Pat Carroll

Author: pc

  • Balancing Structure and Variation in the Creative Process

    Desired Output vs. Conventional Structure

    When I’ve recently sat down to write music, I’ve been more drawn towards ambient, experimental, and spatial work. It’s difficult for me to pin down exactly the type of music I’d like to be writing, but I have found that I’ve been avoiding dance music, and popular music approaches recently — trending styles with conventional popular structures. To me, this music is often about trying to match something that has come before. I’ve found myself interested in exploring approaches to music that are new and haven’t been explored before, and I often want to actively avoid conventions where possible.

    I remember Daniel Avery mentioning how he is confused to hear people talk about wanting to create sounds that reflect natural sounds and sonic behaviours, as he wants to explore sounds that are impossible, new, and haven’t been heard before. I definitely resonate with this feeling.

    But right now, my creative process feels like it’s in a bit of disarray. Every time I’ve recently sat down, I seem to want to approach composition in a new way. This does align with wanting to push music into new territory, but it also leaves me feeling fairly untethered. There’s huge value in having a process down pat that you can use to make new, wildly variable music, using the same set of tools. I believe it comes from having a process that is rigid enough to offer security, but flexible enough to facilitate a diverse and experimental output.

    The Creative Tension

    I think that’s part of the tension: I’m always trying to find the balance of established structure in the creative process, and abandoning conventions in the music itself.

    An established structure acts as a foundation. If I ever get lost, I can fall back on it and use it for guidance. I know which synths to use for certain applications, or which plugins to use for specific processing methods. I’d really like that: having, say, a single plugin for a distortion pedal, or a single plugin for a tape emulation. That way, whenever I want distortion or tape emulation, I know exactly where to go. At the same time, this bank of equipment (and creative techniques) must have the potential to create experimental music, absent of conventional structures.

    Defining the Creative Process

    What actually is the creative process? To me, it’s a collection of procedures, techniques, and equipment/technologies.

    Procedures are linear processes I move through to fulfil certain tasks. Techniques are the creative, often signature ways of carrying out those procedures. And finally, equipment/technologies are the tools (DAWs, specific plugins, modulators) required to execute them.

    The creative process is almost fractal in nature: micro-techniques nested within macro-procedures. Take, for example, creating a layer of interesting glitchy material. I go through an overarching procedure: setting up the material, routing it to an auxiliary channel, loading a complex processing chain, recording the output, chopping up the resulting recording, isolating the parts that resonate with me, and then further processing them through pitch shifting and time stretching. That whole sequence is a procedure, but the specific choices I make define my technique. Another composer would have an entirely different set of techniques — and use a set of different tools — to carry out their procedure of creating a layer of interesting glitchy material. A single piece might have a hundred of these procedures embedded within it, from long, extensive sequences of actions to concise procedures for things such as isolating transients in a sound.

    Rigidity; Avoiding Dogmatism

    It’s worth considering the results of rigidity in the creative process. If it’s very rigid, and the composer knows exactly what to do step-by-step — which rhythms to use, which synths to use — the composer will feel secure, but the piece will sound similar to their last one. But if the process is completely unstructured, the composer may feel lost, and each piece will sound wildly different.

    The essential task is finding that balance: the process should have enough rigidity to allow the composer to feel somewhat secure and have options for what to do next, but not so much rigidity that the resulting works are predictable. Variation — and its ability to create unexpected outcomes — can be applied to technologies, techniques, and procedures alike.

    To me, it’s similar to the move of certain DAWs to create ‘ranges’ in parameters, rather than fixed values. In Live, you can fix a velocity range that each note will play at each time it is triggered, creating a subtle sense of randomness in the sound. In Bitwig, you can create a range that an automated parameter will sit at, rather than a fixed value. This ability of establishing ranges rather than fixed values allows for some structure, but offers the possibility for variation each time the track is played. Applying this to the creative process, there is structure and security, but the possibility for variation each time the creative process is undertaken.

