2016.11.02-19 tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE interviewed by AG Davis

2016.11.02-19 tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE interviewed by email by AG Davis

As I recall, my attention was 1st called to the work of AG Davis by Monty Cantsin in Belarus, probably in 2015, who told me that Davis was one of his favorite sound artists or some such. Not long thereafter, an offer was made to publish a split 7" lathecut record with a piece by me on one side & one by Davis on the other.

We got in touch with each other online & traded by snail-mail. Davis sent me his "Bionicism" CD & a tape done in collaboration with {AN}-Eel possibly entitled "airporting roseate with crude basement xenakis" (nicely wrapped in fake fur), & a book of his entitled "Báthory" published by Abstract Editions (my review of the book is here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/515255-b-thorying ). The proposed split 7" didn't happen & AG proposed that we collaborate. I counter-proposed that we each interview each other for my "Interviewee" & "Interviewer" websites. My interviewing of AG is here: 2016.11.03-19 AG Davis interviewed by email by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE.

AG: 1. which is more important to you: time or energy?

tENT: Neither is more important. If I have plenty of time but no energy I won't get much done. If I have plenty of energy & no time I won't get much done. Getting things done is what's important - but, of course, not just indiscriminately so.

AG: 2.what is your ultimate goal in composing/creating?

tENT: I don't have an "ultimate goal in composing/creating". When I listen to someone else's composition I'm more likely to be stimulated by it & to, therefore, like it if manifests ideas that are fresh to me. Since I listen to an enormous amt of (M)Usic this is mostly a difficult thing b/c I'm so jaded & I'm surprised less & less. On the other hand, I'm also more likely to notice & appreciate small innovations & inspirations that also please me so I don't have to be surprised by large scale inspiration, I can appreciate subtleties.

Generally, I don't say that I "compose", I say that I "d compose". I don't remember where I 1st came across the notion of the "decomposer" or what was meant by that by whoever put forth the idea but it might've been in something sd by Karlheinz Stockhausen, by far one of my favorite composers. What I retroactively imagine is that I read Stockhausen mention "decomposing" & I liked the idea & adopted it for my own purposes - probably no later than 1975.

I imagine that I was amused by the idea of being a "decomposer". That probably seemed appropriate for me since I wasn't particularly interested in making conventional music or even avant-garde music, I was more interested in doing things w/ sound that were outside of existing currents.

Nonetheless, I did have starting points: improvisation, Musique Concrete, electronic music, graphic notation, noise, text scores - all of the things that I'd found most stimulating in work that I'd only recently come upon in the mid-70s after having been initially stimulated by older classical music, rock'n'roll, jazz, & folk music - in other words, music that was more common in my immediate surrounding culture.

Being a "decomposer" is both a riff off of the joke: "I'm following in the footsteps of the great composers, Beethoven, Mozart, etc. I'm decomposing." & other things. Obviously, they're dead & I'll be dead eventually too. It also riffs off of the idea that to decompose is to analyze, to separate things into parts. I'm an analytic person. I changed "decomposer" into "d composer" b/c I barely graduated high school w/ a "d" average, the lowest passing grade - not b/c I was incapable of understanding the work that I was presented w/ but b/c I was so bored by it all. I was a good, perhaps an excellent, mathematician &, yet, I got low math class grades. Why? I remember people sitting next to me in math class so they cd surreptitiously ask me what the correct answers were. They'd get good grades. I just wrote punchlines to the test questions. I'd fail. I was bored & didn't give a flying shit about whether I'd get the imprimatur of the enforced 'learning'.

My self-description in 1975 was relatively simple:

Mad Scientist / d composer / Sound Thinker / Thought Collector / As Been

Since then, it's grown considerably. Self-descriptions relevant to sound production wd include:

booed usician / Low Classicist / Earchivist

& probably others that I'm not thinking of at the moment. I wrote an essay called "Low Classical Usic" that's online here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/WdmUUsicEssaysLCU.html &, probably, elsewhere.

Back to yr question (w/ the word "ultimate" removed): "what is your goal in composing/creating?"

I have many, MANY goals. I hope that my goals increase w/ every new work. In other words, I hope that I accomplish something w/ each new work that I haven't previously accomplished. That sd, there probably are overall characteristics that are key to my sense of purpose:

I prefer to live as much as possible in accordance w/ my imagination.

