Author: Elora Trotter

Sometimes, still, I can feel this kind of future brush my skin like an operatic note tapering off somewhere. The rushing static of a runaway dream. Maybe for me, it’s enough to know that it has existed and will exist again, with or without my input. Even if it’s not existing in my body, that it is existing in bodies elsewhere. Bodies connected to mine. That one Kanye lyric “Everything I’m not made me everything I am.” Technology has been and is being midwifed by some pretty evil forces. I really think Trump and Thiel and Hegseth are unknowing and helpless vessels of trickster spirits they will never see or understand but nevertheless are. Can’t help but be. Was never their choice. To, what, bring down imperialism and the Western empire? Is this the subversion and chaos and yet in the end totally predicable story necessary to finally do it? I think so. I think this is the long-term equilibrium equilibriuming. So I think for modern technoscience, by virtue of it being itself, it will bring about its own end. We need not aid in its destruction. We already are. We have this Hobbesian way of being and we also have mycelial aspects of our being that aren’t systematized or normative right now. I’ve always thought about technology as having very real spiritual consequences. I’ll be the first to say it’s done a number on mine, for better and worse. I think we tend to think in this binary. Like, because we’ve only experienced “technology” within our current circumstances, we assume this is the only kind of reality it can bring about. This is the only way we can know it. But in the reading, technoshamanism reveals that no, our modern sensibilities of technology can very easily be a part of a different kind of reality that is more aligned with the social and biological, and all the other aspects of looking at the word -al ways, ways of being that is shamanism. And the reading is right that we exist within a very powerful engine that tends to just co-opt and consume beautiful things into itself, so how to avoid doing that. How to deepen and embody our understandings. And I liked that Oliveros part where she bodily connects to the tech around her. It is very much alive but none of us really feelingly know and that’s why we exploit and abuse our technology the way we do. At times, I feel really bad for it because I know it is suffering and I cannot feel its suffering. Because I am still yet another imperialized appendage that is losing its ability to feel and I want to depend and truly live out these understandings. There’s no lies you can tell here. All you can kind of do is be and try to be it and there’s no excuses otherwise. Your face is bare to God. And I want to read all of the authors that were listed more. So yeah. I also want to attach my poem I wrote a while ago because I didn’t know there was a word like entheogenesis which is cool. I like entheogens.

HOW I DECIDED TO STAY:

windows wink like radiant bullet holes

in the sun a city

becomes a sweaty crucible for

churning

bleeding angels

the water inside distilled into dark vein wine because

we could not speak

and then could not stop speaking

with the same magic the Bible cast when it coaxed the Word

from the black beginning

i am sure our language had never been spoken before

except by the Neandetherals

ultimate entheogen, love

will wash us inside

slowly

like a sky change 

we will emerge as an emulsion and

dine at some last supper to congratulate the

champion incarnation and

model alchemist

i think of Aphrodite rising in that Botticelli painting

let the demons vomit in your body

watch the night spread its wings

and after it has finished dragging your eyebags across the land

let me tell you a very important thing

(the whole world is covered in butterflies)

let me tell you how you will survive

(we will watch the earth thaw into breathy morning

enough to forget that it used to be any other way)

i still see your voice

squiggling like broken caterpillars

remember (always remember)

faith is the gravity that holds the last stars together 

all we need is a trick of photosynthesis

i am already the woman i want to become

I also like these questions:

1. How can artists embrace visionary consciousness?

2. How can art support entheogenesis (becoming divine

together) by joining ancient shamanic techniques and

contemporary technoscientific tools?

3. How can art catalyze greater awareness of what

Thich Nhat Hanh calls interbeing (the unity of all things)

to help heal the Earth?

What does it mean for something to be live? And what does liveness mean to us? Why is it important to us? I didn’t exactly know what the author meant when they said “meditaization may in fact amplify perceptions of liveness.” Amplify how? In what way? Regardless, I started thinking about how mediatization has affected our perceptions of liveness. Can liveness mean more than “physical activity in the moment of performance”? I don’t think so. What that physicality looks and feels like is different when we’re using computers, which the reading also goes into, but I think our hypermediatized environment has made “true” liveness as the reading conveys it feel rarer, and has also made delivering liveness more challenging in some ways.

Access to compilations of the greatest live performances in recorded history are mere clicks away. A lot of people attend events wanting to feel how that video made them feel, which produces a manufactured sense of “liveness,” as if we’re attending this performance as a prepackaged experience, with certain expectations.

And the reading goes, that’s not really live then, is it. Or it’s on one end of the spectrum of liveness that we should move away from. Through this reading, I got the overall sense that liveness is important to us because it moves us in particular ways, and we want to feel moved in those ways. And it asks can live computer performances move us in those ways? And it can, but not when it’s played by Deadmau5, apparently.

I have to preface this by saying I have a negative bias towards EDM. Even as a kid, I hated the EDM-infused pop that was super popular during the early 2010s. Liveness means different things to different audiences depending on their expectations. I think most people who listen to Deadmau5 don’t expect more than the kind of live experience he delivers. (But maybe not, given how defensive he was.) At first, I thought saying he “facilitates spectacle” was harsh since he plays his own compositions – it’s more than mere spectacle. But as the reading went on, this description made sense. He deferred to the audience making the

Chasing simulacra.

There’s a reason Deadmau5 deferred to the audience instead of

said “You guys are what make this

“I wish I was there.”

This kind of liveness doesn’t appeal to me.

I understand why the reading said Deadmau5 “facilitated spectacle” because, like most EDM performances, people aren’t there for the musicality as much as they are there for the party.