    My ideal process is one that results in works that do not align with conventional structures. If you make music based on techniques you’ve heard artists use, your music may align with their sound. This is completely fine early on in a career, as you develop your skill set, but at a certain point, departing from these conventions allow for a unique, personal voice to emerge. You have to allow yourself to develop and evolve the techniques you learn and mimic, to embed them in your own process — to adapt them; to break them into their fundamental components and vary these. Techniques can be built upon others, merging to create entirely new ones, akin to how technologies evolve. I believe it’s worth being aware of the true nature of techniques, and how adapting them can open us up to entirely new ways of working and entirely new types of creative outcomes. I think we’re all aware of techniques, and can talk about them well, but it’s interesting to really unpack them and get to their essence — understanding how they’re similar to technologies; how they relate to craftsmanship; how they construct our own unique ways of doing things.

  • Reading x like a text

    Something I’ve been interested in for a while is the ways that we interpret our inputs; the way we make sense of what we’re observing and experiencing. This is very connected to semiotics and representation. Perhaps my interest in it is a result of being educated in a creative arts institution like the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, and tending to have a fairly ‘artistic’ lens. I don’t mean that as a brag — I’m merely pointing out that I have tended to see the world as, or in terms of, art and representation.

    Representation to me is the core of the arts. It’s the way that certain pieces of art and creative media represent certain meanings that we apply to our own lives and experiences. Certain characters within texts resonate with us differently than the next audience member, because we relate to them differently; we might have gone through similar experiences to what they’re going through, and we’re intuitively comparing what they’re doing to what we did or would do. For another audience member, that character’s experience might be completely foreign, and there’s far less of a way to relate to them. We see a tree in the world, but to some, a tree represents concepts like growth, branching, and lineage. A tree is really just a tree, but to the beholder, it can mean more. A painting of a tree is just a series of lines, shapes, textures and colours. But that painting represents a real-world tree, which in turn represents growth, branching, and lineage. This is the fundamental experience of experiencing art.

    The world and everything around it can similarly be read like a text. So-called ordinary things come to represent something for us. This is the domain of semiotics, where images, sounds, words, stand in for and link to other things, either real-world objects, or abstract concepts. For example, the word ‘dog’, consisting of the squiggles ‘d’, ‘o’, and ‘g’, represents to English-speaking people our furry little animal friends. But simultaneously, that furry friend can represent play, joy, vitality, curiosity, or companionship, depending on its behaviours. This is the same experience as above, of observing a piece of art. But the same processes exist outside of the world of art — we do them all day long, and it’s at the core of human creativity.

    We can apply this to broader phenomena. What does the gradual move towards isolating technologies such as noise-cancelling headphones say about us? That we don’t enjoy the company of strangers? What about the efforts of tech giants to build social media platforms that pit us against each other, causing massive engagement, increasing revenue from advertisements? That the powerful in our culture prioritise revenue over the wellbeing and cohesion of the social fabric?

    The same applies for reading historical artistic movements. In the late 40s, composer-engineer, Pierre Schaeffer pioneered Musique Concrète, a new compositional method based entirely on recorded sounds — fragments of everyday life, musical instruments — manipulated through tape editing and playback. Around the same period, in Cologne, German composers such as Herbert Eimert and Karlheinz Stockhausen developed Elektronische Musik, built exclusively from electronically generated tones. What do these approaches mean? The two schools represent contrasting philosophies of sound: the empirical and phenomenological (building from the concrete) versus the rational and synthetic (building from the abstract). In 1956, Stockhausen’s Gesang der Jünglinge united the two approaches, combining a boy’s recorded voice with electronic tones in a single composition. What does this mean? The fusion can be read as a collapse of mid-century dogmatism — an early sign of the move toward pluralism and post-modern openness in the arts, where boundaries between methods and materials were no longer seen as absolute.

    This process of drawing conclusions about events — of ‘reading’ history in particular ways, and using history as evidence for certain conclusions — is a difficult skill to develop. However, I believe it’s fundamentally creative work. Perhaps more precisely, it’s a combination of creativity and critical thinking. It entails making connections between disparate phenomena and justifying the conclusions critically. Reading historical events like a text and drawing creative conclusions, is a very similar — if not the same — process as drawing interpretations of pieces of art. It all involves considering what things mean; what can be made of them; what they represent.

    It’s the process for any interpretation of data. Researchers go through it when analysing interview responses or quantitative statistical data. It’s all ‘read’; it’s the researcher’s role to make meaning of these forms of data, in the same way that it’s the audience member’s task to make meaning of the art they observe. (Of course, I’m referring here to the more active approach to cultural consumption, rather than the passive ‘lean back’ consumption that is encouraged by streaming platforms.)

