Acid Education
Altered perceptions or misperceptions: The DJ as multimodal communicator
I went to a party on the weekend. After staying up all night and listening to hours of essentially word free music I found myself thinking about multimodality in connection to DJing and more generally to the psychedelic experience. It’s difficult to know how up front I can be here, I’m talking about taboo subjects; altered states of mind, drug induced synaesthesia and unconstrained interpretation.
Perhaps a bit of context:
I have some experience as a DJ. I’ve played to various sized crowds (often around 300-500 people) at a number of outdoor parties. The people at these events are most often supporters of the “better living through chemistry” view of drugs. They are positive, empowered and political users of psychedelics (usually LSD or psilocybin mushrooms) and other drugs (amphetamines, including ecstasy, and marijuana). The combined effects of these drugs (while somewhat different in every individual case) tend to leave the participants in a cybernetical (that is, ripe with the potential to make connections) state of mind. This is a conscious choice. People (well I) view this state of mind not as intoxication but rather as a return to the promise and full potential of human thinking (cf.: there is some conjecture and evidence that the primitive inclusion of psychedelic plants in the hominid diet may have been one of the mechanisms that helped propel our ancestors towards self reflection and put them on the long road towards minded humanness as we recognise it, Terrence McKenna has termed this era the stoned age).
At this type of party the final ingredient in the heady mix of chemicals and minds, is the music. LOUD, LOUD, LOUD… um, I don’t really know how to get it across, music so all encompassing that nothing seems to exist outside of the intersection of sound and mind, is one way to put it. Not only the loudest music you’ve ever heard, but the loudest sound of any kind. Noise to make a world where sound and rhythm and melody seem to drip from the very air. How am I going? These are images not measures (I know) but that’s all I have. The music (at this volume) is awesome, unsettling, and terrible, in the way the countenance of an angry but achingly beautiful God might be described as terrible. These are sounds that can reduce the self centred ego to nothing and take us to the edge of what it is to be organic rather than aural. We confront the questions: Can a human be a sound? Can a human come back from being a sound?
So where does this leave multimodality? At these events there is music, there are usually animated projections, a light show, the weather (we’re outdoors remember), sculpture, artwork, installations, performances and a crowd of crazy, high, people moving, moving, moving. The DJs’ job here is to create a perfectly timed (you can not put a beat wrong or the story you’re weaving falls apart) musical expression that brings the minds together and that helps them to get through the chaos of night and find the hope and promise of the dawn. I wanted to say ‘…to create a musical artefact’ (rather than expression) because in the environment I’m talking about music does not seem to be as fleeting and untouchable as simple sound, but at the same time the word artefact suggests something that can be returned to over and over (a physical thing), which is far from the case. Like live music at a concert the particular interpretation and musical expression at any party can only happen one time. Perhaps an appropriate name for a DJ set could be a temporally unstable musical artefact. It is something structured and constructed, often pre-planned (but we all know about the best laid plans…) and usually rich with meanings that originate in many places.
So, the multimodality I’m interested in is not that embodied in all the lights and performances and artwork, but that engendered by the particular musical progression that the DJs and live musicians create.
There are many things that help one to decide what to include in a particular set and what comes next. Before I even start I must consider the time I’m playing, where the gig is and which crew is running the party. All of these things set a framework (particularly the time), or perhaps highlight some signposts, that help to guide me in the track selections that I make. This is where multimodality comes to the fore. The track selections are made using a variety of cues which range from the particular sound of the song and what style it is in (foremost), through to who produced it, what its called, what label its on, when it was made, how popular it is (or has been), what its cover or label look like, and how much people have been playing it recently. As I consider these and many other factors I attempt to tell/communicate a story that uses this information to make meaning. The next track is always connected to the one before, there are reasons. The beginning of the set is connected to the end. As I plan and construct 2 or 3 hours of music I attempt to create a progression of sounds, ideas, meanings and rhythms that makes sense. Much of the narrative exists apart from the simple, raw experience of listening to the music. It is a meta-story which accompanies the musical expression, a field of meaning whose depth is only determined by the amount of knowledge and creativity members of the crowd bring with them. Of course, as we may warn a pretentious poet, it is no use if some obscure trick blows the audience away. For a DJ this means that the musical progression must always be paramount. At the same time, however, there is little reason not to fill (when it’s possible) these other levels of communication with meaning as well.
Multi-modality, as I’m imagining it here, is not a combination of audio, visual, textual, and tactile, but rather a it is conjunction between sound, thought and experience. The meaning that a member of the crowd at such an event makes is not determined or constrained by that that I (or another DJ) have designed into the expression. Combinations of awe-making sound, altered perceptions and the physical environment, including the people in it, help non-verbal/non-linguistic, impressionistic, narratives to form within the listeners and to grow under their guidance. This kind of unconstrained interpretation is not somehow of little or no value simply because the meanings made by the audience are not necessarily the same as those constructed by the communicator. Such interpretation is not just fantasy, it is thought, structurally coupled to an aurally driven reality. It is possible (and often subjectively obvious) that this type of thought has as much claim to truth as any other thinking. How I hear you ask?
