when migrations are in the air...

yesterday was the first day of my drive to wyoming, and i drove from pasadena to park city utah. there were two very strange moments, both seemingly related to my previous post regarding otto piene's thoughts on the word migration suggesting certain forms of ephemeral artworks drifting in skies (you should take a peek at piene's great inflatable kite pieces from the 70's).

the first incident was about a half hour north of las vegas. at first i thought i was hallucinating, as it appeared to be a flock of giant birds, but as i sped closer, i could see that the drifting dots were actually humans with small colored parachutes - a small swarm of drifting humans slowly descending to the ground, as hundreds of automobiles sped by. it was uncanny to say the least, particularly the difference in the speed we were traveling on the ground, and the relative slow motion feeling of how they were falling.

the second incident was somewhere in utah, in a much quieter area and it was simply like a vision, as i turned my head to look at the landscape to my right, and i could see all these markings in the sky, probably a temporal map of flight patterns, but looking a lot like one of rudolf steiner's black board drawings.

i couldn't help but think in both circumstances that piene was right about the potential of such things, and i wonder if stockhausen wasn't so bombastic with his helicopter string quartet, how a group of instrument playing parachutists slowly descending while playing, might sound; and perhaps they could even be watching the sky, translating such graphic notations as music literally falls into our laps...

and thus begins the drifting...

an illustration from an article on telemetry in a 1950 issue of electronics world. i should probably just let you revel in the image without adding any text; but i can't help but add just one tiny bit from the article. the following should certainly enhance the mind moving in various directions of expansion that the image suggests.

one of the simplest methods of measuring any quantity is to convert it to code, where the quantity is transmitted as a function of time. for example, to indicate 10 pounds per square inch of pressure, a switch may be closed for 10 seconds.

time, functioning as a language... for me, this is like a foot pushing a boat away from a dock, and into a large open lake of possibilities...