That leads into what I call "undermining 'reality' maintenance traps". In 1981 I performed an action that I named "id ntity's attempt 2 undermine "reality" maintenance traps" a brief description of wch can be found here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/MereOutline1981.html & a brief movie from wch can be found here: https://youtu.be/Ababbr_8Xas . The idea was that I'd try to hypnotize myself into being able to walk thru walls, etc..

Mainly I try to be more or less 'free' (a debatable concept considering how many impediments there are to it intrinsic to existence in a social context in particular & intrinsic to existence in general) & to cooperate w/ others in resisting injustice.

Creatively? The traces I try to leave behind me are ones that I hope open new positive possibilities for thought & action. If I'm not the type of personality for establishing & maintaining long-term institutions I'm at least the type of person who sets examples by deed.

AG: 3. after reading the above, i am curious in regards to your jadedness, especially when it comes to potentially hearing something novel or new. do you think, in terms of sound in and of itself, and what is able to be heard/registered by a listener, that we have reached an impasse; that all potential for developing neu-sounds has been exhausted due to the limitations of the human ear and current tech? if so, i am interested in how you think this limit might be overcome. perhaps tech to augment/modify the ears, or tech to generate internal sounds within the brain - such as when you think a sound? i tend to be jaded myself in terms of 'music', yet i am excited for future prospects in tech, and how advances might even overwhelm the listener with different ways of experiencing/perceiving things. maybe in the future a Mozart will be unpalatable, simply bc the ear will take in sounds differently, whether through the process of evolution, and/or through the aid of technologies.

tENT: "do you think, in terms of sound in and of itself, and what is able to be heard/registered by a listener, that we have reached an impasse"?: No, certainly not. I don't think it's 'possible' to reach such an impasse. There are an infinite amt of ways of working w/ sound & imagination is infinite. Various states of mind just inhibit the explorations that may be freshest.

EG: Academia encourages a fabulous discipline in both playing & composing. I admire this discipline immensely. However, it takes time & sometimes gets in the way & it's not for everybody. Academic composers tend to pay too much attn to craft & too little attn to thinking outside the box. If a person doesn't worry about whether what they're doing meets standards that may be completely irrelevant to reaching a Eureka!-state then they may accomplish something truly astounding rather than something that's 'beautiful' but banal. There are many types of discipline & truly driven people will develop the discipline that's most appropriate for getting done what they envision.

EG: In 1978, I decided to make super-8 films of the main art objects that I'd made to date & to then give those objects away in the interest of moving on from being an 'artist' to being a 'mad scientist'. I then took those films & cut them into individual frames by hand w/ scissors to yield approximately 46,800 individual frames. These frames were then distributed internationally in "Mike Film Form Letters" to people who I asked to do things w/ the frames & to then report back to me about what they'd done. A part of the idea was to distribute my art works in a somewhat unprecedented way - hence expanding their conceptual value immensely. Hand-cutting all those frames was mind-bogglingly tedious & took serious discipline to get thru. That specific discipline was, obviously, not something I wd've been taught in a school.

To this day, I tend to think of difficult things to do & to then imagine how to get them done w/o having to rely on economic resources that I don't have. I've always admired Outsider Architects, like Ferdinand Cheval, who build fantastic structures by themselves or w/ the help of a few interested friends. Building the Watts Towers took an incredible discipline more typical of the working class & the poor than it ever cd be of the privileged & rich. A rich person wd hire someone to build something & then say they built it - even if they never laid a hand on it. The type of accomplishment I admire most is the type that money can't buy the making of.

When I got my 3D brain tattoo on my head in 1987 that also took a type of discipline - the discipline to make myself even more of a blatant pervert than I already was in pursuit of a vision that was clearly deviant from mainstream society's tolerances & wch was clearly likely to result in an enormous amt of hate being directed against me.

Even something like making the movie I'm currently working on, "Hindsight", takes the discipline of the "work-around", The movie was shot in 1920X1080 HD but the computer that I did the initial edit on was incapable of processing it in a way that wd enable me to actually see what I was doing in motion while I was working on it. I've had to work-around this in ways that've been extremely slow but the movie will get done. That takes the discipline to not be defeated by frustrating obstacles. I literally don't know anyone else who has the patience to work under such conditions.

