Losing gravity again!

Ok. So the first sentence you see in wiki definition of dematerialization is: "For the phenomenon resembling teleportation, see teleportation."
"Teleportation is the transfer of matter from one place to another"
Ok!
And:
"Similar is apport, an earlier word used to describe what today might be called teleportation; and bilocation, when something or someone is described as being able to occupy two places simultaneously."
hum, hum
curious!
So, back to: Melodia, Guidelines for a space propulsion device based on Heim's quantum theory.
And: the voyager golden record.
Are we all trying to get to the same point?
And then that sound experience in the science museum:

• the vibrations travel through the metal and through the bones of your skull to your ears.
• In your ear the sound vibrates the eardrum, then travels through the bones attached and you hear this vibration as sound.

And what about magnetic fields?
Can they be used to create our own "bubble"?

• 
  
• presume the magnetic field is constant with respect to time"

Magnetic fields the album:

wiki: Magnetic Fields (French title: Les Chants magnétiques) is the fifth album by Jean Michel Jarre, released in 1981 on Disques Dreyfus. The album was one of the first records to use sampling as a musical element and represents a departure from the sound of Jarre's previous efforts. For this album Jarre was partly inspired by the works of Andy Warhol and a fascination with the reproducibility of digital sound.
The long first track consists of three distinct movements, the slower second movement being heavily laden with sample work, foreshadowing the sound of Jarre's 1984 album Zoolook.

The Magnetic Fields the band:
The Magnetic Fields is a band led by New York City singer-songwriter Stephin Merritt. Albums released by Merritt under the name "Magnetic Fields" often make extensive use of synthesizers underlying clever lyrics, often about love, that are by turns ironic, bitter, and humorous.
?

Is all down to love in the end!! Isn't it?


The book of love is long and boring
No one can lift the damn thing
It's full of charts and facts and figures and instructions for dancing
But I
I love it when you read to me
And you
You can read me anything
The book of love has music in it
In fact that's where music comes from
Some of it is just transcendental
Some of it is just really dumb
But I
I love it when you sing to me
And you
You can sing me anything
The book of love is long and boring
And written very long ago
It's full of flowers and heart-shaped boxes
And things we're all too young to know
But I
I love it when you give me things
And you
You ought to give me wedding rings
And I
I love it when you give me things
And you
You ought to give me wedding rings
And I
I love it when you give me things
And you
You ought to give me wedding rings
You ought to give me wedding rings
PETER GABRIEL

wiki: Dematerialization

For the phenomenon resembling teleportation, see teleportation.

In economics, dematerialization refers to the absolute or relative reduction in the quantity of materials required to serve economic functions in society. In common terms, dematerialization means doing more with less. This concept is similar to ephemeralization as proposed by Buckminster Fuller.

Dematerialization is the counterargument to the idea that economics is only about 'more is better.' The idea that more is better, a common activist argument which likens economic logic to the logic of a cancer cell, ignores the differences between inputs and outputs, and it ignores the ratio of inputs to outputs.

The Spiral Theory

There is a theory by Luke Golemon that states that each civilization is like a giant spiral, in which it starts on the outside and curves ever inward until collapsing. this theory is new and not well known however.

Dematerialization of the Art Object

In "Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object" Lucy Lippard characterizes the period of 1966 to 1972 as one in which the art object was dematerialised through the new artistic practices of conceptual art .

Are we setting apart vinyl disc from its paper cover?

Yes, we idolize album covers. We buy them because we want to have them in our wall. To show our preferences to others, or just because they are an art object to us.
And what do we do with the disc that was inside? Doesn't it turn our new picture in the wall into a heavy object? It goes in the drawer, of course.
Does this mean we have now two different kind of people: the ones who listen to music and the ones who buy record covers.
Is the dematerialization of music also a new way to really appreciate its old "material" as art?
Is downloading of music making us "upload" music to a higher level?
Why are we so into it anyway?

Lets see what wiki says about dematerialization. And then we'll return to Evan Eisenberg.

The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction, Walter Benjamin, 1936

About art in general
Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: it presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be. This unique existence of the work of art determined the history to which it was subject throughout the time of its existence.

Photography, Film and Music
Technical reproduction can put the copy of the original into situations which would be out of reach for the original itself. Above all, it enables the original to meet the beholder alfway, be it in the form of a photograph or a phonograph record. The cathedral leaves its locale to be received in the studio of a lover of art; the choral reproduction, performed in an auditorium or in the open air, resounds in the drawing room.

