TRAVEL DIARY

A weblog regularly updated by Jodi Rose.

Thursday, April 17, 2003

9:57 AM
Posted by jodi rose

writing chapter on the context of my bridge project. from the ancient Greeks aeolian harps, through the Futurists valorisation of industry, technology and the art of noise, (shame about the fascism) to of course Pierre Schaeffer and musique concrete, Stokhausen, Piere Boulez, John Cage and his exploration of indeterminacy and chance, opening up the audience's ears to hear the sounds of the environment as musical composition, leading on to steve reich, edgard varese with his out there radio compositions. Contemporary artists alan lamb (who records and composes with telegraph wires), jon rose (fence wires) and various other sound art practitioners. The new model of writing 3-4,000 words a month seems to be working, I've done 1,500 so far and it's the 17th, so we're on track.

Of course, the next 11 days will be in sydney, and may not get that much work done - but at least my friends have got back to me, had to stop wallowing in self pity. The greater existential issue underlying all this is that I don't have a strong sense of belonging, or 'home' in any particular location or with a single group. This is, no doubt, the post-modern nomadic state - and as Heidegger wrote, in 1947 "homelessness is coming to be the destiny of the world." My friend Bianca in berlin told me "you have to belong to yourself, before you can belong anywhere or with anyone else." Maybe it is better to have many homes and belong to many groups - not that I own any real estate. Failing on that manifestation of the great australian dream; having traded in my chance at an investment flat for this insane dream of recording bridges around the world. not that I regret it at all - just have to work harder to manifest some results, get that cd out there, make some postcards - my mind is on merchandising this week. Plenty of people said they'd buy a cd at my exhibition - except I want to edit and compose the sound before releasing it publicly, and as noted below, have got kind of stuck with that process.

Part of the trouble is I really don't like working on computers - when I learnt to sound edit, it was on 16mm film, and in radio studios - and I still love the physicality of the sound in those mediums. It seems to somehow disappear once you feed it into the computer, and becomes just 0101010 or whatever the code is. Lingering Luddite inclinations, although I have to use technology, I am deeply ambivalent about it.
Enough of this ranting, must go and get some work done, and maybe knit a few more rows.