Iain Cameron's Diary
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2003-09-30 - 5:24 p.m.

I bought a calculator on Saturday. I have been looking at ratios - starting with the Dream Chord which is 12 to 16 to 17 to 18. The 16 is only 1 cent or so above the well tempered fourth and the 18 is the same amount below the well tempered fifth. The 17 is just 3 cents above the well-tempered tritone . Its amazing that these ratios are so close to the modern scale. The ratio of 24 to 17 is also very close to the tritone � just three cents under. 18 to 17 is about one cent off a semitone. The ratios of 17 to 18 to 24 to 27 would give four notes a semitone, a fourth and a tone apart. 34 over 27 is very close � less than one cent from - a well tempered major third. What a surprise that 17 is so potent � I wonder if it has anything to do with its being a prime?

I heard on the radio two early Cage on the radio over the weekend pieces -Preparation for a Meditation and Root of an Unfocus. The broadcast versions sounded better to me than the ones on the Naxos record which I have. I was googling about when this account by Aimee Tsao fell into my lap:

�I grew up in Ann Arbor, where the University of Michigan attracted many artistic types. In 1959 my parents rented a house to Robert Ashley, then an obscure electronic music composer. As a result of the ensuing friendship between landlord and tenant, I was frequently taken along to all manner of concerts, happenings, light shows and multi-media events sponsored by the ONCE Group, a collection of avant-garde composers, musicians, visual artists, film makers and performers.

Since I also studied ballet, attended performances of many assorted dance companies on tour, went to hear live classical music and lingered in art museums, I had a well-rounded arts education. The key here is that at the time I was unaware that I was being exposed to a much wider slice of the arts pie than most of my peers, or other adults who are knowledgeable about culture. It was all art to me. Historical perspective wouldn't arrive until years later.

The first time I saw the Merce Cunningham Dance Company perform was in New York City, where I lived from 1967 to 1970. Gordon Mumma, a family friend from Ann Arbor, also of the ONCE Group, had joined MCDC as a musician and he often invited me to see the company and also set about introducing me to the work of other avant-garde performers.

I had just gotten back from a summer dance tour in France and had a dream that I was riding in a van through the French countryside with Merce at the wheel. When I woke up I wondered if I should write Merce, since I didn't really know him and it seemed like a presumptuous idea. To make the decision, I did the Cunninghamian thing and threw the I-Ching. It said yes. So I wrote him about dreaming I was on tour with his company and asked him what he was doing these days. I was more than surprised when I received a reply.

He said he was learning to use a video camera because it seemed easier for him to do that so he could get the shots he wanted than it would be to train a cameraman to dance. He explains the differences between dance for stage and dance for camera. With stage the audience has a fixed point of observation and the front of the stage appears wider while the back appears to narrow. With the camera, one's point of view can move constantly at varying speeds or stay still . When it is closer there�s a narrower field, and farther away objects or dancers have a much broader field. He says that in film, as a choreographer, you cannot repeat phrases of movement too many times because for some reason the viewer tends to remember the sequences better.

Saturday I run into Gordon Mumma in the lobby. I haven't seen him a couple of years and we catch up on each other's news before we start reminiscing about the company and old times. I say that in "Suite for Five" you can tell which roles were originally danced by Carolyn Brown (one of my personal idols and role models) and Merce by the shape of the choreography. He adds that there aren't too many people any more who have been around long enough and are familiar enough with the first generation dancers to notice.

The program consists of two old works and "Fluid Canvas." "Pictures"(1984), to David Behrman's "Interspecies Small Talk" with decor and costumes by Mark Lancaster and lighting by Josh Johnson, soothes me in the same way that "Suite for Five" did the previous night. The best ending for this season is "How to Pass, Kick, Fall and Run" (1965). With Merce himself and David Vaughan reading stories from John Cage's "Silence," "A Year from Monday" and elsewhere, I recall Cage's own reading with Vaughan. Merce displays his quirky yet impeccable timing and the dancers continue to delight me.

I am grateful for this development as I spent all those intervening years being continually disappointed. Though the dancers executed the steps technically well, they somehow had misinterpreted the idea of dance without emotion to mean dance without nuance. Merce had always practiced what he preached and it's good to see that even though he is no longer dancing, dancers in the company are now running with the baton he has passed on. �

And also this Merce comment:

�Sometimes they want information ahead of time and sometimes they don�t,� he says. �Sometimes Cage would ask me the structure of the dance, that is, the structure in terms of time. That�s about all he asked. Oh, sometimes he asks me how many people are in it. Sometimes I may know what he�s doing in terms of sound and sometimes I never hear it. I�m willing to�it�s not that. It�s just that he�s working on it�which I�m sure he does up until the day of the performance.�

I am still trying to digest the fact that Cage was drawn to an Indian categorisation of emotions in the second half of the 1940s to give his work structure.

I read an interview with the couple who collected a lot of the work that is included in video acts. Their house is wired so that there are lots of situations for viewing videos but they say that they mainly watch them with friends rather than alone. I have just started on the issue of how we consume time-based media. People seem to think that the consumption of normal broadcast media sets an overriding framework that you can�t escape.

But we tend to watch TV or normal commercial videos or DVDs with a set of presuppositions especially about pace, the balance of effort and interpretation between creator and viewer and available duration which may well not fit an art offering. Usually when we look at a portable or a PC it is not to passively consume at all but to do something more fundamental to our purposes. We look at the screen as a means to an end whereas art is generally an end in itself. When we go to a gallery we often see several works and we don�t give much time at all to some of them � and we don�t repeat view much.

The CD-ROM rubs up against all these habits and normal ways of using/consuming/viewing/reflecting. For example today in the office I have the CD ROM in the portable and occasionally I click on it and it erupts. It had the sentence �This sentence is easy� on the screen and when I clicked it EASY appeared in a box and a woman�s voice said the word. Then I got up and walked across the business park to get a sandwich.

I came back and as I ate I googled into a page about CD-ROM art on www.artandculture.com and then I saw that they had an aesthetics section with a view of Matthew Collings. Here�s the (accurate) opening para:

�A combination of artspeak and gossip, Matthew Collings� seemingly casual ruminations can reveal surprising depth beneath their absorbing surface: in a way he is crafting a new kind of art criticism, chic, clever, and street-smart, but with an edgy self-consciousness that mimics the style of contemporary art itself. This strategy doesn't always convince serious critics, however. Collins' two most popular works, �Blimey!� and �It Hurts,� which cover the London and New York art scenes respectively, have received both rave reviews and pans.�

And now a quote from Suzi Gablik who I hadn�t heard of until I saw her in the same sections as Collings:

�We are now faced with a curious situation in which meaning has become so detached from itself that its central collapse defines much of the art of our time -- to the point where the �will� to meaning often deliberately courts meaninglessness and even finds satisfaction in it."

The idea of the will to meaning is one to conjour with. I have been trying some more soundworks � just a few minutes or so of sound from certain specific sources processed and configured.

I am having a lot of difficulty completing the intention to get my car serviced and I feel quite tired. I am reluctantly drawn to the conclusion that there were too many opportunities to drink at the end of last week � and that my attitude towards them could have been more measured.

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