ALL THINGS BIG AND SMALL 2.0

If you think the free-form jazz of Ornette Coleman, the abstract art of Jackson Pollock or John Cage’s 4’33’’ are too far-out, consider the art of experimental artist/musicians Eduardo Kac and Peter Gena who used Biology to do their Art and Music. WHAT EDUARDO KAC DID (see image above) In his live Art entitled ‘Genesis’, Eduardo: 1.       Took a passage from the Bible (Genesis 1:26) “Let man have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth." 2.       Translated it into the dots and dashes of Morse Code 3.       Using an algorithm he designed, he then translated it to DNA’s  A, C, T, G protein base pairings  to have a design for a strand of DNA 4.       He then synthetically manufactured and injected this DNA strand into live bacteria. 5.       Using an elec...

The extraordinary powers that musicians have still mystifies me. For example, the fingerboard of the violin is only a few inches long. Each note is only a millimeter or less away from the next. So when you consider that an accomplished violinist can play at great speed and his fingers must always be in the correct position within 0.5 mm for him to play each note pitch accurately [note out by half a tone is still discernible as out-of- tune by the human ear], it is really a wondrous feat. But this is just a technical feat. Even more interesting is our ability to 'feel' the chord changes in a song. In a simple song with a Root chord, a 4th and a Dominant Seventh,[e.g. in C key, it is C, F and G7 chords it is usually no problem for an average musician to know when to change ]. But ask most musicians and they can't explain how they know when to change. It is just a 'feeling' and it's quite unerring in it's accuracy. Folk songs, church songs, country songs ...