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• W4286368517 abstract "I readily admit my ignorance around the term psychedelia. As is perhaps the case for many, for me the term was firmly entrenched in its clichés and (sub)cultural baggage: connotations of 1960s art, fashion, and music, and the vibes of hippies and flower power. My encounter with Jonathan Weinel’s Explosions in the Mind: Composing Psychedelic Sounds and Visualisations changed that dramatically. Through its own mind-expanding approach, at once dreamily yet lucidly combining artistic practice with comprehensive research, Weinel’s innovative work takes us on a wholly new journey. It’s a trip through which our understandings of psychedelia not only flourish into an invigorating analytical vocabulary for our multimodal and synesthetic experiences with audio, but along the way, psychedelia becomes a creative and ludic methodology of interest to (ludo)musicologists, audiovisual artists, and musicians alike.Accommodating reader accessibility, Explosions in the Mind begins by defining its key terminology through captivating narration. Conjuring a series of audiovisual sensations through visceral wording, Weinel invites readers to imagine such phenomena as uncanny vocals emerging from a bathroom drain as water trails into its abyss, accelerating geometric funnels and kaleidoscopic neon webs, and Persian rugs rippling with digital aliasing. Such audiovisual phenomena, recounted from experiences with the psychedelic effects of liberty cap fungi, are the very “explosions” to which the title of Weinel’s monograph refers.These explosions in the mind, he continues, occur during instances of “altered states of consciousness” (ASCs), in which our audiovisual, haptic, and synesthetic perceptions are mediated by external influences, but here our notions of psychedelia and what constitutes an ASC are expanded beyond the influential substances we might typically associate with such states. Weinel broadens our horizons by considering the psychedelic phenomena and ASCs that form in many facets of our day-to-day lives: through the effects of caffeine, isolation tanks, daydreams, meditation, and even the gradient hues that form on the insides of our eyelids. In particular, our attention is drawn to the unique relationship between such phenomena and the pivotal role that music and sound play in their mediation. And here, not only does Weinel further expand our perspectives on the relationship between sound, music, and synesthesia, but this relationship forms the very basis of the practice-led research presented in his monograph.Weinel’s interest lies in the affectivity of psychedelia as a creative resource for a range of audiovisual media. Specifically, it is the translation of subjective and ephemeral psychedelic states into audiovisual representation, and vice versa how audiovisual sensoria can induce multimodal synesthetic experiences, that forms the basis of his methodologies. Referencing Roland Fischer’s “cartography of affective states” and Alan Hobson’s discussions on the meeting between “internal” and “external” inputs in relation to states of consciousness,1 Weinel considers the negotiation between internal factors—such as memory and the imagination—and external audiovisual inputs, and the ways in which their convergence can mediate varying intensities of synesthetic phenomena. His insights here are thereby of potential interest to those researching posthuman approaches to audiovisuals and subjectivity.This approach is grounded further with rich historical context, as the first chapter goes on to curate a historical overview of the creative correspondence between psychedelia and art, music, and musical visualizations—such as virtual reality (VR) experiences and video jockey (VJ) performances. Once more, the consideration of reader accessibility in this section is commendable. Similar to the opening definition of key terms, Weinel succinctly outlines the historical context of his approach to psychedelia in a way that is not exclusively catered to those with cultural capital in the musical and (sub)cultural movements he traces. Beyond the accounts of hippie, electronic dance, and rave cultures, ludomusicologists and video game (music) fans in particular will appreciate Weinel’s insights on the audiovisual creativity of the Amiga demoscene and his exploration of ASCs in such video game series as Silent Hill and F.E.A.R.Once grounded in theoretical and historical context, the following chapters guide us through Weinel’s body of work, which richly consists of psychedelic experiments in sound design, musicianship, and audiovisual art. In each chapter, a different aspect of his conceptual approach is explored in relation to corresponding performances, compositions, and projects—effectively illustrating his research in practice. Here, Weinel identifies different kinds of audiovisual media in which he has implemented his methodologies: fixed-media (studio-created and playback), live media performances, interactive media, and instances in which these categories blur and combine.Weinel’s introduction of concepts by way of colorful and surreal narration remains present throughout the monograph, and to great effect. Chapter 2 discusses fixed-media compositions and electroacoustic music. Through such evocative synesthetic imagery as “purifying electronic waves breaking onto a shoreline of e-waste,” we are encouraged to consider music and sound design as taking listeners on a “journey through sound” (10), utilizing ASC phenomena as both conceptual inspiration and stimulative goal. Drawing from the works of Pierre Schaeffer, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and the associative deterritorializations that comprise electroacoustic soundscapes, Weinel defines his “adaptive approach”: the transitory blurring between the familiar and the unfamiliar, in which we creatively modulate familiar aspects on different scales to represent how they may look, sound, or feel within a hallucination. This methodology is illustrated through the organic musical movements of his 2011 project Nausea, to which we are treated an in-depth breakdown of the psychedelic inspiration behind each movement, his technological apparatus, and graphical scores.Chapter 3 then explores live performances of electronic music. Through this context, Weinel extends the psychedelic journey concept by playing with the factor of unpredictability. As before, we are given a thorough overview of his creative processes in intricate detail—including his own bespoke program for MAX/MSP, The Atomizer, which was initially designed to translate psychedelic visualizations into their sonic representation by way of varying