image: “Distant Noise Song Sang by a Smoking Noise Singer” – GM 2014
What is the Sound Mind ?
Is Kermit’s remark “It’s not easy being green” a sound quote? It depends on how we hear the word sound within the question. If we hear it as a noun, then we’ll expect the quote to reference something that can be heard, and there are no first-order sound-word in the phrase “It’s not easy being green.” The answer then should be, No, because the word “green” engages the mind’s eye and not its ear
But if when asked we hear the word sound as an adjective, then Kermit’s remark could be interpreted to mean something like sound judgement or dependable advice, in which case the answer would be, Yes, of course it is a sound quote. That’s why we like Kermit. He is sound frog!
In English, the word sound semantically encompasses a vast territory of human experience that spans beyond the ear. Although most of its definitions relate to our ability to hear and to process information by way of sound, the rest of it covers other concepts and ideas I believe to be more related to sound itself than any other realm. As an artist, i take the position that all of it, the set of audible and inaudible sound-words together comprise what should be understood as the sound mind
Comparing [ sound ] Notes
visit the home page at subtropics.org to check out the project, Comparing [ sound ] Notes
Like many of my word-based projects, this one is also without a clear beginning or end. it continues to evolve. it is simply a collection of known and unknown quotes that use the word sound, or some other sound-word, regardless of the quote’s message
“I don’t practice. I investigate.” A though about experimentation
Curiosity leads to experimentation which leads to interpretations that result from the nature of questions asked, the processes adopted and the level of rigor applied to any investigation.
When the context for exploration is personal and inevitable, when the motivation for figuring things out is about designing an alternative way to live, the experiments become artistic ( meaning artificial ), and the natural path toward discovery remains empirical and intuitive. that’s the path i have chosen and it is what i mean when i say i am mostly self-taught
As young I was quiet and introspective. Terribly dyslexic yet unaware of it as a disability and hoping to avoiding embarrassment and find ways to meet society’s expectations, I found myself embracing sound and listening as an alternative tool for keeping up with education, and for building friendships and a sound sense for how things worked
Because of dyslexia, things weren’t always what they seemed. On the other hand, a sound was fact and dependable as a description of an event. I discovered I had intuition for interpreting the information that came to me by way of sound. All else I absorbed from reading and by using feedback as a metaphorical strategy for fine-tuning my relation with reality. It was a different way to build character, a sense of citizenship and to arrive at conclusions we could all share about society and what things are. However, along the way it has always felt to me like i have nurtured, not so much alleys but accomplices.
Performance is within us
words are sound. like in a musical score, the written word is notation that begs to be performed. that’s what we do when we read out loud. we perform. and when we read to ourselves, a something useful happens in our mind that helps us grow. to the mind’s ear, performance fosters clarity by drawing sound-pictures in our mind, pictures that are invisible and manifest themselves as the source of epiphanies that produce a sensation of understanding. sound-language is the set of words that evoke not images, but solid understanding of the abstract. Engaging the sound mind in the interpretation of our environment complements visual-language as a tool for sounder learning. And that, I believe is the function of performance, in music, poetry, sound art, comedy, public speaking, time-based media, and other verbal and non-verbal communication realms. A picture can only be worth “a thousand words” because of the subliminal engagement of the sound mind and because the image itself functions as a score
Shift
we enter the world from opposite cardenal points to meet in some kind of middle a point that shifts around over time
Contrast
a.bun.dance = good | red.und.ant = not so good