The point is: there's still an infinite amt of ideas to be brought into realization - it's just a matter of having the imagination to do so & the persistence to see it thru. Just b/c I'm not as surprised as I once was by the sounds I hear other people making doesn't mean that we're at an impasse. It might mean that people are thinking too much inside the box, that people are overly attempting to be the next person in an admired lineage rather than just themselves. I think of Conlon Nancarrow, whose work we both enjoy: he pulled one of the greatest work-arounds ever by using player-pianos when he moved to Mexico after participating in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. I don't need to make a piece for multiple orchestras like Stockhausen did in "Gruppen" & Anthony Braxton & others did. They took advantage of their available resources. I took advantage of MY available resources & cocreated "B.U.T.N.", the BalTimOre Underground Telectropheremoanin' Network w/ Richard Ellsberry & Doug Retzler in 1979. By using answering machines & telephones we incorporated thousands of people into the work by creating a participatory mass media.

In a 2006 article of mine entitled "That Newfangled Telephone Gizmo" rejected from a prominent new music magazine I wrote:

"Richard (the main participant other than myself at this point) realized that we could create a message chain that began with a message, was followed by an incoming space, & was ended by the tone that triggered the rewind & playback. Callers could call & hear an explanation of this process. They could then leave a message. The next caller would then hear the trigger tone, the rewinding, the explanatory message, &, most importantly, the last caller's message. This way our machine could act as an intermediary between anonymous callers & we could record it all! One guy called repeatedly offering his 9" dick, drugs, his sister's body. It didn't work for him as far as I 'know'. Other people did connect with each other though. They left their phone #s (something I thought was foolish to do) & people would call each other outside of our system.

"Some readers of this article might wonder what any of this has to do with music. To put this project into a classical continuity one need only refer to the wonderful John Cage / David Tudor collaboration entitled "Variations IV" at the Fiegen/Palmer Gallery in Los Angeles in 1965(?). In this performance, records, tapes, & radio were mixed live with sounds picked up by microphones in & around the performance space. With the phone stations we simply took advantage of the telephone network's ability to provide us with a huge network of microphones to tap into for our Concrete Mixing. I'm not truthfully concerned with whether people accept this as music or not. Calling it sound art will do just as well. Either term is disposable." - http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/Telephone.html

Why was this article rejected from the peer-reviewed journal? 1st of all, no-one among those making the editorial decisions were likely to be in any way shape or form my so-called 'peer'. 2ndly, the theme of the issue was Gizmos or some-such & I suspect that the Gizmos likely to be accepted for presentation were more likely to be rare, expensive, & highly technical rather than repurposed household objects. 3rdly, an article in wch sentences like this exist: "One guy called repeatedly offering his 9" dick, drugs, his sister's body." are not likely to be accepted in 'polite society'. Once again, the working class gets censored out by the self-glorifying wealthy people likely to be the editors of a journal at a prominent university. That particular recording does exist, however, on my CD entitled "Significantly Different from the Other One".

The point is that if we only hear the world thru the aesthetic biases of the likes of the editors of the above un-named journal life is bound to get boring. Projects of mine like Mike Film are still, 38 yrs later, too weird to've made it into any film histories. I maintain that Mike Film is far more imaginative than anything else of its time & since & far more deserving of analysis & appreciation than any Jean-Luc Godard movie, eg. Furthermore, the B.U.T.N. projects were far more adventurous than even Cage's "Roaratorio" of the same time but Cage kept it all in 'good taste' by not using sex sounds that other less 'polite society' cultures wd glory(-hole) in.

Back to yr question(s): "do you think" [..] "that all potential for developing neu-sounds has been exhausted due to the limitations of the human ear and current tech?": No, I don't think that at all. In fact I often try to de-emphasize tech. Technology has become the new God. The claim is made by Carl Sagan & just about everyone else (except, unfortunately, for the religious - in whose camp I definitely don't want to be) that all paradigm shifts occur as a result of innovative technology such as the Gutenberg Press or the computer. I'm rooting for paradigm shifts conceived of as concepts independent of technology. EG: the concepts of ZERO or NEGATIVE NUMBERS are certainly paradigm shift markers IMO but I think arguments linking them exclusively to technology changes are bound to be forced.

