Art-sy stuff, thankfulness

Not a lot of visual interest here, I realize. Certainly not as "fun" a blog as this one. Also, a lot of discussion of mundane mechanics/process with respect to "musical product" bla bla ughk. So an attempt at being more aethereal follows...

My favorite visual artists are Surrealist painters
like Yves Tanguy. The sub-group of artists in that artistic movement that I like the most are the "veristic surrealists"

Now, there are political/societal values associated with Surrealism, which some people may consider inseparable from that movement, that I do not so much subscribe to, because these values are ephemeral manifestations generated by the people and environment who happened to exist in a certain place in history while grappling with what are timeless, eternal issues described nicely here.

Surrealism grew out of the "anti-art" movement of Dadaism and which amplified the 'dreamlike oddness' of the juxtaposition of disparate elements that is a recognized hallmark of Dadaism; that is, Surrealism explores the nature of that oddness, rather than causing it to occur by sticking odd things together.

One reason Surrealists appeal to me is that they seem to deal in the 'moment of cognition', presenting us with things that look like something else but aren't quite anything. We think of there being a divider or membrane between conscious and unconscious, and surrealism is the attempt to position our view right on or within the meniscus of that separator. I also like dreams, I like the way that dreams don't make sense yet you feel they make sense while you are having them.

So in this context, I am very grateful for electricty and electronics, the computer stuff, for the samples and the ability to manipulate waveforms, for MIDI and digital effects, for microphones and tranducers of all sorts, for vibrations and time.