The art of audio

We all live inside our heads.  Inside your head sits a cognitive consciousness that is the magic “I”, in your case it is the magic “you”.  This miraculous entity, the awareness that is you, is insulated from the outside world and connects to it through sensors.  Ears, eyes, skin, all that feeds in data which is evaluated and stored.  We are in effect, software running in a mobile bio-ware system. It isn’t necessarily fast or right, but it works well enough that we can co-exist and as a species persist through time.

We make ART.  Art is short for Artifact(s), the things that we make.  At one time our art was sharpening rocks to cut food and deer antlers to punch a hole in hides, now we are playing with atoms.  Along the way we found there were kinds of artifacts that did more than just modify our physical world.  There are artifacts that modified our minds, the ‘me’ that is above the physical – but firmly rooted in it.  When we make an artifact that is aimed at the mind, it carries an intended message or knowledge that is coded to trigger the truly metaphysical side of us, our passions, our appreciations, we make ART.

Because we are essentially all ‘wired’ the same, our senses report to our minds similar data.  Because humans share such a large data-base from experience we share reactions to the data, we all ‘feel’ pretty much the same about what we perceive.

Most fundamental of our senses is aural or acoustic input. It is our only omni-directional input.  Its maximum performance is in the sound domain of breaking twigs and dry grass movement from the sounds that were important to early humans.  It remains active all the time, and it has the deepest wiring in our psyches.  The first thing you ever perceived was your mothers heartbeat.  You shared her chemical reactions with the sound of her heart.  Rhythm is basic to our existence.  It makes sense that our most common artifact is music and that our ability to analyze what we hear is shaped by music.

There is little question that life is an illusion; it is an illusion based on a constant flow of data from your sensors.  It is about half a second behind real time due to processing thus it is disconnected from reality by some space and time.

The better the data you can get to a human, the more likely you can get them to ‘false trigger’.  That is to misinterpret what is perceived, to mildly hallucinate and succeed in getting them to temporarily suspend reality.  The homunculus is fooled, and likes it. From that flows pleasure, a very Romantic idea.

So I want my products to produce pleasure.  The way I see it there are three arts that have to be coordinated such that a product is worthy of this task.

Art#1 is the sensuality of the results.  In this case how good does it sound?  What imagery does the music promote in the mind that was not perceived before?  The ART of Art#1 is lining up physical electronic components in such a way that they do something in the mind of the listener to cause Eargasms. Raw Pleasure.

Art#2 is the execution of the Art#1.  The execution of the physical manifestation of Art#1.  It must be elegant, beautiful, and in tune with the TEMW (Transversal Electro-Magnetic Wave) of each individual signal flowing; for these too are elements of the performance process.  It must show the finest craftsmanship we know to shape signal flows in a 3-Dimensional world and a 4-Dimensional Space-Time.

Art#3 is the physical layer – what you perceive when you visually and physically interface with the product.  All the memes you know, everything your culture has taught you, your emotions both superficial and primitive; is what you FEEL about it.  All the passionate emotions of the self that form the “Whole Product Experience”

All these together result in the true gestalt; we want it to be a good experience and feeling.  Do that and I succeed with this art I offer. It has to be sonically compelling, visually glamorous, tactiley luscious, and emotionally satisfying.   Thus is the art of audio.