Palmyra [Disquiet0293] by Suss Müsik

Alvin Toffler, author of the now-classic (and eerily prescient) book Future Shock, knew something about transience. "One of the great unasked questions of our time," he wrote in 1970, "has to do with the balance between vicarious and non-vicarious experiences."

It was not so long ago that a hologram of the late Michael Jackson appeared at the 2014 Billboard Music Awards, sparking controversy over the ethics of using a digital visage to promote one's posthumous career. Then again, humans have always been adept at manufacturing what Toffler calls "ritual significance" — the state at which the symbol for a thing becomes more important than the thing itself.

(Suss Müsik wonders what all the fuss was about regarding MJ. You'd think the music industry would be accustomed to such paradigms. After all, wasn't it Freddie Mercury who famously asked "Is this real life? Is this just fantasy?")

For this short piece, Suss Müsik explored the state of emergence. We hit little rocks with mallets recorded with heavy dollops of backwards reverb, then added some fake strings and gently plucked guitar. Buried in the mix are two solos played on an EWI device, which were panned right-to-left while the fake strings moved left-to-right.

The life of Bassel Khartabil was too short by any metric but the vicarious. Our collective participation in this week's Junto project ensures that Khartabil's work will continue to be celebrated and his memory preserved.

More on this 293rd weekly Disquiet Junto project — Make music for Paige Dansinger’s Palmyra 3D/VR images, paying tribute to the late Bassel Khartabil — at:

https://disquiet.com/0293/

Thanks to Niki Korth, Jon Phillips, and Barry Threw for encouraging this project, and to Paige Dansinger for the collaboration. View Dansinger’s 3D drawings of Palmyra here:

http://www.newpalmyra.org/projects/junto-emerge-immerse/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here:

http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0293-emerge-immerse/

There’s also on a Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for Slack inclusion.

Image associated with this project is by Paige Dansinger, more on whom here:

http://paigedansinger.com