    ***

    This process is one I teach my students. Consider these two images that represent disabled people in our society. These are universal symbols these days, and you find them in most public settings. In my Cultural Studies class, I get the students to compare the two images, looking at what they mean.

    Figure 1 – the passive disability icon

    Figure 2 – the active disability icon

    In my Cultural Studies class, I get the students to compare the two images, looking at what they mean. Compared to the first image, the second is far more active; it pairs disabled people with a representation of agency. Once the meanings of the images have been established, I ask what it means that people in our society designed this second image. Perhaps it means that parts of our society value the wellbeing of disabled people, and would like to recognise their agency. Perhaps it means that parts of our society want to break the stigma of disabled people as entirely incapable. What does this mean? Perhaps it highlights that our society values inclusion and the wellbeing of members of society, representing a streak of altruism.

    ***

    Getting students to really see the world around them and think about what it all means, in my opinion, is a crucial part of their education. While the above example relates to social justice, these sorts of exercises develop the students’ capacity more broadly for creative and critical thinking. It really brings them to the question, ‘What does it all mean?’ I think the more we can strive to answer that question, the less confusion will be in society, and the more connection we will have with the world around us, and the people living within it.

  • Reflecting on a simple creative process

    Yesterday I had a good session of composition. I feel like recently my composition practice has been a little too much in foreign territory: incorporating too many new techniques and pieces of equipment. (I tend to do this often). I have been incorporating too many new approaches into the process, which meant that I didn’t feel like I was engaging my existing skill set.

    Over the weekend I had the pleasure of working with a bunch of high school students through a composition and production session. Preparing for this required me to really slim down the creative process into its most basic form. While teaching it, I and my student helper both agreed that we often complicate the creative process too much. What we were putting the students through sounded so simple, yet fun and explorative. We both said that we wanted to be doing what the students were doing in our own studio sessions.

    So yesterday, I did. I just carried out the creative process in a very simple format: improvising, landing on a core sound and idea, looping this and recording more sounds around it, experimenting with different processing techniques, mapping it out into a structure. All the time, just using Live and the Prophet as my main instruments, both of which I am very comfortable on.

    I spent some time back in session view while the core materials were playing in arrangement view, which allowed me to record little loops and random flourishes. I then looped these and recorded them into arrangement view, automating their levels and filters to allow them to gradually grow and retreat when necessary.

    When was necessary? Well, this brought me back to how I have typically carried out the arrangement process in the past. The structure emerges from some initial improvisation. This involves me recording a long performance, building the sound as I go until I have a full structure. I then spent some time tidying it up and getting rid of any errors. Sometimes I will trim the structure if I feel like I stayed too long in one level of intensity. I then build elements around the trajectory of this sound. The main sound forms the macro structure while the other supplementary sounds articulate the structures on smaller time scales.

    This process worked well with this piece I worked on yesterday. I actually started working on a part two of the piece, but it grew to be something entirely different, so I’ll probably split this off into its own project file.

    The whole process was just nice. It was about 2 hours of work. It engaged my existing skill set while still forcing me to challenge my abilities. I’ve been conscious of applying the concepts of deliberate practice to my creative work and I feel like this session was operating in the perfect range of difficulty — just beyond the current abilities — for encouraging skill development.

    HERE is a link to the result.

  • Plans for the next record

    I’m putting together some ideas for my next record. I like to start with a bit of a plan like the one below, but I think this is probably the most formal and structured plan I’ve made.

    The purpose of plans, as I see it, is to provide the first steps and the ways forward when feeling a little lost. They’re not to be stuck to in a very dogmatic sense – I’m very comfortable knowing that I can and probably will deviate from it.

    A big focus for this plan is to separate the different stages of the creative process onto particular pieces of equipment. I’m beginning by gathering a bunch of material onto the Tonverk SD card, then sketching on that box, before moving to Bitwig to record into and flesh out, then Live to do a final round of touch ups. I’ve found this to be a good practice, as it really forces me to be aware of what stage of the creative process I’m actually working on. In modern DAWs, you can do everything, from sketching to arranging, processing, polishing. In my experience, this vast amount of options can stifle creativity, mostly in the early stages of building a work. I’ve made a conscious effort below to assign myself particular platforms to work in at the various stages of creation.