By making many reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence. And in permitting the reproduction to meet the beholder or listener in his own particular situation, it reactivates the object reproduced. These two processes lead to a tremendous shattering of tradition which is the obverse of the contemporary crisis and renewal of mankind.

(...) the desire of contemporary masses to bring things 'closer' spatially and humanly, which is just as ardent as their bent toward overcoming the uniqueness of every reality by accepting its reproduction. Every day the urge grows stronger to get hold of an object at very close range by way of its likeness, its reproduction. Unmistakably, reproduction as offered by picture magazines and newsreels differs from the image seen by the unarmed eye. Uniqueness and permanence are as closely linked in the latter as are transitoriness and reproducibility in the former. To pry an object from its shell, to destroy its aura, is the mark of a perception whose 'sense of the universal equality of things' has increased to such a degree that it extracts it even from a unique object by means of reproduction. Thus is manifested in the field of perception what in the theoretical sphere is noticeable in the increasing importance of statistics. The adjustment of reality to the masses and of the masses to reality is a process of unlimited scope, as much for thinking as for perception.
An analysis of art in the age of mechanical reproduction must do justice to these relationships, for they lead us to an all-important insight: for the first time in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual. To an ever greater degree the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility. From a photographic negative, for example, one can make any number of prints; to ask for the 'authentic' print makes no sense. But the instant the criterion of authenticity ceases to be applicable to artistic production, the total function of art is reversed. Instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice – politics.

[Taking some pieces of art from its context might remove its relevance. Can that happen with music as well? If a certain Bach was created for a certain religious moment, what are we perceiving from it when we listen in our living room? Can we capture its original intentions and recreate our own ritual? Religious or not... ]

[Then again is the need to perpetuate moments. And also it can be seen as a need to keep beauty (our own or the image we have of the other).]:
In photography, exhibition value begins to displace cult value all along the line. But cult value does not give way without resistance. It retires into an ultimate retrenchment: the human countenance. It is no accident that the portrait was the focal point of early photography. The cult of remembrance of loved ones, absent or dead, offers a last refuse for the cult value of the picture.

Photography transformed the entire nature of art
The nineteenth-century dispute as to the artistic value of painting versus photography today seems devious and confused. This does not diminish its importance, however; if anything, it underlines it. The dispute was in fact the symptom of a historical transformation the universal impact of which was not realized by either of the rivals. When the age of mechanical reproduction separated art from its basis in cult, the semblance of its autonomy disappeared forever. The resulting change in the function of art transcended the perspective of the century; for a long time it even escaped that of the twentieth century, which experienced the development of the film.

Earlier much futile thought had been devoted to the question of whether photography is an art. The primary question -- whether the very invention of photography had not transformed the entire nature of art -- was not raised. Soon the film theoreticians asked the same ill-considered question with regard to the film. But the difficulties which photography caused traditional aesthetics were mere child's play as compared to those raised by the film. Whence the insensitive and forced character of early theories of the film. Abel Gance, for instance, compares the film with hieroglyphs:

Here, by a remarkable regression, we have come back to the level of expression of the Egyptians .... Pictorial language has not yet matured because our eyes have not yet adjusted to it. There is as yet insufficient respect for, insufficient cult of, what it expresses.

We can look at this from the music point of view: go to a concert or staying at home with a record?:
The artistic performance of a stage actor is definitely presented to the public by the actor in person; that of the screen actor, however, is presented by a camera, with a twofold consequence. The camera that presents the performance of the film actor to the public need not respect the performance as an integral whole. Guided by the cameraman, the camera continually changes its position with respect to the performance. The sequence of positional views which the editor composes from the material supplied him constitutes the completed film. It comprises certain factors of movement which are in reality those of the camera, not to mention special camera angles, close-ups, etc. Hence, the performance of the actor is subjected to a series of optical tests. This is the first consequence of the fact that the actor's performance is presented by means of a camera. Also, the film actor lacks the opportunity of the stage actor to adjust to the audience during his performance, since he does not present his performance to the audience in person. This permits the audience to take the position of a critic, without experiencing any personal contact with the actor. The audience's identification with the actor is really an identification with the camera. Consequently the audience takes the position of the camera; its approach is that of testing. This is not the approach to which cult values may be exposed.
.... The projector will play with his shadow before the public, and he himself must be content to play before the camera.' This situation might also be characterized as follows: for the first time -- and this is the effect of the film -- man has to operate with his whole living person, yet forgoing its aura. For aura is tied to his presence; there can be no replica of it. The aura which, on the stage, emanates from Macbeth, cannot be separated for the spectators from that of the actor. However, the singularity of the shot in the studio is that the camera is substituted for the public. Consequently, the aura that envelops the actor vanishes, and with it the aura of the figure he portrays.