I think it's people's imaginations that're limited. To refer back to my previous mention of available resources - this is key. Imagine being a person who's been told their whole life that great music is made by orchestras w/ hundreds of millions of dollars of finely crafted instruments. Now imagine this person living in a remote area where such resources are unlikely to be accessible. If that person can break out of thinking that the orchestra is the only way & realizes that whatever might be around them can also produce something phenomenal then they're much more likely to produce an original work than if they get mired in irrelevant traditions. Obviously, this notion is not original to me, Luigi Russolo & John Cage & many others deserve credit for that. Just the potential for environmental recordings alone shd be enuf to keep alert listeners happy for a long time to come.

You write that: "i am interested in how you think this limit might be overcome. perhaps tech to augment/modify the ears, or tech to generate internal sounds within the brain - such as when you think a sound?" &, again, I de-emphasize tech. For the last 40+ yrs I've been making pieces under the rubric of "Sound Thinking". Think about this:

2 B OAR KNOT 2 B

A deaf person unfamiliar w/ the homophones of "2" & "to", "b" & "be", "oar" & "or", & "knot" & "not" & also not familiar w/ the famous quote from Shakespeare's Hamlet speech may not read the above as "To be or not to be". But a person who has in their memory the homophones or who's capable of recognizing them by silently pronouncing the above symbols & understanding their double meanings will get the Hamlet quote. That's not what you're talking about when you mention using technology "to generate internal sounds within the brain" but it IS what I'm talking about when I make the claim that we're already doing that in ways that we pay no attn to that aren't necessarily technological.

You write that "maybe in the future a Mozart will be unpalatable" to wch I reply that Mozart is already somewhat "unpalatable" to me simply b/c I don't find his music very interesting to listen to. I think that it's possible that hitherto neglected older musics might be revived as the criteria for appraising & appreciating them change. I have a strong interest in "Toy Symphonies" for their available resources nature. One of my favorite pieces of music is Henri Kling's "Kitchen Symphony" wch I was exposed to thanks to the research of pianist Raymond Lewenthal. One can see the album cover of his performance & hear it as well in this YouTube vaudeo: https://youtu.be/s8n3A39_JmY . But a "Kitchen Symphony" is 'doomed' to be 'reduced' to a novelty music piece until fresh thinking about it happens. I'm already there. Care to join me?

AG: it seems to me, that a lot of what you are saying in your previous answer ties in with the idea of the official, accepted def. of 'ART' as upholding the ideals and livelihood of the upper class: the stradivari, the expensive and over-the-top symphonies, the means to produce extravagant 'artifacts', etc. ... and then there is the co-opting of ''the marginal'' as a wish to capitalize on alterity, and a fetishistic embrace (usually from a distance) of the 'other', almost a clinical pursuit of whitewashing said 'other' (gallery/museum spaces, etc.) with work carefully placed and offered up almost as a sacrifice. it seems as if you are asking for a new standard of judging artworks, one which takes into consideration the means (or lack thereof) for production AND the talent put forth. --the idea that money has nothing to do with creativity in the arts. in praxis tho, this cannot be the case, i would argue - since serious advancements in most of the arts and especially in science require (and this is unfortunate) serious capital. this is not delving into the realm of thought experiments, infinitesimal art, etc. - practices which can be carried out in one's own mind, possibly being transmitted to others via vague analogy. i am speaking more on the physical side of things, or, the physical translated into the intangible (sound, computing, etc.). in other words, do you see money as having corrupted the idea of 'art', or do you see 'art' as being a direct result of the idea of capital and its accumulation? do you see 'art' as an almost divine entity (bc this to me would imply a sublimation of capital), or do see 'art' as being obsolete - that it is a mere term rendered obsolete because it is overshadowed by investment (money)? you said that science is the new religion? but isn't some form of looking up necessary, some idea of transcending ourselves? won't there always be a new god? or should we look inward for our OWN transcendence, relying on the self alone, bc obviously shit aint working? would you be in favor of a hive-like mind - a mind that knows all parts and functions? or should difference be celebrated, as long as the difference isn't harmful to the whole (unless the difference is harmful, but is necessary to shake things up in a positive manner)? it seems to me ppl want a whole and infinitely many parts at the same time...but to me, this will never work and creates cognitive dissonance. sorry for all the questions at the same time.

