26/3/07
Travels in Hyper reality by Umberto Eco
”Disneyland makes it clear that within its magic enclosure it is fantasy that is absolutely reproduced.”
It is this statement that fuels the entire journey and the book regarding the way contemporary culture is now full of re-creations and themed environments.
In Eco’s description of Disney, Eco also saw that behind the facades lurks a sales pitch. Put these ideas together and you have a succinct characterization of the age, which is forever offering us something that seems better than real in order to sell us something. That makes Umberto Eco one of the forerunners of contemporary thinking on this subject.

But, perhaps his most interesting perception occurs when he discovers, behind all the spectacle in Disneyland, the same old tricks of capitalism, with a new twist: "The Main Street facades are presented to us as toy houses and invite us to enter them, but their interior is always a disguised supermarket, where you buy obsessively, believing that you are still playing," he writes. He similarly finds in Disney, "An allegory of the consumer society, a place of absolute iconism, Disneyland is also as place of total passivity. Its visitors must agree to behave like robots."
But what is most remarkable about Umberto Eco's essay is that, in the two decades since it was published, many of its more extreme observations, if not all its attacks on America, have been confirmed, and, in some instances, surpassed. The experience of The Caribbean Pirates ride was described as the scene degenerates, everything collapses in flames, slowly the last songs die away, and you emerge into the sunlight.In no instance are these the cheap tricks of some tunnel of love; the involvement (always tempered by the humour of the inventions) is total. As in certain horror films, detachment is impossible; you are not witnessing another’s horror, you are inside the horror through complete synesthesia; and if there is an earthquake the movie theatre must also tremble.

March 2007
Edmund Burke A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful

The more I read about the notion of the sublime the more I became interested in the idea of the sublime as an experience. As an artist I wanted to explore how I could communicate the notion of my fear through an experinece imbued with sublimity.

The concept of the sublime has a history of philosophy of aesthetics reaching back to the 18th century and any discussion in relation to contemporary art must consider this history.

Edmund Burke believed “The intention of artists would be to depict an experience, which was for them already imbued with sublimity: to provide the viewer with the same overwhelming feelings they themselves had already experienced. These could be feelings of awe mixed with trepidation from a sight that can inspire.”

The intention of using the notion of my personal fear of the dark and unexplained sounds was to re-create the feelings of dread, suspense and anxiety that I have experienced. I feel that the audio walks are a sufficient vehicle to express this experience in an intimate manner to the listener.
Burke suggests that these feelings can be re created by sound “Excessive loudness alone is sufficient to overpower the soul, to suspend its action, and to fill it with terror.” The sounds that I have been recording relate to the aesthetics of my personal experience because these are the sounds that I live with and the sounds that still have the power to wake me in fear.
I have been reading The Sublime: Between Darkness and Light, Arts Council catalogue.This source has been very useful and has expressed the sublime as a 'Human experience that is beyond the everyday' and that 'The sublime can inspire bliss and exhilaration as well as fear and dread'.

20/3/07
Edmund Burke A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful

Sound and loudness
Excessive loudness alone is sufficient to overpower the soul, to suspend its action, and to fill it with terror. The noise of vast cataracts, raging storms, thunder or artillery, awakes a great and aweful sensation in the mind, though we can observe no nicety or artifice in those sorts of music.
Suddenness
A sudden beginning, or sudden cessation of sound of any considerable force, has the same power. The attention is roused by this; and the faculties driven forward, as it were, on their guard. Whatever either in sights or sounds makes the transition from one extreme to the other easy, causes no terror, and consequently can be no cause of greatness. In every thing sudden and unexpected, we are apt to start; that is, we have a perception of danger, and our nature rouses us to guard against it. It may be observed, that a single sound of some strength, though but of short duration, if repeated after intervals, has a grand effect. Few things more aweful than the striking of a great clock, when the silence of night prevents the attention from being too much dissipated.

