Allan Janik, Stephen Toulmin: Wittgenstein’s Vienna (1973)

29 January 2013, dusan

“The central figure in this portrait of a crumbling society giving birth to the modern world without realizing it was Wittgenstein, the brilliant and gifted young thinker whose great book remains the key to modern thought and who went on to influence a whole generation of English thinkers, artists and scientists.

As a portrait of a man, this book is superbly realized. It is even better as a portrait of the age and milieu in which our modern ideas were born–not only in philosophy, but in art, music, literature, architecture, design and style.”

Publisher Simon and Schuster, New York, 1973
A Touchstone Book
ISBN 0671217259, 9780671217259
314 pages

Review: Barry Seldes (H-Net, 1996).

Wittgenstein’s Vienna (English, 1973)
La Viena de Wittgenstein (Spanish, trans. Ignacio Gomez de Liaño, 1998; removed on 2017-10-3 upon request of publishre)

Jean-Luc Nancy: Listening (2002/2007) [French/English]

5 January 2013, dusan

In this lyrical meditation on listening, Jean-Luc Nancy examines sound in relation to the human body. How is listening different from hearing? What does listening entail? How does what is heard differ from what is seen? Can philosophy even address listening, couter, as opposed to entendre, which means both hearing and understanding?

Unlike the visual arts, sound produces effects that persist long after it has stopped. The body, Nancy says, is itself like an echo chamber, responding to music by inner vibrations as well as outer attentiveness. Since the ear has no eyelid (Quignard), sound cannot be blocked out or ignored: our whole being is involved in listening, just as it is involved in interpreting what it hears.The mystery of music and of its effects on the listener is subtly examined. Nancy’s skill as a philosopher is to bring the reader companionably along with him as he examines these fresh and vital questions; by the end of the book the reader feels as if listening very carefully to a person talking quietly, close to the ear.

French edition: À l’écoute
Publisher Éditions Galilée, Paris, 2002
ISBN 9782718605975
96 pages

English edition
Translated by Charlotte Mandell
Publisher Fordham University Press, New York, 2007
ISBN 0823227731, 9780823227730
85 pages

publisher (FR)
google books (EN)

PDF (French, no OCR)
PDF (English, EPUB)

Florian Hecker: Speculative Solution (2011/2012) [EN, FR, JP, FLAC]

1 January 2013, dusan

Speculative Solution is a CD and book with contributions by Florian Hecker, Elie Ayache, Robin Mackay and Quentin Meillassoux. Originally commissioned by Urbanomic and developed over the year 2010, this collaborative project brings together Hecker’s sonic practice and psychoacoustic experimentation with philosopher Quentin Meillassoux’s concept of ‘hyperchaos’ – the absolute contingency of the laws of nature.

In an apparent departure from Hecker’s previous release Acid in the Style of David Tudor (eMEGO 094, 2009), the four titles featured in Speculative Solution contain a series of micro-chronics and sequences of auditory contingencies, ranging from extreme stasis to the most dynamic intensities, crisp dramatisations of what Meillassoux calls in his text ‘extro-science worlds’.

As Mackay states in his contribution to the book, Hecker’s composition “participates in a circuit in which it, the accompanying texts, and diverse other objects, enter into a perpetual catalysis that must annihilate all priority, representation, reference, and even entity.’. Both ‘scripture and prescription’, Speculative Solution invites its users to integrate its sonic and textual components, as they enter into an accelerative cycle, becoming “truly ‘literalist’ marks which have no reason to be as they are, and which could have been – and still could be, at every moment – otherwise”. With Speculative Solution Hecker proposes that the concepts of absolute contingency and hyperchaos offer a rigorous new alternative to the employment of chance and randomness in avant-garde composition.

Japanese version was produced on the occasion of the exhibition Tokyo Art Meeting (III) Art & Music – Search for New Synethesia, October 2012 – February 2013, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo.

English/French edition
Publisher Mute Song, 2011
Editions Mego 118 / Urbanomic UF13
Edited by Robin Mackay
159 pages

Japanese edition: Speculative Solution and 3 Channel Chronics
Translated by Natsuko Jimbo
ISBN 9780956775030
81 pages

review (Brainwashed)
review (Ian Latta, TinyMixTapes)
review (Adam Strohm, Dusted)

publisher (EN)
publisher (JP)
exhibition in Tokyo (EN)

Download (English/French, removed on 2013-2-7 upon request of the publisher)
PDF (Japanese, no OCR)
Download (full album in FLAC, removed on 2013-2-7 upon request of the publisher)
related: Florian Hecker: Chimerization (2012)