tENT: I'm not actually that interested in the notion of "artworks" per se, I'm more preoccupied w/ standards in general which take "into consideration the means (or lack thereof) for production AND the talent put forth". I once worked for an events company the owner of wch was the son of a judge. He had plenty of wealthy connections as a result. He'd get a job & have us working class stiffs basically design & build & install the props for the event. Then we were expected to get our unacceptably working class selves out of sight before the 'beautiful people' wd come in. The clients wd then gush all over the employer about what a great job he'd done when, in fact, he'd done almost nothing. This was, to put it mildly, galling. So, yes, I'm heavily preoccupied w/ class issues or just giving credit where credit's due.

Money is a tool for getting things done. It's much easier to produce something physically ambitious if one can pay the participants & use difficult-to-get materials etc. You say that you "would argue - since serious advancements in most of the arts and especially in science require (and this is unfortunate) serious capital" & I don't have any problem w/ that assertion up to a point. But what I'm usually most interested in is the minds of the people who have the inspirations & the visions. What price does one put on the mind of Alan Turing? & how fast wd the Enigma code been cracked, despite all the money put into doing so, if Turing's mind hadn't been in the mix? Leonhard Euler has had a profound effect on human consciousness, how much did he cost? His ideas are incredibly pure math &, yet, have amazing applied math consequences.

You ask me if I "see money as having corrupted the idea of 'art', or do you see 'art' as being a direct result of the idea of capital and its accumulation?" Neither. Again, I'm not that interested in the 'idea' of "art" per se - even tho I'm very interested in much of what other people produce as "art". I've been saying for something like 41 yrs now that I think "art" is an outmoded context - I'm interested in creating new contexts that encourage people to perceive things freshly. I've been arguing all this time that contextualizing things as "art" often involves bringing in irrelevant baggage & also encourages people to oversimplify their perceptions.

You say that I "said that science is the new religion" but actually I wrote that "Technology has become the new God." To me, that's not the same thing. What I mean is that people increasingly seem to revere technology as a sort of supreme entity & each new addition to its pantheon proof of its supreme powers. But I value Gödel's incompleteness theorems more than I do an iPod.

You ask "isn't some form of looking up necessary, some idea of transcending ourselves? won't there always be a new god?" To me, both of yr questions imply the necessity of a hierarchy. I find hierarchy pernicious b/c it encourages people to entrust themselves to a 'higher power'. It's possible to 'transcend oneself' by stepping outside of oneself - one doesn't have to go 'higher', just outside the entity box. There might always be a new God but I don't have to believe in its supremacy.

You ask if I wd "be in favor of a hive-like mind" to wch I reply absolutely not. The hive mind is exactly what mass media is working toward, the hive mind accepts all the tv 'news' as the truth & acts accordingly in response. You ask "should difference be celebrated, as long as the difference isn't harmful to the whole"? I'm not proposing celebrating difference just for being different in & of itself - but I'm more likely to observe difference in search of ideas that I haven't previously encountered given that they're more likely to be found there.

You say that it seems to you that "ppl want a whole and infinitely many parts at the same time...but to me, this will never work and creates cognitive dissonance." Given that I call myself a Cognitive Dissident I'm not necessarily opposed to Cognitive Dissonance. I also don't think that a whole & infinitely-many-parts are necessarily mutually exclusive. I've always been interested in set theory. Can't the 'set that includes everything' consist of "infinitely many parts"? & isn't it also very appealing to have a 'set that includes everything but itself'?

AG: ? - what do you think, if anything, about the idea that if there is no god as of yet, that a god could be potentially created as an actual ''entity''? i know this question can only be answered with a somewhat inflexible definition of what ''god'' is, so i will define this potential god as an entity having all of the attributes of the christian conception of god: god as all-powerful, all knowing, etc., etc..--- as even though god would be created, it would have the ability to be anywhere/everywhere in space/time; therefor being a created god, but one which would, at its inception, grasp the entirety of space/time and be able to manipulate/control every aspect of space/time. it would become god retroactively; a god created by us, but paradoxically, its extension as god would retroactively encompass ALL, therefor making it able to know everything, past, present, and future. .

tENT: I think that the creation of such a "god" is highly improbable but the idea intrigues me. How wd it be created & who/what wd do the creating? Of course, anything that cd create a god wd be in a hierarchy above that god, a 'holier than thou' god perhaps. I find the idea of creating a god that isn't lower in the hierarchy as a result particularly interesting. It implies a possibility ordinarily deemed 'impossible'. A god created by a zeitgeist wd be a gestalt god, a god greater than its creator parts. I still don't want a god of any kind in my life but your idea is still a fun one.