    Skill development goals:

    1. learn the Tonverk deeply
    2. learn Bitwig deeply

    Inspirations:

    1. Murcof
    2. Taylor Deupree
    3. Loscil
    4. Purl
    5. Lawrence English
    6. Offthesky
    7. Abul Mogard

    Aesthetics:

    1. Dystopian, but moments of light
    2. Cinematic
    3. Not only long droning pieces: more ‘composed’ and shaped
    4. Tapey, driven, textural, experimental

    Creative Framework/Limitations:

    1. I will begin with a pool of materials, some recorded by myself, some gathered from elsewhere.
    2. I will do all writing, sketching and sequencing on the Tonverk.
    3. I will record and do additional creative processing in Bitwig
      1. (I am leaving open the option of jumping to Live if this is really hindering the creative process),
      2. I will carry out an additional round of and creative processing in Live.
    4. I will write a development log specifically for the record
      1. Descriptions of what I did,
      2. ‘Findings’ and discoveries about the equipment and techniques,
      3. Reflections on how it’s going.

    Process:

    1. Gather materials:
      1. Record improvisations
      2. Source samples
      3. Record instruments
      4. Load onto Tonverk SD card
    2. In Tonverk:
      1. Build the sketches on separate patterns in the Tonverk
      2. Process sounds
      3. Focus on one piece per session
      4. Record into Bitwig
    3. In Bitwig (if realy struggling with creative flow, jump into Live):
      1. Carry out additional processing
      2. Record extra layers
      3. Adjust arrangement
      4. Export stems, bring into Live
    4. In Live:
      1. Mix tracks

    I want to document these sorts of projects on the blog, and so I’m adding a post category of ‘DevLog’, and a post tag of the record title, which is currently “tonverk_record_2025”; it’ll change eventually. For future works, where I carry out a similar process, I’ll carry out the same format, adding them to ‘DevLog’ category, and adding a new post tag for the record title.

  • Thoughts on ‘Pandora’s Star’ – Peter F. Hamilton

    Pandora’s Star is a science fiction book by Peter F. Hamilton, published in 2004. I began this one because I absolutely loved his recent book, Exodus: Archimedes Engine, which is set in the world of an upcoming video game. I gave that one an easy 5 stars – it had such interesting concepts, setting and a good pace.

    I felt that Pandora’s Star (PS) was good, but not as good as Exodus. PS felt bigger and wider than Exodus, but I felt that the writing at times was just a little unrefined. This is the most male gaze story I’ve read in a long time (potentially ever), where every female character was overly sexualised, young and most of the times using the attractiveness for manipulative purposes. While this was most likely just Hamilton’s style of writing back then, it could also have been interpreted as the state of humanity in a world where death has basically been overcome through ‘rejuvenation’ of the body, making everyone horny, sexy 18–25 year olds. At least that’s one way you could justify it… But all the interactions between a male and female character ultimately revolved around sex and attraction, which got a little old, but (even though I’m ranting about it here) didn’t really ruin the reading experience for me. Most of the time it just led to an eye-roll and laughter.

    The concepts were pretty bloody cool though. I’m relatively new to sci-fi; I’d say I’ve read 10 sci-fi books over the years, loving some like Hyperion and Children of Time, but also not loving a few. But I could tell while reading PS that the main antagonist, MorningLightMountain, was a very special kind of alien. I loved the chapters from its perspectives, while also being terrified of it. I think the thing that made it so special to me was its non-humanness; not really angry and wanting to just go out and wipe out the human race, but doing so from a place of not having the concepts of compassion or pain. It simply needs to expand, to take the resources, to become omnipresent and immortal – whatever is required to do so. What I loved was how this was scary when contrasted to how humans think – to human nature.

    I loved how an important conversation takes place with MorningLightMountain that aims to understand its goals, but it’s not carried out by a human; it’s between the alien and an AI. I thought this was interesting, seeing two different non-human consciousnesses discussing the fate of humanity, and seeing the AI as more human than the alien.

    Something I really enjoyed about the book was its look at not only new technologies, but their effects on humanity. Specifically, the book centres around the presence of wormhole technologies. There are places that in real space are separated by huge distances, but due to wormholes, they’re effectively neighbours (linked by a vast network of trains!) This is something I’ve been interested in quite a bit recently – how certain technologies drastically shape humanity, and what human life looks like in societies where those technologies dominate.

