IDEA DEVELOPMENT
During the Aesthetics and Practise module, I was fascinated by the idea of unnatural worlds - whether or not they can exist and why they do. I wanted to continue exploring this as I was very happy with the process and outcome. I enjoyed it, I learned a lot, but I felt as if I could get more out of it.
This project has been many projects since I started it. Initially, it was going to be an electroacoustic album in a game engine. I was dead set on the idea of being able to maneuver in between objects and blending together the sounds that are emitted. I didn't want it to be a game, however. I also didn't want it to be linear. there were a lot of things that I knew I didn't want it to be, without really being able to nail down what I did want it to be. So, I knew what it wasn't, which isn't very helpful in knowing what it is.
I played around with different ideas, each revolving around giving the listener a level of control over how they experience the album, from open space movement to pressing specific buttons in order to change pitch, distance, and speed of the individual musical elements.
For the most part, this was really interesting to me, I was going in a direction that I liked and I enjoyed the technical development aspect. I couldn't decide on a theme that I wanted to explore - which hindered the technical development aspect as what you do (technically) has to have some relevance to the theme or topic.
At this stage, I wasn't unhappy with my progress. I felt as if I needed to have a clearer image of what I wanted to explore.
I was reading through Donna Haraway's: A Cyborg Manifesto, where she was giving consideration to the social locations of a futuristic, hyper capitalist society.
“Church: Electronic fundamentalist 'super-saver' preachers solemnizing the union of electronic capital and automated fetish gods; intensified importance of churches in resisting the militarized state; central struggle over women's meanings and authority in religion; continued relevance of spirituality, intertwined with sex and health, in political struggle.”
It was ''automated fetish gods'' that initiated a link between the natural, the artificial, and the gods.