Intermitting
A low, tremulous, intermitting sound, though it seems in some respects opposite to that just mentioned, is productive of the sublime.

I have already observed, that night increases our terror more perhaps than anything else; it is our nature, that, when we do not know what may happen to us, to fear the worst that can happen us; and hence it is, that uncertainty is so terrible, that we often seek to be rid of it…

Now some low, confused, uncertain sounds, leave us in the same fearful anxiety concerning their causes, that no light, or an uncertain light does concerning the objects that surround us.
But a light now appearing, and now leaving us, and so off and on, is even more terrible than total darkness; and a sort of uncertain sounds are, when the necessary dispositions concur, more alarming than a total silence.

11/3/07
Edmund Burke A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful

Darkness
It is Mr. Locke’s opinion, that darkness is not naturally an idea of terror; and that, though an excessive light is painful to the sense, that the greatest excess of darkness is in no ways troublesome.
…having once associated the ideas of ghosts and goblins with that of darkness; night ever after becomes painful and horrible to the imagination.

We have considered darkness as a cause of the sublime; and we have all along considered darkness as a cause of the sublime; and we have all along considered the sublime as depending on some modification of pain or terror…

…an association of a more general natural, an association which takes in all mankind may make darkness terrible; for in utter darkness, it is impossible to know in what degree of safety we stand…

As to the association of ghosts and goblins; surely it is more natural to think, that darkness being originally an idea of terror, was chosen as a fit scene for such terrible representations, than that such representations have made darkness terrible.

…the effect of an idea so universally terrible in all times, and in all countries, as darkness, could possibly have been owing to a set of idle stories…

Why Darkness is Terrible
Such a tension it seems there certainly is, whilst we are involved in darkness; for in such a state whilst the eye remains open, there is a continual nisus to receive light; this is manifest from the flashes, and luminous appearances which often seem in these circumstances to play before it; and which can be nothing but the effect of spasms, produced by its own efforts in pursuits of its object…

Some who allow darkness to be a cause of the sublime, would infer from the dilation of the pupil, that a relaxation may be productive of the sublime as well as a convulsion…

…I believe any one will finds if he opens his eyes and makes an effort to see in a dark place, that a very perceivable pain ensues.

It may perhaps be objected to this theory of the mechanical effect of darkness, that the ill effects of darkness or blackness seem rather mental than corporeal; and I own it is true, that they do so; and so do all those that depend on the affections of the finer parts of our system.

Blackness is but a partial darkness; and therefore it derives some of its powers from being mixed and surrounded with coloured bodies. In its own nature, it cannot be considered as a colour.

6/3/07
The Sublime: Between Darkness and Light Arts Council catalogue.

This source has been very helpful as it has expressed the sublime as a 'Human experience that is beyond the everyday' and that 'The sublime can inspire bliss and exhilaration as well as fear and dread'. It has many useful references to artists, literature, philosophers and theorists. The concept of the sublime has a history of philosophy of aesthetics reaching back to the 18th century and any discussion in relation to contemporary art must consider this history.

'capable of producing delight; not pleasure, but a sort of delightful horror; a sort of tranquillity tinged with terror.'

Burke’s view brings together the idea of imminent threat and the certain knowledge of security; a feeling of physical danger, fully grasped and understood, yet apprehended from a position of safety. We experience ‘ the towering force of things’ Burke writes. ‘The grand’ and ‘The sublime’ hinges upon the notion of fear. While both lead eventually to feelings of pleasure and well being.

‘grandeur by way of a sense of awe, and ‘sublime pleasure’ only after an initial feeling of terror.'

The intention of artists would be to depict an experience, which was for them already imbued with sublimity: to provide the viewer with the same overwhelming feelings they themselves had already experienced. These could be feelings of awe mixed with trepidation from a sight that can inspire.
I have been particularly interested in the experience when referencing the sublime and the way in which artists can create work based on their experience to express a sublime experience for the viewer.