4. JUNE 4 MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS MUSEUM If you were allowed to choose one instrument to take home, free of charge, paid shipping, which one would you choose and why?* If you have a picture, show it on WhatsApp. How did your experience of seeing the instruments correlate with hearing audio examples? What did we miss out on by being unable to touch or attempt to play the instrument? How does an instrument function as an interface? As a system? As an interactive art object. For a trained musician, they use the instrument differently from an untrained musician. They use it to interpret and perform the works of a composer as closely as possible to how the music is written. For a folk musician, less skill is required, the song is played on a more affordable instrument, and the composition is allowed more room for interpretation. Non-musicians making music use technology to create and perform their compositions. Interface question: How are the physical shapes of musical instruments related to the human body? Systems question: How are the mechanisms of musical instruments related to the human body? Mcluhan: Technologies are extensions of our body. "When a pianist sits down and does a virtuoso performance, he is in a technical sense transmitting more information to a machine than any other human activity involving machinery allows." - Robert Moog How is our creative production informed by tools? How does this experience have relevance to us as digital creatives? We have a wider range of options for tools and how to use them, but just as many of the instruments we saw and heard are evolutions or mutations of traditional instruments, how might we customize, mutate, and evolve our tools in ways that are specific to us and our individual preferences and purposes? Tchaikovsky’s use of actual cannons in his 1812 Overture "Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed" (Antoine Lavoisier). How related to composing? To new media? ////////////////////////////////// MAGRITTE MUSEUM Magritte quotes for discussion: Freedom is the possibility of being and not the obligation to be. Revolt is the reflex of the living man. The real value of art is according to its liberating power. I hear this moment of lucidity that no method can make appear. (receptivity/discovery) Written poetry is invisible; painted poetry has a visible appearance. The term composition presupposes a possible decomposition in the form of analysis for example. To the extent that my paintings are valid, they do not lend themselves to analysis. Everything in my works comes from the feeling of certainty that we belong, in fact, to an enigmatic universe. To be surreal is to banish the deja vu from the mind and seek out the not yet seen. Tricky bastard: Why is it called "The Treachery of Images?" How many ways is this not a pipe? What is "this"? What is meant by "is"? What is meant by "not"? What is "a pipe?" quite literally? Between a painting of a pipe, a photograph of a pipe, the word pipe, and an object called a pipe? What is the relationship between the title and the image in most of Magritte’s work? One theme in our discussions has been in navigating the need to earn money with the need to pursue a creative career at whatever level. Based on the work you saw yesterday, how did Magritte do this? --- Flusser thought for today: Freedom as Permanent Strangeness True freedom for the expelled is not just movement, but the freedom to remain a stranger, to preserve difference and foster ongoing internal and external dialogues.