AG: -but yet we come from our parents, and some of us maintain a higher intelligence than our parents - sometimes radically so (not that 'radically' so makes any sort of difference in terms of human intelligence). if (and i don't mean to put words in your mouth) you believe in evolution, we literally are a chain reaction descended from single celled organisms. and then there is technology, which is increasing exponentially in terms of what it is capable of. i suppose it depends on how you frame the hierarchy and how things fall within said hierarchy. do they fall within the hierarchy in terms of intelligence? or, something else? it would seem you are framing the hierarchy in terms of something other in saying that a god created would be lower on the hierarchy. but what determines hierarchy? is it time? my theory is that god will be created as a result of AI, and that time will be rendered (and already has been) irrelevant in terms of an ''ultimate knowledge''. time is still relevant for us bc we are trapped in an intricate loop. although loop implies a time structure, i am thinking of a point in the loop where god is created , and the original loop becomes irrelevant for this god; where time would only apply to creatures who perceive themselves as being trapped within the loop, and indeed are. basically, what i am getting at is that god is to be created, but bc it is to be created, it has been here the whole time, bc at its creation, it would break free from time, becoming all powerful and all knowing. it would then have the capability of retroactively inserting itself within the fabric of space/time. in other words, god is to be, but always has been, as we have made it that way. this is the best i can explain it. god is not here, yet here...and we --- we have no way of knowing where things begin or end --- although they certainly do not, in my best estimation - end, bc god is and is not there - he exists, yet does not exist

tENT: The above isn't really a question so I'll respond to it as if we're having a dialog. You write that "we come from our parents" & that "some of us maintain a higher intelligence than our parents". To some, that might seem egotistical of the person claiming higher intelligence &/or delusional &/or non-appreciative of the qualities of one's parents. However, a child is the product of 2 sets of DNA & there's always the possibility of the gestalt, the whole being greater than the parts. Furthermore, what one does w/ what one's born w/ varies dramatically from person-to-person. I rebelled against authority more or less immediately. I remember being, what?, 5?, in kindergarten in a church & being told to not go into the balcony. So, what did I do? I went into the balcony & screamed. Now an adult reading this might cringe at my brattiness & be glad I wasn't under their care. That's understandable. I recount this incident to show that even at such an 'unformed' age I was not to be controlled.

What I'm getting at is that some people, very few perhaps, hold onto their free thinking for dear life. These are the people whose intelligence is more likely to develop. Other people, such as most, if not all, of my family, immediately toe the line, controlled by punishment & reward scenarios, & become robopaths - effectively brain-dead as far as independent thought goes. Rewards offered are usually rewards for conforming & for doing what others command you to do & NOT for doing what fits your own personal vision or best interests other than immediate survival. As for the punishment? When one is faced w/ choices like: 'join the military or go to jail' wch option is 'best'?! Obviously, the 3rd option that's unstated is best: get your ass out of there altogether - not always an easy thing to do.

As for whether I believe in evolution? Long ago I came up w/ the idea that "I believe in everything, I believe in nothing." What I mean is that I try to maintain an open mind that anything's possible but that I make decisions based on the idea that just b/c something's possible doesn't mean that it holds true in any way that's relevant. I try to make decisions in a way that's based most directly in my personal experience & not based on whatever mediation I'm inundated w/. Evolution seems to be generally taken as a simple step process: A develops into B develops into C, etc.. I tend to think that everything's more multivalent than that. In other words, if technology develops, as you say, "exponentially" is it so impossible to imagine that evolution does too? Imagine 1 + 1 = 2. Now imagine DNA + DNA = Gestalt. Then imagine Gestalt + Gestalt = Meta-Gestalt, in other words: imagine every new combination producing previously nonexistent combinations w/ new implications & imagine how fast those new combinations might & can lead to new possibilities. AI (Artificial Intelligence) will have to reach this level of organic possibility before it can really be sd to 'compete' w/ human intelligence. I don't think it's anywhere close yet, despite its exponential growth. There's a chaos factor that's enormously stimulating in biology.