In order to cut through the gloop of post-modern relativity, we can assert with the evolutionists that if truth is about anything then it is surely about an organism’s ability to function in its environment. The human central nervous system is designed to reveal true things about the world to us, things that improve (and this is the test) our ability deal with the world without hurting ourselves. There is an experiment (ref: Mckenna, T. Food of the Gods) in which patients given small doses of psilocybin were asked to identify when two apparently parallel lines diverged from each other. The surprising result was that those under the influence of these small doses were able to make the detection more reliably than their compatriots who had not been dosed. The important philosophical implication is that one’s being under the influence of a drug can actually produce a situation in which one is better informed about the world than would be the case without the influence of the drug. What this means is that it just aint necessarily so, that stoned and ill-informed go together.
The conclusion here, that the answer to the altered perceptions versus misperceptions question, is not as obvious as it first appears, is one that may be difficult for many people to accept. There is little doubt though, that having an appreciation of the validity of altered states and some understanding of other modes of thinking (even those that are drug related/induced) can lead towards a better understanding of the variety of (new) modes of communication and thought in which students engage.
I’m not entirely certain where all this leads but I do suspect that the themes I’ve raised, even though they are miles outside the mainstream of education theory, should not be ignored. Of course, one is not going to learn the symbols for the first 20 chemical elements, or when federation in Australia happened, by going out and taking some acid or listening to ultra-loud music but it is possible that ideas about (say) just what Hamlet’s problem was, or where the roots of modern advertising imagery lie, or why people in the past (and today) have worshipped the Sun, are accessible through this type of process. No one can predetermine where unconstrained education would end up. This is both its problem and its promise. Problem, because rigid systems and those within them fear chaos, and promise because no matter what anyone tries to do about this fear, chaos will always be just around the corner. Open-ended education, worthy of the name, would embrace this potential chaos and would value more about young people than their ability to function within the modes of experience that Western society has traditionally validated. Kids want to learn, in fact there is no way that they can help it, however, they’re not served well by too much of the stuff that our rigid education systems present and embody. The question becomes: How can we serve them better? As the various “progressive” education theorists attempt to answer this it appears that they stay well away from anything too radical. Rather than redesign the system they redesign within the system. This may be realistic and pragmatic but I wonder if it is really innovative.
I don’t know that I’m quite where I thought I’d be when I started this...but I guess I’m somewhere. I have very little ability to predict how others will take this kind of thing. If anyone gets this far, tell me what you think. Bye.
I went to a party on the weekend. After staying up all night and listening to hours of essentially word free music I found myself thinking about multimodality in connection to DJing and more generally to the psychedelic experience. It’s difficult to know how up front I can be here, I’m talking about taboo subjects; altered states of mind, drug induced synaesthesia and unconstrained interpretation.
Perhaps a bit of context:
I have some experience as a DJ. I’ve played to various sized crowds (often around 300-500 people) at a number of outdoor parties. The people at these events are most often supporters of the “better living through chemistry” view of drugs. They are positive, empowered and political users of psychedelics (usually LSD or psilocybin mushrooms) and other drugs (amphetamines, including ecstasy, and marijuana). The combined effects of these drugs (while somewhat different in every individual case) tend to leave the participants in a cybernetical (that is, ripe with the potential to make connections) state of mind. This is a conscious choice. People (well I) view this state of mind not as intoxication but rather as a return to the promise and full potential of human thinking (cf.: there is some conjecture and evidence that the primitive inclusion of psychedelic plants in the hominid diet may have been one of the mechanisms that helped propel our ancestors towards self reflection and put them on the long road towards minded humanness as we recognise it, Terrence McKenna has termed this era the stoned age).
At this type of party the final ingredient in the heady mix of chemicals and minds, is the music. LOUD, LOUD, LOUD… um, I don’t really know how to get it across, music so all encompassing that nothing seems to exist outside of the intersection of sound and mind, is one way to put it. Not only the loudest music you’ve ever heard, but the loudest sound of any kind. Noise to make a world where sound and rhythm and melody seem to drip from the very air. How am I going? These are images not measures (I know) but that’s all I have. The music (at this volume) is awesome, unsettling, and terrible, in the way the countenance of an angry but achingly beautiful God might be described as terrible. These are sounds that can reduce the self centred ego to nothing and take us to the edge of what it is to be organic rather than aural. We confront the questions: Can a human be a sound? Can a human come back from being a sound?
So where does this leave multimodality? At these events there is music, there are usually animated projections, a light show, the weather (we’re outdoors remember), sculpture, artwork, installations, performances and a crowd of crazy, high, people moving, moving, moving. The DJs’ job here is to create a perfectly timed (you can not put a beat wrong or the story you’re weaving falls apart) musical expression that brings the minds together and that helps them to get through the chaos of night and find the hope and promise of the dawn. I wanted to say ‘…to create a musical artefact’ (rather than expression) because in the environment I’m talking about music does not seem to be as fleeting and untouchable as simple sound, but at the same time the word artefact suggests something that can be returned to over and over (a physical thing), which is far from the case. Like live music at a concert the particular interpretation and musical expression at any party can only happen one time. Perhaps an appropriate name for a DJ set could be a temporally unstable musical artefact. It is something structured and constructed, often pre-planned (but we all know about the best laid plans…) and usually rich with meanings that originate in many places.