    I did have a hard time with the lack of a clear lead character. There are a lot of characters in this book, and it didn’t feel like one was the main one the reader should be rooting for. For me, I did find myself gravitating towards the Paula Myo character, and also the storyline of Ozzy Isaacs. But it was definitely more of a large ensemble of players, rather than a clear through-line character.

    Overall, really enjoyed it. It was a little wordy – it probably could have been cut down to 800-900 pages – but it was also really immersive. Keen for the second one, but won’t jump in straight away.

    4/5

  • Loving the Tonverk

    Yesterday, I had a session on the Elektron Tonverk using a portable battery plugged into it’s USB-C port for power. It worked really well.

    I have a feeling that the Tonverk might be exactly what I’ve been after for a while: a very powerful and capable machine that is portable, fairly self-contained (as in it can cover all the bases for a piece of music – playback of materials, processing), and aimed at more experimental approaches to composition. That’s another thing: this machine does feel like one that is leaning a little more into the composition side of ‘doing music’, rather than one aspect of music making, such as making drums or making synths, or solely the performance of music. I think with future updates, it’s just going to continue to get better and have more functions added to it.

    It has copped quite a lot of negativity recently, and this has been interesting to see. I feel like people who are upset about it have some grounds for their arguments, but are also being unreasonable at times. Sure, the device has bugs and some glitches, but it’s nowhere near as bad as people are making it out to be. And I feel like people went into the announcement of the machine with a clear idea of what they want the machine to be, only to be disappointed at the fact that it didn’t align to  their expectations. I think many people just wanted an Octatrack mk3. Even after using it for only a few days, and it still being in its infancy, I can definitely see that it is something entirely new for Elektron, borrowing from parts of their other machines, but really taking a new approach. I’m very excited for it.

    I think it would be a great device to begin a whole record on. It has everything there, and it would be a nice exercise to gather a bunch of materials onto the SD card, start a new project, and just build everything on the machine. This would be good for at least getting a collection of tracks to the point where they can then be further processed and mixed in the DAW. But all of the sequencing, rhythms, some processing, and core elements could be there.

    I also love the idea of sampling things into it from external sources like my phone or iPad. This makes it a really portable machine that I could make a little case for, containing the external battery, a 3.5mm – dual 1/4-inch cable, and some headphones to be able to take the machine anywhere, do some sampling, and make whole pieces anywhere.

    There are a couple of methods for sampling with the Tonverk:

    First is normal ‘melodic sampling’ of sampling in a note and playing this back polyphonically. Multi-sampling is an extension of this to capture more samples per sound/synth patch (samples for different pitches and different velocities).

    The second the approach is that of looping parts of longer recordings, eg. for tape loop-inspired approaches. I can load in a long take of me playing some melodic material on an instrument (just an improv), and then in the Tonverk, I can just play a small portion of this back by playing a single pitch and holding it for a portion of time, looping it. I could have multiple of these going, perhaps some at different loop lengths. If I was using the subtracks machine, I could have loads of these going – 8 per track, on each/any of the 8 tracks. The other two playback machines (single player and multisample) are designed specifically for melodic sampling, so I think subtracks would be the best way to go about it.

    I’d really be keen to test this process out to make some Taylor Deupree-style music. These loops could be processed by a couple of insert FX, the bus tracks, and sent to the send tracks.

    Excited to dive in more 🙂

  • Treating Material Roughly

    I’ve recently been working on the Elysian installation quite a bit. It’s being presented next Friday the 26th of September, 2025.

    I’ve primarily used the material of Time Vials (all parts) as a starting point. I used it to map out a base structure for the work, which ran for approximately 45 mins. This foundation gave me a good overview of the intensity trajectory the piece would travel through.

