin Heidegger - can you relate your concept of an immersive consciousness to the Heideggerian idea of moods (especially in his lectures about Hölderlin) and his concept of the Da-sein (Being-the-there-of-Being) in the non-subjective sense of the Enowning-Thinking of his works after 1936 and his idea of the “peal of stillness” (Geläut der Stille) ?

[Joseph Nechvatal] On page 61 I state that Martin Heidegger maintained that being is the most unconscious of concepts because we are thoroughly immersed in it. I do not enjoy reading Heidegger.

 
[SKG] How do you transfer your philosophical ideas of noise/art into your artworks ?

[Joseph Nechvatal] That is done through intuition.

 
[SKG] Are your artworks conceived to have an transformative impact on the innermost sensorium of the spectators ?

[Joseph Nechvatal] My art of noise extends the possibility of a transforming rupture (something renewed and renewing) by addressing the frissure between intellect and the sensible. The frissure that noise art offers culture is that of a different view of the sensible, one that no longer regards the sensible as only an image (signal) cast by a remote and detached intelligibility. In noise art sophistication, signal (foreground) and noise (ground) are impenetrably interlocked and inter-embedded. And this interpenetration reveals the truth of reversibility in our culture, laced, as it is, with the counter-force of incoherence.

[SKG] When you think of the shimmering minimalism of Barnett Newman or Ad Reinhardt, can you relate this to your theory of noise and your own artistical thinking ?

[Joseph Nechvatal] In the book I mention such shimmering minimalism in relationship to Robert Ryman. The 'pure' opticality of the color white embraced by Ryman is a prime example of subtle noise, as in his white paintings he addresses the problems arising from the tension created from the opposition between surface materiality and opticality in relationship to the edge of the painting and its relationship to the wall on which it is hung. This ambiguity of the painting's boundary in relation to the wall that contains it draws attention into an expanded subtle noise field. Ryman does this by extending the optical white shimmering-field of color/light out from the painting onto the white gallery walls which present it. Now it is really the wall that provides the painter with his ground which Ryman himself clarifies when he writes “the wall plane is actually part of the painting and it extends out three or four feet...”. Hence Ryman presents his paintings as part of the white cube that has come to represent modernist ideals of purity and neutrality. The whiteness of the paintings require the whiteness of the walls, as the white-painted optical field spills out over the confining edge of the painting to fill, theoretically, the entire wall and room, thus texture, surface-plane, color and wall are unified. As Ryman himself says: “The wall becomes very much a part of the work”, and so by blurring the difference between painting and wall, Ryman extends our consciousness of painting into an expanded, immersive, subtle, visual noise environment.

[SKG] Cordial thanks for the interview Mr. Nechvatal and all the best for your solo exhibition and for all your projects.


Read Joseph Nechvatal's "Immersion Into Noise" here
Visit Joseph Nechvatal's blog here
Visit Gallery Richard here

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