So, the multimodality I’m interested in is not that embodied in all the lights and performances and artwork, but that engendered by the particular musical progression that the DJs and live musicians create.
There are many things that help one to decide what to include in a particular set and what comes next. Before I even start I must consider the time I’m playing, where the gig is and which crew is running the party. All of these things set a framework (particularly the time), or perhaps highlight some signposts, that help to guide me in the track selections that I make. This is where multimodality comes to the fore. The track selections are made using a variety of cues which range from the particular sound of the song and what style it is in (foremost), through to who produced it, what its called, what label its on, when it was made, how popular it is (or has been), what its cover or label look like, and how much people have been playing it recently. As I consider these and many other factors I attempt to tell/communicate a story that uses this information to make meaning. The next track is always connected to the one before, there are reasons. The beginning of the set is connected to the end. As I plan and construct 2 or 3 hours of music I attempt to create a progression of sounds, ideas, meanings and rhythms that makes sense. Much of the narrative exists apart from the simple, raw experience of listening to the music. It is a meta-story which accompanies the musical expression, a field of meaning whose depth is only determined by the amount of knowledge and creativity members of the crowd bring with them. Of course, as we may warn a pretentious poet, it is no use if some obscure trick blows the audience away. For a DJ this means that the musical progression must always be paramount. At the same time, however, there is little reason not to fill (when it’s possible) these other levels of communication with meaning as well.
Multi-modality, as I’m imagining it here, is not a combination of audio, visual, textual, and tactile, but rather a it is conjunction between sound, thought and experience. The meaning that a member of the crowd at such an event makes is not determined or constrained by that that I (or another DJ) have designed into the expression. Combinations of awe-making sound, altered perceptions and the physical environment, including the people in it, help non-verbal/non-linguistic, impressionistic, narratives to form within the listeners and to grow under their guidance. This kind of unconstrained interpretation is not somehow of little or no value simply because the meanings made by the audience are not necessarily the same as those constructed by the communicator. Such interpretation is not just fantasy, it is thought, structurally coupled to an aurally driven reality. It is possible (and often subjectively obvious) that this type of thought has as much claim to truth as any other thinking. How I hear you ask?
In order to cut through the gloop of post-modern relativity, we can assert with the evolutionists that if truth is about anything then it is surely about an organism’s ability to function in its environment. The human central nervous system is designed to reveal true things about the world to us, things that improve (and this is the test) our ability deal with the world without hurting ourselves. There is an experiment (ref: Mckenna, T. Food of the Gods) in which patients given small doses of psilocybin were asked to identify when two apparently parallel lines diverged from each other. The surprising result was that those under the influence of these small doses were able to make the detection more reliably than their compatriots who had not been dosed. The important philosophical implication is that one’s being under the influence of a drug can actually produce a situation in which one is better informed about the world than would be the case without the influence of the drug. What this means is that it just aint necessarily so, that stoned and ill-informed go together.
The conclusion here, that the answer to the altered perceptions versus misperceptions question, is not as obvious as it first appears, is one that may be difficult for many people to accept. There is little doubt though, that having an appreciation of the validity of altered states and some understanding of other modes of thinking (even those that are drug related/induced) can lead towards a better understanding of the variety of (new) modes of communication and thought in which students engage.
I’m not entirely certain where all this leads but I do suspect that the themes I’ve raised, even though they are miles outside the mainstream of education theory, should not be ignored. Of course, one is not going to learn the symbols for the first 20 chemical elements, or when federation in Australia happened, by going out and taking some acid or listening to ultra-loud music but it is possible that ideas about (say) just what Hamlet’s problem was, or where the roots of modern advertising imagery lie, or why people in the past (and today) have worshipped the Sun, are accessible through this type of process. No one can predetermine where unconstrained education would end up. This is both its problem and its promise. Problem, because rigid systems and those within them fear chaos, and promise because no matter what anyone tries to do about this fear, chaos will always be just around the corner. Open-ended education, worthy of the name, would embrace this potential chaos and would value more about young people than their ability to function within the modes of experience that Western society has traditionally validated. Kids want to learn, in fact there is no way that they can help it, however, they’re not served well by too much of the stuff that our rigid education systems present and embody. The question becomes: How can we serve them better? As the various “progressive” education theorists attempt to answer this it appears that they stay well away from anything too radical. Rather than redesign the system they redesign within the system. This may be realistic and pragmatic but I wonder if it is really innovative.
I don’t know that I’m quite where I thought I’d be when I started this...but I guess I’m somewhere. I have very little ability to predict how others will take this kind of thing. If anyone gets this far, tell me what you think. Bye.
posted by Chris at 9:55 PM
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