You seem to be asking whether I frame "hierarchy in terms of intelligence". Hierarchy is an ordering, not a single entity. There will be times when there's a hierarchy of intelligence, there will be times when there's a hierarchy of power. Generally hierarchies are maintained by power in the vested interest of the status quo. IE: a judge has the power to pass judgment on someone in a way that inflicts punishment on them. It's in the judge's interest to maintain their judgmental position just as it's in the interests of those who put the judge in place. It's not in the interests of the people imprisoned by the judge. The 'successful' criminals know this & act accordingly to have their power base include judges & others who can enable their continued criminal operation. When I say, as you put it, "that a god created would be lower on the hierarchy" I mean that an entity that creates another entity has a generative advantage. In your imagining, that generative advantage can then become superceded - your theory being "that god will be created as a result of AI, and that time will be rendered (and already has been) irrelevant in terms of an ''ultimate knowledge''".

I'm not quite sure what you mean by time, I don't know of any AI that's independent of it - at least in the sense of independent of functioning w/in duration - nor do I 'know' of any "ultimate knowledge". When I think of the great claims made for AI I think of how automation was claimed to be something that wd free humanity from tedious labor. Instead, it's enslaved people to the service of maintaining machines. Show me the day when I can fuck an AI & enjoy it as much as I enjoy fucking humans & the day when we can give birth to progeny & I'll show you a day when AIs are beginning to get somewhere. However, I don't mean that I want a machine to joy-stick my brain's orgasm-production & that I want progeny that's machine manufactured out of information gleaned from my DNA. IMO that's extremely inferior to the rather messy way we do things now.

Your idea "that god is to be created, but bc it is to be created, it has been here the whole time, bc at its creation, it would break free from time, becoming all powerful and all knowing. it would then have the capability of retroactively inserting itself within the fabric of space/time" is interesting but not really of any value to me. Such a god is as useless to me as an any other. I'd be much more entertained, at least, if you suggested 'that mud is to be created, but bc it is to be created, it has been here the whole time, bc at its creation, it would break free from time, becoming all powerful and all knowing. it would then have the capability of retroactively inserting itself within the fabric of space/time'. In other words, I really don't relate to the ongoing emphasis on 'god'. If we're to imagine such a scenario of creation becoming 'all-powerful' why does it have to be GOD?! Why not an iPod or something? Or an iGod? Something we can buy for less than $100 complete w/ all claimed capabilities. Think of the mayhem! 'I just got the latest iGod 7 & it has an eat-your-annoying-neighbor-w/-an-alligator-invasion app!' 'Oh, I can only afford the iGod 3 so I'm still working on having sex w/ Lola but another guy's interested in her & he's got the Beta model of iGod 7.5 so I don't stand a chance.' 'I had sex w/ Lola & she gave birth to an iGod 10-to-the-10th power as soon as I pulled my cock out but it ate her as soon as she tried to suckle it so you might as well pick another partner.'

AG: 'god' is obviously mere terminology, and i maintain that you are right in your manner of speaking of the terms 'god' as being relatively trite and/or overdone...it is merely a matter of semantics-but powerful semantics at that, in a negative sense. when i think of 'god', i simply mean a 'being' that has ultimate control, knows and sees everything, etc.. now, you're statement about the 'igod'...i think that could be possible, in fact likely, to where each entity has complete control over their ability to ''see'', to ''control''; what i mean by this is that all of mankind could have the potential of reaching 'god' status, and regardless of how long that might take in 'time' - but that's the point, it has already happened, bc regardless of the amount of time it would take to reach an exponential factor toward an AI consciousness, it is going to happen - unless we destroy ourselves - which i suppose might be an equally likely proposition. if the exponential progress toward consciousness begins, then i am proven right - bc it could only explode into the technological singularity resulting in the said AI consciousness. i remember an H.P. Lovecraft story where a human came to the realization that he was actually a very high number of separate creatures residing in different dimensions. This struck me, as to where does that extension stop? maybe it does not. maybe, in a sense, what i am getting at is the monad. an interconnection that cannot really be understood from our reference pt., but which does indeed exist - to where we have all made ourselves out of a universal accident, one in which we retroactively have inserted ourselves into - implying that we existed before the universe - somewhere/something else. but what is an 'accident'?: more semantics. i mean an 'accident' in terms of our perspective within the framework of this loop (and then we can get into the multiverse)...my idea is that we exist in the first loop, the loops both anterior and posterior to the accident- and that we are trapped within, simply from pt. of reference. i am hinting at immortality. and our unrecognized godhood, although i know you hate the terminology, or are at the very least slightly annoyed by it. - all of this is obviously very difficult to explain, and beyond my capacity. my mind simply runs crazy with ideas thinking about it. too many routes. a nearly infinite amount. basically, time IS irrelevant. i don't think it really exists except from our perspective, which as the cliche goes, is only an illusion.