[Doesn't this sound like what Evan Eisenberg describe as the substitution of the musician for the recording itself? "For music was now an object that could be owned by the individual and used at his own convenience. There was no need to cooperate, coordinate or share with anyone else. Technically the musicians were still necessary; given the economics of production, so was the rest of the audience. But only technically. Once the record was owned they disappeared."]

Let us assume that an actor is supposed to be startled by a knock at the door. If his reaction is not satisfactory, the director can resort to an expedient: when the actor happens to be at the studio again he has a shot fired behind him without his being forewarned of it. The frightened reaction can be shot now and be cut into the screen version. Nothing more strikingly shows that art has left the realm of the 'beautiful semblance' which, so far, had been taken to be the only sphere where art could thrive.

About the participant public

For centuries a small number of writers were confronted by many thousands of readers. This changed toward the end of the last century. With the increasing extension of the press, which kept placing new political, religious, scientific, professional, and local organs before the readers, an increasing number of readers became writers -- at first, occasional ones. It began with the daily press opening to its readers space for 'letters to the editor.' And today there is hardly a gainfully employed European who could not, in principle, find an opportunity to publish somewhere or other comments on his work, grievances, documentary reports, or that sort of thing. Thus, the distinction between author and public is about to lose its basic character. The difference becomes merely functional; it may vary from case to case. At any moment the reader is ready to turn into a writer. As expert, which he had to become willy-nilly in an extremely specialized work process, even if only in some minor respect, the reader gains access to authorship. In the Soviet Union work itself is given a voice. To present it verbally is part of a man's ability to perform the work. Literary license is now founded on polytechnic rather than specialized training and thus becomes common property.

All this can easily be applied to the film, where transitions that in literature took centuries have come about in a decade. In cinematic practice, particularly in Russia, this change-over has partially become established reality. Some of the players whom we meet in Russian films are not actors in our sense but people who portray themselvesmand primarily in their own work process. In Western Europe the capitalistic exploitation of the film denies consideration to modern man's legitimate claim to being reproduced. Under these circumstances the film industry is trying hard to spur the interest of the masses through illusion – promoting spectacles and dubious speculations.

in 2005 Charles Alexander Moffat said:

We have surpassed the information age. Information, and in this case images, are now readily available online in digital reproduction. This form of digital reproduction makes the advertising of original works by amateur artists to be on the same ground as professional artists because it becomes a level playing field. The influence of the art world as an institution is placed at the sidelines and in the area of art history while contemporary artists compete for hits, recognition and sales. The sales of artworks online have increased dramatically since the 1990s and while there is no official census, one may conclude that the sale of art online might have already surpassed the sales of artwork in art galleries.

Charles Alexander Moffat, The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction

in 1931 Paul Valéry said:

In all arts there is a physical component which can no longer be considered or treated as it used to be, which cannot remain unaffected by our modern knowledge and power. For the last twenty years neither matter nor space nor time has been what it was from time immemorial. We must except great innovations to transform the entire technique of the arts, thereby affecting artistic invention itself and perhaps even bringing about an amazing change in our very notion of art.

Just as water, gas, and electricity are brought into our houses from far off to satisfy our needs in response to a minimal effort, so we shall be supplied with visual or auditory images, which will appear and disappear at the simple movement of the hand, hardly more than a sign.

Paul Valery, Pieces sur L'art, Le Conquete de l'ubiquite

Ceremonies of a solitary

Private music, music no one else hears, reinforces your invisibility by giving you a private structure of time to set against public time.

Stravinsky called music 'the sole domain in which man realizes the present'. But living in the present is (contrary to vulgar opinion) nearly impossible in a modern city, which always hungers for the future and eats the past. One reason for the vogue of headphones among city dwellers is the sense they give that one escaped the city's voracity, because one is inside the music. The desire to be inside a record is made graphic by the desert island fantasy.

Ceremonies of a solitary, "The Recording Angel", EVAN EISENBERG



Illustration for book cover: Stranded, Rock and Roll for a Desert Island