Quadrat

Aug 03, 2021, 04:45 PM

Nepal traffic reimagined by Simon Kennedy.

"The more than brilliant Dillon Bastan’s Emit was used for the work. There is no processing at all other than slowing time by 4000%.

This study is what I am calling a Ganzfeld audial experiment. Ganzfeld is a Gestalt term describing a phenomenon of perception caused by exposure to an unstructured, uniform stimulation field. The effect is the result of the brain amplifying neural noise in order to look for the missing visual (or audial) signals. If you have seen a James Turrell environmental installation then you’ll get the idea of the Ganzfeld effect. Max Neuhaus is an artist whose sound work encourages the effect. 

Many composers (John Cage, Pauline Oliveros and Eliane Radigue) have worked with a form of composition that combines their spiritual (often Buddhist) practise with a sonic minimalism. Many academics refer to this work as requiring a focussed, reduced, deep, layered or quantum listening. 

This piece offers a mandala or quadrat to stimulate reflection. 

Katmandu lies in the valley known as the Nepal Mandala. A mandala is known, in some faiths, to represent the spiritual journey, starting from outside, venturing to the inner core, through transitional and increasingly enlightened layers. The mandala is a meditative simulacrum to be repeatedly contemplated to the point of saturation, such that the stimulus becomes fully internalised in even the minutest detail and can then be summoned and contemplated at will as clear and vivid.

A mandala traditionally has four gates. This quadrat imagines four gatekeepers offering wayfinding to, perhaps, a spiritual meditation on the four stages to enlightenment. Or the four deracinating stages of culture shock: disorientation, negotiation, adjustment and assimilation (or, often, revulsion). Maybe we follow the path from simulacra to simulation when we realise we do not experience a faithful image or copy of a place but a perversion in which our experience has no relationship to any reality or place whatsoever. The final gatekeeper suggests we reflect on the environmental and ecological consequences of our journey and our impact on this place: creation-germination; croissance-augmentation; existence and division; degradation, collapse and extinction."