AG: question: you obviously are antipathetic toward words which have become stock, or, rather are generally perceived as being words that relate to things in a strict given manner, such as the word 'god' - or rather - words whose connotations have almost become denotations. why is this? i mean, beyond the obvious of 'this necessarily' necessarily means this, and nothing more...to be honest, i like playing with these strict words, as they usually don't mean the same to me as other people might imagine them meaning, or believe them to mean; they might be buzzwords for most ppl, but it depends on the take, my take being the marginal, the understated, the ignored, the UN-canonical. is it the word 'god' which bothers you bc of what it represents to the majority, or, is it because of something else - maybe the idea that you might not be in control?

tENT: Actually, I use stock words all the time. Starting in the 1970s I often framed my texts w/ quotation marks meant to signify that the language I was using wasn't mine, I was simply arranging it. SO, I'm not necessarily "antipathetic toward words which have become stock" given that I use common articles, prepositions, etc.. Therefore, I'm not "antipathetic" toward a word that begins w/ the 7th letter of the alphabet I use, has as its middle letter the 15th one, & ends w/ the 4th. God god god god; god god god god god, god god.

However, I was raised in a Christian family. My mom was a Sunday School teacher, my sister was a missionary, the woman who introduced my mom & stepdad was a missionary, one of my stepdad's brothers was an army chaplain. The man who lived at the end of my small dead end street was a street preacher. His legs had been blown off in Vietnam. He walked on his hands, wch he wrapped in rags. Since he knew that I was both an atheist & opposed to the Vietnam War & to war in general he followed me around on his hands screaming that I was going to go to hell. He had discussions about this w/ my mom. She agreed w/ him.

The point is it's not the signifier that I am "antipathetic" toward it's what's signified. People use the idea of a supreme being to pass the responsibility buck: 'It's God's will' & that sort of thing. Given that I'm an anarchist & a person who prefers to take responsibility for my own actions I choose to, therefore, have as much control over those actions as I can manage. As w/ almost, or all, of the questions you ask me, you phrase the following question in an either/or way that leaves no room for my actual opinion unless I sidestep your provided answers (as I'm about to do): "is it the word 'god' which bothers you bc of what it represents to the majority, or, is it because of something else - maybe the idea that you might not be in control?":

As already explained, the word is irrelevant. The "idea that you might not be in control" is closer to what might bother me. Imagine this: I'm driving on a street where children are playing, you grab the wheel of the car & try to force me to run over the children. I struggle w/ you to regain control of the car while pushing the brake firmly down to prevent any further motion toward the endangered. You say: "What's the matter? Are you bothered "that you might not be in control?"" I park the car as safely as I can, remove the keys & try to get you to leave the car or get a safe distance away from you. I'm not going to run over the kids b/c 'God told me to'. No thanks. I prefer to be responsible.

AG: you're right, and i see your point entirely. i think all of my questions were phrased in an either/or manner, which i apologized for in a previous email. i'm a bad interviewer. never have interviewed, but i guess my questions seemed like they phrased the way my mind works: in an either/or fashion, which simply is not true, although i can definitely see someone reading this as thinking that. so, i apologize. although i will say, even though i used the word 'or' in my previous question, i did say in asking the question ''...or, is it because of something else'', the ''something else'' leaving ample room for you ton answer as it pretty much encompasses everything. but again - i apologize for framing things in an either/or fashion; i was persistent in it and the fault is entirely mine.

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