Many years ago I concluded that the modern emergence of bass-laden, beat-dominated music was significant beyond the realm of arts. Ties to archaic musical culture and its ability to inform the present hinted that such music is informing our understanding and perception of time. Perhaps it is reviving a lost understanding of time; a revival of archaic perceptions of time.
It became clear to me that all such compositions both archaic and modern were built with specific interaction between the tactile, audible, and visual represented in the humanities as dance, music and visual arts. The music was palpably constructed in a way to promote certain physiological movements of those dancing based on the basic parametres of the human body in which relations between body parts generally adhere to natural matemathical laws - as does tonality.
Architecture is also optimised to enhance an optimal range of sound with minimal disturbance. But more importantly, people naturally trace patterns around the various axes of their body when they dance. As they do this, they are mimicking the elements of the rhythm in the air as they dance, tracing a pattern through space to manifest the elapsing of time in the a meanful way with the physical body. So when, for example, we use long exposure on cameras to capture the trails of movements, we see the 'fourth dimension' manifested in the three dimensions of space.
I am now looking to gather the yarn up and thread an understandable package to leave behind the thicket of confusion, in order to discern the patterns of a highly ordered architecture revealed in auditory composition. Indeed, perhaps mysterious relations in one's personal temporal structures are capable of being consolidated into instantly perceivable order which is also managable.
One obvious means of visualising this pattern in space is as a basin of temporal density to which certain events are either more or less proximate. At the centre of the cone there is a denser area of events (in music beats or tones) that are most temporally proximate to the subject. The temporal proximity of encounters or actions in real life could also be given a rough value and in this way be assigned a position in three-dimensional space. The regularly with which each occurs would determine their 'loop' length. If we look at life in it's most basic components, it is the meaningful interaction of various rhythms and patterns that determines personal fulfilment, happiness and sense of purpose. From the seemingly mundane diurnal patterns of daily life to the the monumental, protracted events of our time. Each seeks to find a link to each other. To find relevance and resemblance across scales. To interact to form complex tempro-architectural strutures - towering stuctures with interlocking levels of relation.
At a more compressed temporal level. The syncopation of beats affords satisfying variation to our experience of the moment as such. Beats scatter and disperse monotony from the moment, injecting surprising glitches, amusing stupefaction and a 'different groove' to set our personal clocks to.
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Because the constraint of thee-dimensional space, distance, is temporarily subverted by the Internet being almost instantaneous around the globe, the importance of our notation of time and the roles of our current calendars play will need to be reconsidered and perhaps intergrated into temporal schedules* that are better suited to digital possibilities, specifically, that are able to weigh temporal relevance in a instantly understandable way. Helping us to priorise and sort events based on their temporal proximity.
* Schedule is derived from the Latin word schedula meaning 'strip of paper', in turn derived from the Greek skhida meaning 'splinter'. Its use as a printed timetable is relatively recent. I propose the use of time stripes organised into a meaningful strucutre to supersede the need for timetables.
The goal of any form of notation must be to alleviate the person of overly cumbersome thought processes in an efficient way so one can better direct intellectual resources to achieving a goal rather than merely sorting through a puzzle of possibilities.
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