Hi, it's a pleasure to have you as a guest.
This is my virtual refuge, in the borderland.
Which border? Actually, I am continuously looking for it myself and it's not easy to pinpoint it…but it's there and maybe it will always be there. Just when you thought you succeeded in crossing it, you realize that it was like trying to erase a line in the sand. All you did was widen it…who knows? Maybe that borderland is generated by my attempts to fill the (imaginary?) abyss which separates Aestethis from Mathesis, sensation from reason, art from technology, serious music from light music, sound from noise, artistic from commercial videos. But it's here I want to stay, right across that line, like Focault's pendulum, never stopping in either side of the sky. Seven days a week.
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7.
320x240 DivX Pal Audio 5.1 AC3 Tools: A&G X-spat boX, Propellerheads Reason, Digidesign Pro Tools HD and Sony DV Cam. |
(7 see the exoteric meaning in numerology) Why seven? Our Lord, for those like me who believe in him, rested on the seventh day but, forgive me, I don't think this justifies the choice of dividing our life in weeks. Maybe for God the day after was just the eighth day. I perfectly understand the rotation speed of my planet when it comes to day and night, but I never fully understood weeks, months, years and the calculations that define them. At least I don't accept them as absolute. They could be totally different and nothing much would change. Realistically, the search for the perfect calendar is utopian. In fact we can now calculate the length of a year with infinitesimal accuracy, but this span of time doesn’t remain constant over long periods. Due to gravitational interaction, the earth's orbit (specifically its eccentricity) slowly changes, thus affecting the duration of a 'year'. Moreover, because of the effect of tidal phenomena, the earth's rotation is currently slowing down and therefore days are getting longer, albeit by very little. Therefore, in the last few decades, an additional second has been inserted when necessary at midnight on the 31st of December, in order to keep the astronomical year in line with the calendar. But these added seconds (23 from1972 to 2005) also alter the average duration of the Gregorian year. Not to mention the time zones when travelling between continents…how long is that journey for the traveller? Does he/she also travel backward or forward in time? Let's admit that almost everywhere in the world human beings cannot understand what time really is and, therefore, as they usually do with everything that is beyond their limited understanding, they try to dominate it by using a series of seven solar cycles which should repeat itself ad infinitum. Having assigned a particular name, like Sunday or Monday, to each cycle, they have also attributed certain features to each one of them. Is it possible that tomorrow I should feel the same as all the rest of the world on a Monday? No chance! I'll decide which day it is tomorrow, or at least I'll try! This mathematical partition called week, although useful on a practical level, represents a cage, an alienating vicious circle for those who have to submit to the perverse game dictated by modern economics (in other world for those who have to earn a living). Tom Hodgkinson, in his fantastic book "How to Be Idle", maintains: - The religion of industry has transformed human beings into working robots. Joy and wisdom have been replaced by work and worry. –
As I would put it briefly, we should ‘live first and then work’ to regain control of our own life, of Our Time. In this video we imagine a person who is a prisoner of this seven day cycle and suddenly feels something ‘switching on’ inside, something forgotten but still laying in the folds of his memory, a dream, a sensation, a feeling, who knows…we shall never know. Musically I have tried to evoke this alienation with a repetitive and slightly boring 7/4 tempo, increasingly broken by melodic bursts anticipating the eventual ‘switch on’ and the advent of the new ‘status quo’ for the main character. The 3D audio movements follow the basic concept of a cyclic repetition of events, some sounds being strategically positioned in space, while the stereo environments of direct intakes have been reprocessed in 3D-EST 5.1.
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6.
320x240 DivX Pal Audio 5.1 AC3 Tools: A&G X-spat boX, Propellerheads Reason, Digidesign Pro Tools HD and Sony DV Cam. Computer: Apple MacPro and G5, Final Cut, DVD Studio Pro. Actors: Michele Crestacci, Monica Brachini. Direction and video editing: Simone Belli and Luigi Agostini. Music: Luigi Agostini. Screenplay: first part: Simone Belli and Luigi Agostini from an idea by Andrea Marmugi, second part: Luigi Agostini. |
(6 see the exoteric meaning in numerology) The music of this video was conceived before the images and the screenplay, during one of my frequent mornings between sleep and wake. I had had a beautiful dream, but I had forgotten it forever and all that was left was a strange indefinable sensation that inspired the basic harmony of this composition. The tempo is 6/8.
All I can say about the screenplay is that often stories write themselves and, in those cases, our minds are mere instruments. If I may make a suggestion, I would recommend to any young writer to wake up early in the morning and make an effort to remain in a state of semi conscience as long as possible. My best ideas have been generated in this way, without any use of romantic laudanum, smoke or other health threatening drugs to enhance my perceptions…I have always though of drugs as a sly method used by ‘big brother’ to befuddle intellectuals who could threaten him as they may understand his game and help the masses to wake up. One more bit of advice? Read, study and respect yourselves and others if you want to be truly free to choose your own life. Whoever is trying to convince you that culture is boring or ‘out of fashion’ is only trying to cheat you…
Back to number 6. The theory of the existence of a ‘sixth sense’ is commonly used to explain any perception that cannot be attributed to our normal five senses. Even our dreams, at least the ones we remember, may somehow mean something more than just our cerebral activity during the REM phase of our sleep. Since we can’t remember our dream life when we are awake, is it possible that we may not remember our waking hours when we dream? At this point, how do we know for sure which of the two lives is the real one?
