Re: [cm] Cactus, frogs (was: A Chord of Nature)

> From: X. J. Scott <xjscott@...>
> To: <crazy_music@yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, August 07, 2001 1:07 PM
> Subject: [cm] Cactus, frogs (was: A Chord of Nature)
>
>
> [Monz:]
>
> >> You guys would be interested in this:
> >> http://researchmag.asu.edu/stories/sound.html
>
> [Joe:]
>
> > This is interesting, Monz... but I don't believe the author
> > mentions
> > that John Cage actually already *does* have a piece where he
> > amplifies a cactus and listens to the result.
> >
> > I'm not certain of the name of the piece... but I've heard of
> > it...
>
> Wow Joe! That makes at least 4 people working in cacti!
> Was Cage the first, I wonder...
>
> I've heard two different live concerts bmy two
> different dudes that used the 'amplifed catus' as an
> instrument. At one concert I asked him some questions
> and he said that the stress of the whole scene kills
> the cactus after a few performances and so he has to
> keep getting new cactuses. He also had some theories
> about the high water content of the cactus interior
> contributing greatly to the sound and such. I don't
> remember. The concerts were over 10 years ago I think.
>
> Anyway, the article posted is cool since the guy
> records them out in the natural environment and lets
> the rain naturally pluck the cactus instead of plucking
> them himself until it keels over dead. Very respectful;
> very nice.

Note that Lerman isn't doing this simply as a musically
creative act. Part of the reason he's doing it is because
he actually wants to assemble a "sonic map" of the Sonoran
Desert, which I (as a confirmed "map geek") think is
*even cooler* than if he had approached this from a
"composer/performance viewpoint".

> Anyway one thing I wanted to say about the frog file
> I posted is that our natural environment creates far
> better, more complex, and more interesting microtonal
> music than we do.

My take on this: All of human activity exhibits a tendency
to simply, reduce, categorize, etc., in order that we may
comprehend patterns that *we think* exist in nature.

As mclaren has so violently argued, nature is a whole lot
more complex than any means we have for representing and
understanding it.

All of these ideas are exactly what lie behind my concept
of "finity":
http://www.ixpres.com/interval/dict/finity.htm

I think that ultimately the simplest way we can comprehend
numerical relationships is to reduce them somehow (meaning
that there may be many different ways of proceeding) to the
prime series and its multiples.

There seems to me to be something inherently "basic" about
the prime series that helps us to understand anything that
we want to quantify, and that's all I'm arguing about when
I attempt to defend my theories.

love / peace / harmony ...

-monz
http://www.monz.org
"All roads lead to n^0"

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