Novel Experience & Expression

(Derrida & Ulmer)

 
Research the various meanings and etymologies of your given and family name.

 
Through wordplay and intuitive combinations, generate and develop your signature into a link between your life experience and your major/career/artistic endeavors.

The “signature” of a musical composition appears at the beginning of the piece, providing the key and time for the performance of the music. (More here.)

 
What resonance do you intuitively notice about your present experience/identity and your signature: in what key and time signature is your life “played” (performed)?
More concretely, we can use our signature not to explain but to better understand our own idiosyncratic (”signature”) mode of working — our “fingerprints” or “trace” on our work.

remember: Resonance is Deleuze’s term for the non-totalizing and non-homogenizing consistency that appears across the assemblage of heterogeneous elements, for example within an author’s work or within a concept.
For him, Proust’s distinct signature (”style”) resonates throughout all seven discrete volumes of In Search of Lost Time.

 
What insights do you gain through your signature theory about your “style” — especially a style of working across different disciplines (college courses)?
 

Example here
 

---

---

 
 
 

 
 
 
“Emblem” examples:

Detailed accounts by Greg Ulmer:

* Frank Gehry: “fish”
Albert Einstein: “compass”
Antony Gormley: “rectangle“

 
 

ghink

 
Cochlea: spiral-shaped part of ear; converts vibrations to neuro-sensory (audible) information;
i.e. literal interface between physical (”frequency”) and neurological sensory data.

 
 
 
Anecdote: (childhood memory)

In 4th grade, my class was assigned to paint something in art class to be considered for inclusion in the forthcoming playground, which our community (including my family) was building.
As I lacked fine art skills — unlike my younger brother Brian, the visual artist — I simply spent the period painting abstract shapes, deliberately not attempting to paint “a picture” like my classmates (following the instructions).
Not intending mine to be considered in the contest, I carelessly splattered some paint over it — which I found I quite liked, incidentally. A few more ’splatter” motions drew the attention of the teacher, who unexpectedly praised my work; (in retrospect, shapes of geometrical abstraction and methods of abstract expressionism!) I’d mainly used the colors that I consistently loved during pre-teen years: black, purple, and teal (as well as some complements of red, if I recall) — not any referential scheme.
 
The most prominent shape in the painting was an imperfect spiral, which I’d been constantly practicing in those days (before perfecting the circular pencil technique).

It looked something like this:

 
Two notable elements that frame this anecdote, prior and subsequently:

1) I most definitely was (and am) not skilled in visual arts, and never drew/draw
(except for tracing comic book characters in an attempt to match my brother’s skilled renderings! but that is a separate anecdote)
My brothers and I all grew up playing music, first through involuntary piano and vocal lessons for me, followed by saxophone and trumpet choices by me and Brian respectively (once we reached fourth grade) — then eventually our “real” instruments of choice (passion) by high school, guitar.
Andrew (youngest) is without exaggeration a musical prodigy, having begun playing piano at age four voluntarily (with a piano in the house, after all); he quickly superseded my skills at first piano and then saxophone(s) (but not guitar, a mandatory instrument for him in college!).
Indeed, Brian has become the visual artist (photography, painting, mixed-media) he has always been (after years of guitar/bass); Andrew has been / will always be a musician (composer and performer) — for them, there is little differentiation of their “life” and “career” (key lesson for all of us, as my parents have supported for 26 years and counting).
In this context, I consider myself not “involuntarily” but incidentally and notably situated in relation to them: artistic sensibility (way of understanding and expressing), yet in a scholarly context; thus, the priority of the aesthetic mode for my career and scholarly method, originating from the “life” dimension (passion for music).

2) The painting from class with the spiral and paint-splatter apparently was only a “draft,” which is unusual for art but not writing (as I’d later endure and then require dozens of composition students to practice).
Unfortunately at the time, I could not quite replicate the original composition for the playground, having a much different attitude toward the desired reproduction.
However, this was fortunate, as I have the framed original (”draft”), which hung in my room where I practiced saxophone and guitar in the subsequent years, until we tore my childhood home down.
Similarly, the playground was torn down last year, perhaps “fated” with its name on our barrier-island town: “Sandcastle Park,” (two blocks from the beach).
The spiral image ended up being just like the cochlea of the ear after all, only receiving vibrations (”hearing”) in the present tense — like the splatter-technique impulse, or live musical performances,
or the conversations between the “architects” (me and my dad) and the “engineers” (Brian and Andrew) of sandcastles during an ephemeral construction at the beach — where of course one might find a spiral-shaped seashell.
(This present time always belonging to Lêthê.)
 
Whereas the spiral once signaled the movement toward “immortality,” — selected for one of the playground’s (castle) towers in the context — there eventually became a point in time when the movement shifted, progressing toward destruction. Rather than linear narrative, we could say that both of these motions were always-already encompassed in the spiral shape.

 
 
Career Resonance

 
// Spiral in chaos theory

summary: dynamical systems are sensitive to changes in initial conditions (not deterministic); ordered systems include movement toward chaos, while chaotic systems include movement toward order. In other words, “undecidable” with binary logic, not “either/or.” Consider: is spiral moving “inward” or “outward”? Unknown, undecidable; both.
At SUNY Buffalo, my thesis supervisor was Joseph M. Conte — who uses chaos and complexity theory in his work with postmodern literature.

 
 
 
Spiral’s in/direct appearance or function
in (French) poststructuralist theory
(my primary area of research):

— Roland Barthes: “third meaning” of expression is neither denotation or connotation, but signifiance. The “third sense” is hearing.
(Image-Music-Text)
 
 
— Hélène Cixous: task is to hear the unsaid, with attunement.
 
 
— Jacques Derrida:
“middle voice” is between active and passive, self-address. (i.e. speaking-hearing oneself)
Also, Différance is neither word nor concept, but active moving forces: undecidable, as différer means both “to differ” and “to defer.” Between speech and writing; becoming-space of time and becoming-time of space; new logic of impossibility.
 
 
— Gilles Deleuze:
Greek myth of Ariadne (from Nietzsche’s understanding); labyrinth is both spiral shaped and sonorous in Deleuze’s reading. For him, Ariadne’s song becomes one of affirmation of Life, as lover of Dionysus — rather than slave to ressentiment that results from judgment.
Thus, way of living that affirms Life.

 
B) “Signature Theory” example: ghink

(g)ary

 
ary:
Main Entry: “-ary”
Function: noun suffix
Etymology: Middle English -arie, from Anglo-French & Latin; Anglo-French -aire, -arie,
from Latin -arius, -aria, -arium, from -arius, adjective suffix

 

1 : thing belonging to or connected with; especially : place of <ovary>
2 : person belonging to, connected with, or engaged in <functionary>

 
French: -aire = “surface”

— also, River Aire in England (?)

 
Suffix -aire
1. -er; suffix used to form agent nouns.

e.g. legionnaire

 
* Latin: “ARIA” = expressive melody

noun
an air or melody in an opera, cantata, or oratorio, esp. for solo voice with instrumental accompaniment

 
— thus, expressive melody (solo) + connected with (orch/accomp.)

* voice/song as gesture (expressive quality of voice; unique)