Iain Cameron's Diary
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2006-11-05 - 7:21 p.m.

I thought I might get to Compton Verney today for the exhibition of impressionist painters and female subjects - but I couldn�t overcome the gravitational pull of Cameron Towers - especially a stable production platform - you never know how long it will last.

The track �two and six� has made it into a vid - which surrounds a single statement about the decay of identity politics. The statement purports to say that despite everything there is still some validity in identity politics and the visual language seeks to undermine that. �Two and six� has also been upgraded by heavily modulated flute chords - but this isn�t the version on the vid.

There is a short piece which uses the flute concert - this piece is based on 6 notes and three major seventh chords a major third apart - plus a bass line, This has become the track for a short vid which is around a short seasonal �poem� - called November Render.

The combination of NR and �2&6� has yielded a long piece. This develops the ability of major sevenths to act as a bridge to a fairly atonal universe. The harmonies are based on major sevenths a tritone apart - implying an eight note scale - four intervals of a fifth and four intervals of a flat fifth. The flute concert has a little motif which goes from Emaj7 to Bb major7. This motif goes into a larger structure where the motif is played a minor third up - so the base unit becomes Emaj7 Bb maj7 Emaj7 Bbmaj7 Gmaj 7 Dbmaj 7 Gmaj7 Db maj7 - and a Dhorn line goes over the top as this cycles. Then in post-production further incremental tonal shifts are introduced to develop the narrative. NR is about short major seventh sequences and �2&6� benefits from the sinuous ability of the Dhorn to weave through such sequences. This new piece has become a vid - which is only abstract shapes with no words as yet.- maybe no words will arrive - perhaps its title will be � A rendered heart� - there is a heart as one of the referents amid the abstraction.

I have unearthed the vid of 1+1/Sympathy for the Devil. All this 90s French philosophy technology has made me even more sympathetic - plus the reflections that have been provoked by James McG�s work on Sgt Pepper. The more you look at the clear highlights from that era the more obvious it becomes that they are taken for granted but not understood. So when James McG or JLG begins to open them up all sorts of the current relevance springs out.

James� work has made me think of an impression I had in Budapest this summer - that the society was like what Britain might be like if Thatcherism had never happened. And the core ideas that James is using to explore the thematic network of Sgt Pepper are categories which suffered major transformation in the 80s. So going back into Sgt Pepper in a deep hermeneutic way is like going to Budapest.

With the mass-dumping of Bushism on all sides, the climate of opinion is definitely shifting towards the French. In 0303 in NYC they stood against the mistakes - and suffered a lot of abuse for their pains. Where does this leave Sympathy for the Devil? Well you might say that the blitzkrieg references locate it in the armoured spearhead into Baghdad - and the disguise and misrecognition in the lyric fit the circs well. You can imagine the devil rubbing his hands as the regime collapses - all the best tunes etc.

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