imagination matters

This is the realm of the imagination, where all things
possible can occur. The boundaries of the world expand to include the deepest
mysteries of the mind and the farthest reaches of the universe. Science reveals
the parallel dimensions of a quantum multiverse and art transports us there.

An aesthetic approach to living involves working
creatively with others and other modes of being in the world. Art embodies
great technical and scientific information. It can be scientific but it is not
science. Artists draw inspiration from nature and the natural world, but
artists are not biologists. The truths and mysteries of philosophy and
metaphysics inform much great art, yet art is not religion or metaphysics. Art
reveals the workings of the mind and how humans interact with each other and create
culture in ways that are different from psychology, sociology, and politics.
These universes of discourses take part within the larger cultural context
where art and the aesthetic imagination set the tenor and tone of our
experience.

The aesthetic imagination is the ultimate information processor.
Art forges connections between the hemispheres of the brain by a multimedia
melding of verbal, visual, emotional, and cognitive modes of representation and
experience.

Metaphorical and associative correspondences connect the
myriad waveforms and particles of matter and energy with the trillions of
neural networks of billions of human minds. The Hubble Space Telescope, the World
Wide Web, and the Large Hadron Collider are instruments of vast reach and great
potential and they are also powerful metaphors. Culture expands to include
imaginative access to the formerly unknown territories revealed by our
ever-increasing methods of collecting and interpreting information and
experience.

From the cave walls of pre-history to the 3-D multiplex,
we come to understand ourselves by projecting our view of the world into the
world itself, thereby altering it in an endless feedback loop of creative visualization.
We act not so much in the world as we do within our representations of it.
Because these representations become part of our new environment, they change
us. Our lives take place, not simply in the
material of the world, but in a very real way, within our personal and
collective imaginations.

What we spend our time imagining matters. We can only
build things which we have first imagined. Things are the way they are because
this is how we have imagined them to be.

With this in mind, we might consider the best choices we can
make to be those which decrease suffering and which increase compassion. In
this way both aesthetics and ethics can be one thing. We can create an ethical
world by reimagining, in more ethical ways, the one in which we find ourselves.

*
Image: “imagination” by Tullio, altered ink drawing, 2012

Knowing

 

Pery
Burge and I have completed a new multimedia music video, entitled “Knowing”. As
is true for the entire series, I create the soundtrack, and Pery creates the
visual imagery.

“Knowing”
is intended as a companion piece to our previous work, entitled “Being”. It is
comparably replete with living color and texture.

This
is how Pery describes the work in her Chronoscapes blog:

This video features Tullio’s music along with my fluid dynamics imagery.

In this movie I explore the major/minor key contrasts in Tullio’s
piece, and its mood of perpetual motion.
The major/minor aspect of the music made me think of juxtaposing
structured and unstructured flow, and the feeling of perpetual motion seemed to
match the whirling and wheeling of the vortices which feature throughout the
movie.

I am fascinated by vortices; they make such strong, compelling
images in themselves, and also have a rich symbolism attached. This symbolism can appear self-contradictory
– some mythology emphasising their destructive nature, other belief systems
talking of them as the ultimate energy source – ‘getting into the vortex’ …
perhaps Knowing in the sense of true wisdom.

I hope I’ve captured a little of both aspects here, and that you
enjoy the flow of the whirlpools and their patterns, set to Tullio’s music.

In this movie I explore visual parallels to the major/minor key
contrasts in Tullio’s piece, and its mood of perpetual motion. The major/minor aspect of the music made me
think of juxtaposing structured and unstructured flow, and the feeling of
perpetual motion seemed to match the whirling and wheeling of the vortices
which feature throughout the movie.I am fascinated by vortices; they make such
strong, compelling images in themselves, and also have a rich symbolism
attached. This symbolism can appear
self-contradictory – some mythology emphasising their destructive nature, other
belief systems talking of them as the ultimate energy source – ‘getting into
the vortex’ … perhaps Knowing in the sense of true wisdom.I hope I’ve
captured a little of both aspects here, and that you enjoy the flow of the
whirlpools and their patterns, set to Tullio’s music.

Pery’s
visuals were generated during her tenure as artist in residence in the Thermofluids Lab in the College of
Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences, at the University of Exeter in
the UK. I make this music using a combination of acoustic and electronic
instruments and audio software. We have been sharing files and building the
multimedia works through a series of file transfers and Internet communications.

We hope you enjoy “Knowing”.

Being

Pery Burge and I have completed a
new multimedia music video, entitled “Being”. As is true for the entire series,
I create the soundtrack, and Pery creates the visual imagery.

“Being” is very lush and
rich – full of living color and texture. And it is cosmic in the way light and the
flow of fluid forces interact. Pery’s images bring my music to life. And my music
adds an orchestral dimension to her inspiring visuals.

This is how Pery describes the
work in her Chronoscapes blog:

Tullio’s music has a relaxed, meditative quality, which made me think of new
ways of expressing links between the cosmos and life forms here on earth. I
could see connections between new planets and cellular life forms coming into
existence, and wanted to express the slow, inexorable quality of this birth
process – a gradual unfolding of events.
The whirling galaxies that recur throughout the video are analogous to a
kind of ‘wheel of life’, and we see similarities of pattern and form at all
scales.

Pery’s visuals were generated
during her tenure as artist in residence in the Thermofluids Lab in the College of Engineering, Mathematics and
Physical Sciences, at the University of Exeter in the UK. I make this music using
a combination of acoustic and electronic instruments and audio software. We
have been sharing files and building the multimedia works through a series of
file transfers and Internet communications.

We
hope you enjoy “Being”.

In summer

Under cool forest canopy,

a wood bridge echoes my moves.

It sways, slows me down,

and sharpens my attention.

Leaning on arms and elbows, I breathe and feel beams heave

down through leaves

to the pond below,

where a rainbow arcs

among green fish

and clear fly wings.Wavelets form and subside,

calming the fluid flow

of my bloodstream.

By a grey cloudbank,

birds call to each other.

This sound alters my chemistry.

Their power resides

in being so far above.Things I do not see

and cannot comprehend

change everything.

I exist for a time

in the minds of others,

while gravity propels me

through photon waves

in an inevitable fall

toward the center of the earth.

*
Image: “Summer Sun” by Tullio, altered ink drawing, 2012

Summer Night

 

 

fast hand wings

of evening bats

streak through stellar space

flying and falling

between dark pines

cupped ears far above me

are snaring echoes

I do not hear

and I cannot decipher

the flying points of light

flashing in my eyes

and in the trees

a million voices

not meant for me

the red sun has gone

and left me here

alone on warm land

under a purple sky

surrounded by

the inscrutable signals

of other lives

 

*

Image: “SummerNight” by Tullio, altered ink drawing, 2012