TOWARDS AN ARTICULATION OF AN ONTOLOGICAL OBJECT CALLED:

OPERA OF/FOR KNOWN & UNKNOWABLE UN-I-VERSES

The opera is being conducted in phases. The first consisted of an incubation period of heavy research, to ground and orient the activities in the specific concerns of various disciplines.

STAGE ONE: RESEARCH of ONTOGENESIS= what an opera could be

• Philosophical [abstraction]: cosmology, ontology, language as the terminal abstraction. Combination of the accumulated researches of western empirical existential pursuits to articulate the context upon which the other activities will transpire, namely the ontological fundament serving as an arena for the larger conversation. Teleology (usefulness). *utilize the empirical voice, formal writing methodology, rational logic algorithms, and cerebral cartographies of philosophy towards increased clarity. PHILO-SOPHIA: the love of wisdom

• Theological/Mystical/Transcendental [allegorical]: this project focuses upon a universal human trait, to find or make meaning in the universe we inhabit. The goal is not to combine all the world's spiritual belief into a new age neo-paganism, but to address the source from which all theological articulation permeate. Includes mythology. *utilize the archetypal structures, symbols, aesthetics, architectures, etc., of these "sacred spaces" to infuse occult aporia into the greater dialectic. MYTHOPOIESIS.

• Scientific [algorithmic]: the structural edifice of technology as a material mechanism supplemental to the body, consciousness, and spirit. Science provides rational description of a concrete world, but that makes it no more real than allegory or abstraction. Science carries its own bias in the senses - phenomenological anthropocentric bias. Provides the myriad minutiae: all the descriptions of all the details of all the things in all the worlds. The youngest and most naive of the epistemological pursuits.

These major areas of information are syphoned through various working methods, each harboring various strengths and weaknesses:

• Conversation: The primary operating mode for the composing and performing of the opera is through dialogue: Speaking to myself to discover internal focus, speaking to others to elucidate common relation(ships, set to sail across the sea), the combination of singular voices into the multiplicity of a dialogue oriented towards a subject of consideration. Dialogue happens in the present, with a sense of immediacy, involves practicing the art of negotiation (as the listener can speak back and influence the direction of the content) so is therefore based in reciprocation. *ideas of friction, jouissance (pleasure) of human relationships, the misery of disagreement: the most dynamic mode of communication in that it directly involves the subjectivity of the speakers, has clearly "felt" parameters of inside/outside, and pertains to and incorporates the sublimated psychology of emotions

• Writing: a bit more removed from the direct exchange of ideas with the tongue, writing occurs at a different speed, in slower time. *modes of writing: lists, charts, transcribing the content of dialogue, direct writing, editing, collage or cut-up methods. Language instantiated as material.

• Music/Movement Composition: application of a specific form of writing towards an intended affect/effect (sound, movement, aesthetic display, etc). The parameters for this form are very loose and to a certain degree any image, text, or material can be utilize as a notation: therefore this mode consists more as a process of translation, decipherment. A notation is not a new formal language, but a meta-language or mode of "reading" that can be applied towards other pre-existing languages.

• Information Aesthetics: a mode of reduction towards visualizing experiential data in an intuitively assimilated form. Can vary greatly in complexity, in style, and in usefulness. Can represent the content of conversation, or writing, of various compositions, or likewise serve as the beginning of new conversation scenarios, chart the trajectories of possible writing excursions, or serve as a notation directly.

• Visual Abstractions: consisting of "images" more than visual architectures, these visual artifacts can serve a variety of roles. In relation to writing: illustrates the content (reflection, supplement) or expands the content into a psychic/affective space by venturing into cerebral realms that cannot be concretized through words spoken or written (aporia, the ineffable). Visual abstractions can exist in any material, at any scale, and can be both intentional/deterministic or chance operations: consists more of a "way of seeing" or interpreting visual information (as opposed to pure data) than a methodology. Related to antiquated Platonic idealism of the (Kantian) sublime, sacred abstraction, alchemical symbolism, interference/dissipative patterns observed in physical materials, etc. The pure material embodiment of information that other forms of documentation attempt to describe. Can be made or found.

• Video: a unique media in that it is related/connected to all others (potentially though not inextricably): can serve as a medium of writing, composition, information display, pure abstraction, etc., as well as incorporate subject matter both numinous or profane. A distinct form in its synesthetic affect, combining moving image and sound: evocative, capable of trance induction, pertaining to the memory centers of the biological organism. *still pertains primarily to the eye, but serves as a bridge between media.

The Prologue: Ontogenesis

• The origins of creation out of nothing-ness. The swelling up of emotional turmoil to set the mood for a scene. The beginning of a conversation about how to begin a conversation, the product of a process not motivated by production. The visual elements occur after the event itself. Setting the groundwork for a communication between performers (roles) and their respective ontologies, methodologies, techniques, histories, but also between media (sound, video, text, visual data) in representing the interchange of ideas among the participants. Successes and failures: how are the events evaluated?

• The focus was upon the event itself, a beginning which allowed the conversation to unfold. Now there is content to discuss, problems to solve, a procession to participate in. The next step is to organize the content into a context, reticulate the peripheries and articulate the minutiae, construct the cast of characters through which the entirety of the enterprise will be discussed.

Conclusion to the Ontogenesis TO BE DONE

• Compile all documents into a single text

• Compile solo audio experiments into a single album

• Compile visual diagrams into a single composition

• Compile all data into a single container: the website, a mode of transmission/dissemination for others to interact with the unfurling process

• Begin collecting videos to represent the initial research process, foundational content, and occurrence of the ontogenesis prologue.

STAGE TWO: INTERLUDE POST-PROLOGUE PRE-MISE-EN-SCEN: setting the first scene. These ideas should be pursued, condensed, charted in various forms. Learn the lesson of the prologue by putting various media in conversation with each other, then delve deeper into the content (the minutiae).

New direction of research:

• Sociology: correlating the power dynamic of any particular group. The role of the individual performer in relation to the whole, the composer, the audience.

• New Philosophy of Society, Philosophy and Simulation, A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History: Delanda

• Architecture: the physicality of the scene. Delineate the difference between the stage, the orchestral pit, the audience, the inside/outside of the theater itself: the frame of the place.

• The body, the anthropocene, physical mechanisms of movement. The seat of consciousness.

• Parables for the Virtual, What Animals Teach Us About Politics, Thought in the Act: Massumi

• Writing as a method, as a process processing its own processes. The slippage of language.

• The Parallax View: Zizek

• The Neutral: Barthes

• Of Grammatology + The Truth in Painting: Derrida

• The interstice, the middle, the neutral

• Existential Nothingness in eastern and western philosophy, how the conception/definition articulates subjectivity, the Void, the Other, Zen.

• In/compatibility of various forms of writing: scientific/rational with poetic/visual, surrealist methods of streaming consciousness with deterministic pragmatic clarity, the legibility or decipherability of a text (its coherence).

• Reconciliation of the archaic with contemporary civilization: Mircea Eliade, Terrence McKenna

• Scale: nature realizing itself on every level of consideration, the plateaus of the concrete, the measuring parameters of any specific instrument, the potential to clarify or obscure through language, scientific delineations of scale.