August 21, 2017

Saturday. A dust and polish of the studio surfaces helped prepare the space and my mind to begin assembling the initial components for the I. Nothing. Lack. project. Cassette-tape recorder 1 (the first of five) was linked to a Moog effector, and that to the mixer, in order to test the system’s integrity:

I anticipate that configurations 1 and 2 will be combined. In the notional configuration 3, effectors would be placed both before and after (or in the send and receive loop of) the main mixer. I’ll implement this idea on Monday.

Today. 8.30 am: A communion. 9.00 am: I continued reviewing PhD Fine Art submission material. Periodically, I uploaded a photograph to my Instagram account. The images are drawn from a collection that documents my day-to-day experiences. The motive for publication is primarily to objectify them to myself. I’m not a photographer, but I do take photographs, and I’m aware that I do. That’s to say, I cannot but observe other than deliberately, with an aestheticized eye that’s informed by a knowledge of the traditions of painting, photography, and cinema. The photographs represent a variety of attitudes to looking and to things, on my part. I make no claim to coherence or consistency. Which is not to say that there aren’t underlying proclivities and preoccupations:

Photography has been helpful when my practice-based activities have been exclusively sonic or textual. That act of taking a photograph has kept me visual (to adapt one of Clement Greenberg’s phrases). Often, I understand the reason why the photograph needed to be taken only after the shutter has been released. Thus, instinct advises me to take a photograph; intellect interprets the photograph, discerns the implications and informs the instinct; and instinct advises me to take a photograph, and so on. A hermeneutical loop. Everything we do informs everything else we do. This is how we learn.

2.00 pm: The morning’s business pressed past the great divide into the second session. Deadlines loom. The students’ needs take precedence on this occasion. By the close of the afternoon, I’d acquitted myself of my obligations.

7.30 pm: Studiology. I continued where I’d left off on Saturday, exploring the routing possibilities of my Mackie mixer. This device has a bewildering complexity of pathways and options. I persevered. Later, I extracted the Mackie and inserted the Tascam mixer in its place. I was keen to compare the performance of an analogue versus analogue/digital device. I removed and rerouted cables with the dexterity of an open-heart surgeon performing a quadruple bypass procedure:

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