    With this, I created a bunch of new material by heavily processing the existing sounds and pieces, and creating new parts. This process presented me with an important lesson: be rough with your material. What I mean by this is that it’s important to get out of the mindset of the engineer, who is focused more on the subtleties and fine-tuning of existing material, and into the mindset of the creative and experimental artist. There’s so much information out there about the ‘correct’ ways to treat audio, but I’ve found that this mostly comes from an engineer’s perspective of working with sound. There is a massive focus on tidying out audio, or changing it subtly to meet an artist’s vision. Of course, there are examples of discussions of tones and overdriven sounds, but I feel like there is very little being discussed about the longer processes that can be undertaken by experimental artists working with material with more of a generative approach: aiming to create new materials, rather than clean up existing materials. To future me, I say: when doing work similar to this installation, go ahead and carry out very drastic levels of processing on your existing material, whether that is parts of, or entire, tracks. Transpose and stretch whole pieces; granulate them; run them through some spectral processors like SpecOps; do all of these things in a chain. Use ‘finished’ pieces or parts as the raw material in processes that result in new pieces. This isn’t some groundbreaking idea or anything – it’s a very common technique for more experimental or technical electronic music. But it’s one that I’ve really employed to create the installation piece, and want to adopt more in the future.

    I remember hearing Blawan talk about his studio processes, centring around similar drastic approaches to resampling material. It involved starting out with a drum groove or percussive synth line (created on a drum machine or modular synth), which is then processed and recorded it into a DAW. Then, the recording is sent through more processing equipment, driving or altering it in a range of ways, and recorded back into the DAW. This process is repeated over and over. At some point, you can stop and listen to what you’ve made, and it’ll most likely be pretty experimental and ‘weird’.

    What’s important here is the mindset: don’t think your material has to be treated like it is so fragile. Be rough with it.

  • Time Vials: Part 2

    Time Vials: Part 2

    Time Vials: Part 2 was all about embracing spontaneity in improvisation. I was really into thinking about how to bring these approaches into the process of programming hardware.

    The Elektron boxes – which all of these pieces were started on – are incredibly deep machines. Programming them is this really nice, creative, fun, and challenging process. Whenever I use their gear, I definitely feel the technology guiding me towards more experimental approaches to the material. I feel like working with hardware of this type is so nice because it’s really focused in terms of what you’re working on. In today’s day of converged technologies, it’s nice to work with technologies that do a limited set of things really well.

    I also wanted to feature a little bit more gestural shape in the music, rather than having single textures just be elongated for long stretches of time. (Not at all to diss this type of music. In fact, I’m a big fan of minimal drone music!)

    I hope you like this one.

    Much love
    Pat

    —
    Digital Release
    ffm.to/pc_tv2

    released August 29, 2025

    Created at Bounty Hill Studios
    __
    ©℗ 2025 Occupancy
    OCC0014

    Listen

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  • Linking Knowledge and Technology

    Technology is the product of knowledge.

    The root of the word and concept of technology is the ancient Greek téchnē, which refers to art, craft, or skill. For Plato, téchnē meant something more than a mere knack or habit. It involved a deep understanding of a domain, and the ability to carry out a rational method for some creative purpose. This ‘rational method’ requires the craftsperson to know why what they do works the way it does; why that way is the best way to do something. In modern times, our concept of this is ‘technique’.

    Our concept of technology builds upon this: it is the knowledge and artefacts that allow for techniques to be carried out through mechanisation and automation, and allows these processes to be scaled. A piece of technology is the product of the process of applying deep knowledge and rational methods to produce something that fulfils some purpose.

    Consider the process of developing new technologies, whether they’re machines, devices or algorithms. It begins by gathering a pool of knowledge in usually several domains of knowledge. This involves understanding the principles of a field, as well as key problems or questions related to it. Skilled people are hired by a technology manufacturer, and/or they spend a large amount of time in the research phase, building the body of knowledge further. At a certain point, the focus is very much set on problems, and specifically on figuring out the best way of solving them. This may be a particular movement of an object, or a way of processing information. For example, product developers may come to the best methods for moving dirty clothes through water to clean them. This stage is aimed at building the essential techniques that can be used to solve the problems. This stage is an interesting one, because many of these techniques can be carried out by humans: they may be physical, physiological, or mental techniques. However, when building new technologies, once the techniques are decided upon, they are then mechanised, automated, and scaled. Those best techniques­—the ‘rational method’—for moving dirty clothes through water to clean them are programmed into a device that, when a button is pressed, goes through these motions. A customer of a new washing machine—and any technology for that matter—is buying an object that is capable of specific techniques: The techniques are the things that give the object value.