parameters that control the ir/regularity of sample triggering and modulation—and are guided through his 2010 live performance in New York: Entopic Phenomena. Not only does Weinel effectively extend the techniques established in chapter 2, but his encouragement for us to embrace the factor of unpredictability and, in particular, become playfully psychedelic in our approach to musical parameters is uniquely invigorating; here, the perceptual familiarities of prerecorded sounds, musical parameters, and spatial-temporal relations become ludomusical tools.Chapter 4 then shifts focus to audiovisual integration, which will be of interest to both practitioners and researchers in this field. Setting its focus on film pieces designed to represent ASC states and psychedelic phenomena, Weinel takes us through his approach to composing electroacoustic music that corresponds with such visuals. The factor of synesthesia is most overt in this chapter, and the walkthrough of his fixed media piece “Tiny Jungle,” which once again incorporates his Atomizer MAX/MSP program, explores the coalescence of image and sound. Once more, there is a clear development of the ideas presented in the previous chapters, each feeling like an innovative offshoot or creative germination from the seedlings left by the last.Chapter 5 explores the simulation of ASCs and psychedelic phenomena by way of audiovisual composition, which foregrounds the factors of interactivity and ludic agency. Thus, this chapter is most insightful for ludomusicologists and those interested in audiovisual design for VR software. Drawing from Marshal McLuhan’s notion of technology as an extension of the human nervous system and cyberpunk multimedia,2 Weinel explores how the immersive capabilities of VR apparatus can enhance the efficacy of ASC simulation in conjunction with the audiovisual methods he established previously. While cyberpunk often warns us about the dystopian risks of integrating human nervous systems with sensorial apparatus, Weinel’s approach is refreshingly optimistic and even considers the therapeutic capacities of inducing ASCs tailored to specific moods.His creative interest in VR apparatus and immersion is largely inspired by gaming experiences, and we are guided through his thought processes as he recounts traversing the virtual hellscapes of ID software’s Doom and Quake. These experiences informed the project presented in this chapter, Quake Delirium, which I would consider to be one of the most innovative pieces in Weinel’s body of work. The project centers on a patched version of Quake, whose audiovisual output is remixed by way of MIDI controllers and MAX/MSP toward aesthetics of hallucination and delirium. Psychedelic distortions of graphics and audio are generated in real time and triggered in relation to gameplay, unpredictably disorientating the player as they are overwhelmed by intensely warping fields of vision, or navigating the ludic challenges conjured by the representation of decreasing sobriety.Chapter 6 centers on live VJ performances: the synesthetic mixing of visuals to audio, in contrast to chapter 4. Basing visual designs on ASC phenomena, such as oscillating colors and shapes that dynamically respond to such musical factors as timbre and texture, once again there are case studies that might be of interest to (ludo)musicologists and even chiptune practitioners. Weinel’s approach is contextually rooted in the early 3D imagery and vectorized horizons that accompanied the chipmusic shared among the Amiga demoscene. His project walkthrough for this chapter, in fact, centers on live performances in which early digital rendering programs, in-game footage of the 1994 Bullfrog PC title Magic Carpet, and Amiga tracker sequencers are all utilized within the psychedelic workflow.For my own artistic and research interests, I find chapter 7 the most invigorating. Here, Weinel returns to the VR simulation of audiovisual psychedelia and develops the potential of such stimuli to induce dreamlike states. His project Cyberdream has an overtly digital aesthetic, conflating simultaneously nostalgic and utopic imagery sourced from 1980s and 1990s media and Windows 95 interfaces. Fitting the aesthetic, Weinel walks us through the development of his accompanying hardcore rave and vaporwave soundtrack, in which an overt sense of kitsch artifice in the musical palette gels with the visuals in an attempt to place the player “inside the music.” Many have praised and derided vaporwave regarding its relationship with obsolescence and late capitalist logic, but once again Weinel’s approach to the creative potential of such dreamlike qualities in relation to ASC phenomena is refreshing. Cyberdream delivers a VJ-like experience through VR apparatus, toying with aspects of immersion, distortions of time, symbolic journeys through the oversaturation and distortion of (sub)cultural signifiers, and the playful displacements of memory. Once again, the audiovisual methodology here plays on the hallucinatory porousness between the familiar and the uncanny, the hypermediacies of oversaturation and affective overstimulation, and the instability of spatial-temporal perception.In chapter 8, Weinel concludes by distilling the artistry of the preceding chapters into three audiovisual design frameworks: psychedelic journeys in sound, altered states of consciousness simulations, and synesthetic visualizations of sound. Recounting the key features of his projects, these frameworks are not strictly distinguished from one another as many of their factors overlap. Rather, each framework zooms in on a particular audiovisual methodology while emphasizing the fluidity and hybridity of their concepts. As such, these frameworks are not presented as a definitive recipes or schema; they are akin to an audiovisual and ludic seedbed from which our own creativity may adapt and blossom into exciting uncharted territories. As Weinel signs off with encouragement:Taken as a whole, these frameworks point towards an exciting new paradigm for composing psychedelic sounds and visualisations. Above all, Explosions in the Mind has expressed my vision of that paradigm, and yet, it is only as a collective endeavour that we can truly realise this dream—and so now I hand it over to you, the reader, to compose the psychedelic sounds and visualisations of the future (201)." @default.
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• W4286368517 date "2022-01-01" @default.
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• W4286368517 title "Review: <i>Explosions in the Mind: Composing Psychedelic Sounds and Visualisations</i>, by Jonathan Weinel" @default.
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