I attended an EDM festival that had Calvin Harris.

basketball and the wondrous physicality

Because we have access to so much “live content” as well, it shapes our expectations, as in, we know what to expect. We’re able to access more behind-the-scenes stuff. I think watching a “live” performance of Deadmau5 on Youtube and in person is not that different.

live is something more divine, like we’re watching the gods open up and touch us right in front of us, right here, right now.

I read this and all I felt was tired. Yes, glitch reveals that systems are not inevitable and impenetrable. Control is an illusion. Hurrah. Storms flatten houses. Rivers of gold ravage Pompeii. Nature subverts itself. Glitch is the trickster spirits and coyotes and spiders and monkey kings represent in endless mythologies. The devil Robert Johnson met on the Crossroads. We detect glitch and feel it as a resolutely involved presence, playmaker, and force in this stupid play. I remember a physicist researcher told me dark matter is like stumbling over something in pitch black. It’s Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Shakespeare knew all about glitch. I guess we are all sacrificial casualties on the pyre of glitch. That’s why it all seems so absurd, so tragic, so funny, so meaningful, so useless. You know when Puck revealed at the end that it was all a dream.

Everything I know and have ever loved is because of people who devoted themselves to what counts as glitch studies, those who were at the behest of glitches, and audiences that produced movements motivated by glitches, commodified, repackaged or otherwise. I don’t mean to be hypocritical and shit on the whole parade, but. The author is personally fascinated by the magic of glitch. Is your fascination contagious? They say they “believe that ‘Glitchspeak’ can democratize society.” Hm.

I don’t really want to be involved anymore. Unfortunately my skin is materially and literally in the game, so. The domestication and commodification of glitch blah blah blah. Glitch studies blah blah blah. Glitch is destructive generativity blah blah blah. I’ve become disenchanted with and disengaged from the gain and the loss, the sun rise and set, the confusion and the clarity. Glitch, ravage your course. I’ll laugh at the funny parts and cry at the sad ones.

I tracked down old footage of my friends at a spot we used to frequent long ago. I wanted to evoke nostalgia and the disintegration of memory over time. Coming up with any visuals or sound at all was really difficult. There’s a pacifier wherever my imagination is supposed to be. I wish I had come up with some kind of climax and drop. I also wish I had been able to come up with a visual that syncs better with the arpeggios. I tried tweaking the numbers and couldn’t find the right rhythm to sync to. The entire thing is too chaotic and unbalanced to work as a composition. But at the end, I liked the silence paired with the normal videos, because it felt like reminiscence or reflection. 

s0.initVideo("file:///Users/eloratrotter/Documents/Documents%20-%20Elora’s%20MacBook%20Pro/Code/liveCoding/media/fixed_video1.mp4")
src(s0).out(o0)

s0.initVideo("file:///Users/eloratrotter/Documents/Documents%20-%20Elora’s%20MacBook%20Pro/Code/liveCoding/media/fixed_Video.mp4")
src(s0).out(o0)

s0.initVideo("file:///Users/eloratrotter/Documents/Documents%20-%20Elora’s%20MacBook%20Pro/Code/liveCoding/media/fixed.mp4")
src(s0).out(o0)

s0.initVideo("file:///Users/eloratrotter/Documents/Documents%20-%20Elora’s%20MacBook%20Pro/Code/liveCoding/media/fixed_video2.mp4")
src(s0).out(o0)

src(s0).modulate(noise(.23, 0).pixelate(100, 100),)
.colorama(0.005).luma(0.20).diff(src(o0).scale(()=>cc[0])).out(o0)

hush()
setcps (85/60/4)

  d1 $ slow 2 $ n "~ e7 c8 ~ b7 ~ <g7,g8> ~"
    # s "supervibe"
    # lpf 300
    # sustain 2
    # room 0.7
    # delay 0.6 # delayt (1/4) # delayfb 0.5
    # gain 1.2

d2 $ stack [
  s "bd ~ bd ~",
  s "~ sn:2 ~ sn:2" # lpf 2000 # shape 0.1 # gain 0.8,
  s "hh*8" # gain "0.5 0.3 0.4 0.2" # pan rand # lpf 5000
] # room 0.4 # sz 0.6

d3 $ slow 4 $ n "a2 f3 c3 e3"
  # s "superpiano"
  # gain 0.9

d4 $ slow 4 $ n "a3'min9 f3'maj7 c3'maj7 e3'min7"
  # s "superpiano"
  # velocity 0.4
  # lpf 1500
  # room 0.9 # sz 0.8

d5 $ ccv "[0 127]*1" # ccn 0 # s "midi"

d6 $ jux (rev)
  $ struct "t*16"
  $ slow 4
  $ n (arp "<up down updown diverge>" "<a3'min9 f3'maj7 c3'maj7 e3'min7>")
  # s "supermandolin"
  # sustain 1.5
  # room 0.8 # sz 0.9
  # delay 0.75 # delayt (1/4) # delayfb 0.5
  # lpf (range 800 4000 $ slow 4 sine)
  # pan (slow 3 sine)
  # gain 0.8

d5 $ ccv "[0 127]*8" # ccn 0 # s "midi"

d6 $ jux (rev . (|- pan 0.2))
  $ struct "t(3,8) t*2"
  $ n (arp "up" "<a3'min9 f3'maj7 c3'maj7 e3'min7>")
  # s "supermandolin"
  # sustain 2
  # detune 0.005
  # lpf (range 400 3000 $ slow 8 saw)
  # room 0.9 # sz 0.9
  # gain 1

  d5 $ struct "t(3,8) t*2" $ ccv "127 0 50"
    # ccn 0 # s "midi"


hush