    Technology, knowledge and language are also linked in how they are all generative things, meaning that they evolve by combining simple building blocks of themselves into more complex structures, which are then further built upon. Words are built through combinations of other words, new technologies are built by combining existing technologies in new ways, and ideas are built by combining existing ideas. Our ideas in Western civilisation are based on a lineage of ideas tracing back to the ancient Greeks and beyond, into deeper history. In the same ways, our modern technologies are able to be traced back through a lineage.

    Knowledge and technology are thus absolutely intertwined and inseparable. Theory provides the basis for action, and technology materialises theory into artefacts. These artefacts are not only commodities but also products of a creative process. The creative process is the medium which the craftsperson moves through to turn their knowledge, understandings and rationality, into physical forms of technology.

  • Building Mental Maps of Stories, Music and Arguments

    One of the most crucial skills for understanding texts is the ability to build a mental map of what is being read, watched or listened to, while doing so. I believe the ability to do this has allowed me to understand arguments in non-fiction books and articles, musical narratives, and stories in fiction books and films.

    Musical Structures

    I only really stumbled on the existence of the ability while I was studying composition, and was having difficulties structuring my works. I was always lost during the creative process whenever I thought ‘What should come next?’ I began to consider the importance of understanding the structural models that pieces exist within, in order to hopefully be able to use them in my own work. I wanted to be able to know what the section of the piece I’m currently listening to actually is, and thus what role it plays in the narrative of the entire work.

    A simple example of this is in popular music. Knowing that I am listening to the 2nd verse, or the bridge, or the final chorus, within a typical structure of verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus, allows me to understand where that section is in the piece – what has come before it, and where it might be leading to. It provides context for the musical ideas I am hearing.

    A way to visualise this is to be building a waveform of the entire piece (similar to those on Soundcloud) as I was listening to it, and knowing how to break that waveform into a series of sections, understanding what was in them and what their functions were in the entire piece.

    Structures of Arguments in Non-Fiction Writing

    I have found that the same technique is essential for truly seeing someone’s argument laid out in a piece of non-fiction writing. As I read more non-fiction books – especially over the last year and a half – I felt that I had to develop this same skill to see how the author was piecing together their point. The initial chapters laid out the contexts, then concepts were gradually introduced and importantly interlocked into that context, until the later chapters when the author introduces their main points, drawing on the proposed information in the preceding chapters. Much like a lawyer building their case, now that I think of it.

    So a fundamental part of literacy is to be able to recall the points from earlier chapters, while reading the later chapters; remembering what was proposed there, and seeing how it all links together. It requires building this same form of linear mental map of the structure of the book, and holding this in your head as you read the book.

    Structures of Narratives in Fiction

    The same goes for fictional stories. I noticed how much reading non-fiction books has expanded this capacity when I read a fiction book. This was clear when I had taken about 5 months off fiction, reading a bunch of more difficult non-fiction than what I had usually been reading. Reading the fiction book – Shadow of the Gods by John Gwynne – felt so much easier than usual. I recognised that I could keep track of the plot for the entire length of the book way easier than I could 5 months before. When I was in the later parts of the story, I could look back over the previous length of the book and trace everyone’s journeys and progressions.

    Usually with fiction, it had felt a little more like I could only focus on where they were currently, and maybe where they had been in the previous chapter or two. But trying to piece together a complete timeline of where the character had been throughout the entire book was always very difficult. I don’t think I ever actively tried to do that – it was more that I felt that I suddenly could do it for this book.

    Is It Becoming Scarcer?

    A tragic thing is that I believe much of the problem was an over-engagement with short form content, and the structures of internet media. This is a big part of why The Shallows resonated with me so much – the books describes just how much a medium itself (rather than the content transmitted through the medium) shapes our thinking. The medium shapes how we think, while the content shapes more of what we think about. Non-linear, fragmented content leads to the same styles of thinking, whereas consuming linear, long-form content leads to cohesive and deeper thinking. I very much feel that what I’ve described above is a clear example of this concept at play.

    Building mental maps of what I’m reading, listening to, or watching, plays a crucial role in my ability to understand what is being transmitted through the text. It worries me that this ability is becoming scarcer, or perhaps more accurately, that the technologies that attack this ability are becoming more pervasive. I wonder if this will, or already has, led to a rising sense of confusion, alienation and misunderstanding of the world, its events, others and ourselves.