Probably by living as much as possible in the borderland between dream and wake, the only one we are aware of, Neil Gaiman has written my favourite modern work of art, the cartoon novel "Sandman". This video è dedicated to him and to Dave Mc Kean, who has given unpredictable form and substance to Neil’s vision.
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5. |
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"Metal Souls"
- Metal souls brush one another (casualmente?) |
"Anime Metalliche"
- Anime metalliche si sfiorano (casually?) |
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4 |
(4 see the exoteric meaning in numerology). Currently the most common musical signature in the world is 4/4. For me this has a particular charm: a simple accent differentiates it from the binary signature, presently the least common in the world. I find number four to be the most ambiguous and mysterious among the seven I have chosen as sources of inspiration. The parts of the day, the seasons, the cardinal points and the types of nucleobase in DNA are all four. But the Knights of the Apocalypse were also four and, in the Chinese, Korean and Japanese cultures, number four is pronounced like the word death and it is the focus of much superstition as well as many actual phobias. The video inspired by this number aims at highlighting the ambiguity of the Italian media, when it comes to denouncing criminal acts connected to the worlds of politics and the economy. In my first forty years I have seen murders, mass murder and inexplicable accidents remain unpunished or even without an established cause. And today it seems to be accepted as the norm. People listen to the count of daily deaths in the TV news, while they are eating or waiting for the next football match to begin. Many don’t take any notice, any longer.
Do take notice! Never get used to it!
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3. |
In hindsight, with a higher level of civic responsibility, we should return to the economic, political and cultural high point of the eighteenth century.
Deh, un mi direte mia he v'accontentate d'avecci solo ir carcio di serie A? I go di Luarelli sono esagerati, un di'o di no, ma ir godimento dura poo e poi risiamo ner bottino più di prima... sveglia! (Livornese slang, the meaning is almost the following: We cannot be happy just to have first division football. Lucarelli’s goals are wonderful, I can’t deny it, but the pleasure is short lived and then we are back to square one…wake up!).
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2. |
In the 20th century the avant-garde has moved from atonalism to dodecaphony, from integral seriality to aleatoric music, from concrete music to musical ideologies borrowed from other cultures, from Jazz to Pink Floyd, from Genesis to R.E.M. and, to this day, for a large share of the public, the most important musical event is the MTV Awards (in Italy the San Remo Festival). We can only place our hopes in Internet and in self-production. I can’t certainly blame the escapees of our video, fading out maybe in the direction of a distant future, where they will be able to play for no practical nor material aim, for an entire planet of sensitive aware souls…
P.S. Special thanks to Full-Time DJ Riccardo Cioni, who, for me, is still the best DJ in the world.
lior DJ del mondo.
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1. |
- It has been observed that, if I know that the one suffering is someone who has not behaved too well, my nerve cells suffer less! There is already a sense of justice at the level of the nerve cells who ‘sympathize’ with others. –
One could think that the capacity to distinguish between good and evil is a ‘physiological’ fact, deriving from a biological predisposition as well as from cultural and educational influences. But what is ‘evil’?
Vilayanur Ramachandran has recently put forward the hypothesis that autism could be caused by a deficiency in the mirror neuron system. Such deficiency would have two consequences: the inability to understand actions by others and to identify their emotions. Could this type of deficiency, on a lesser degree and in combination with other mental disorders, lead apparently healthy individuals to behave in a negative way in relation to others? It could be said that individuals who do evil things have total disregard for the actions and the emotions of others…
And what is good? In numerology number one is often seen as the origin of everything and it represents perfection, the absolute and the divinity in monotheistic religions. I like to believe that there is only one God, invoked by all human beings with different names, reflecting the ancestral multiplicity of cultures and traditions in believers all over the world. I like to believe that we have not evolved enough to understand who or what God is, but, with great humility, I also like to believe that God may be an entity that is made up of the vital energy of all of us as well as all living creatures. I find this very consoling. We come from Him and return to Him until our soul is ready to be reborn in a new body, time and reality. Maybe, in a little filament called DNA are saved many of our experiences and feelings from previous lives, mixed with the ones coming from our parents and ancestors, not just for the survival of our species, but for its cultural and spiritual growth. As you may have noticed, I like thinking and fantasizing. I think, I like thinking and I am what I think. Musically I was intrigued by the challenge: number one denies any rhythmic subdivision and represents an absurdity. But after all isn’t it absurd and arrogant to believe that we can divide, classify and quantify time as well as our existence using only numbers?
Luigi Agostini, Leghorn, 12th April 2007
Translation from Italian by Antonio Liotti
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