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.

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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.

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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.

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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. 

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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.”

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It was ''automated fetish gods'' that initiated a link between the natural, the artificial, and the gods.