On Frames, Framing, and Frameworks

All the entries with fram! from my book of aphorisms Dynaxiom and also in its "child" volume ON.

0464. If you want a sense of spirituality to emerge in a piece of music, you have to be willing to surrender to the moment, and apply analysis sparingly--or perfect your craft to the point where it can be made invisible. It's really a balancing act of right and left brain: the right provides the creative framework, the left its outer 'skin'.

0470. Photographers frame and crop reality at the time of the exposure and in the making of the print, whereas painters can re-work reality in real time.

0516. Very often people will make comments about the periphery of something, e.g. an edge, a frame, etc. I did recently when I commented on the video part of a music video, not really liking the music. Someone said they liked the edge of a photo of mine, but nothing about the focal point. Edges, or any part of something that is framed can be a focal point.

0532. Music is a solid framework for lots of things, even if you don't want to play an instrument. Knowledge is the instrument.

0568. Art associates what exists, to what could have been likely to exist. Before photography, painting was a way to capture reality. After photography, a photograph gives shape to reality, putting a frame around it, and associating it with a new technology. Technologies in the future will do the same to things waiting to be objectified.

1020. Rather than sorting data and then finding a frame, take a frame and fill it. Shoot the arrow and paint the target around it.

1076. All photographs have an edge, as does visual perception. Reality has a perpetually undefined edge. Technology, like a camera provides a temporary framing of what is infinitely transmutable.

1124. Artists are cunning users of technology: they find the edges of it, and use it as a frame for content.

1228. Taking a picture and making something pictorial are two different things. The latter can have many levels, especially when framed and placed with other images.

1274. Constraints are useful for limiting the options in a creative endeavor, and it can be a heuristic to reach a resolution, but ultimately the real Resolution includes the periphery and/or the place or context in which it is viewed, including its framing, all of which is essentially 'outside the box.'

1391. Artists are 'packagers' of ideas. Once a piece of art is finished and framed, it is resolved and packaged for use (viewing). Raw data, including billions of images with no organization, are unpackaged. Packaged photography is typically a singular element on a wall with some other elements, not a digital gallery or slideshow.

1405. There are two basic ways to add cohesion to creativity: 1) create the work, then serialize; and, 2) create similar pieces in an existing series. This also works in music where you can compose first, then add to a collection (album) or define the framework for the album and fill it in accordingly.

1502. In many ways, vision is informed by language; knowing more about what to look for gives you greater 'insight'. Sometimes insight comes directly from metaphor as a way to frame something in such a way to see it differently, and makes it easier to communicate. Art and music are 'frames' in this context.

1564. African drumming is good to include in a film score, as it is story-telling through the music alone, even if not the same story. Drumming and film are both 'technologies' in the sense that they use sequences of 'frames' to form narratives. 

"Sound—both music and effects—performs important functions in the movie. Indigenous Algerian drumming, rather than dialogue, is heard during a scene in which female FLN militants prepare for a bombing. In addition, Pontecorvo used the sounds of gunfire, helicopters and truck engines to symbolize the French methods of battle, while bomb blasts, ululation, wailing and chanting symbolize the Algerian methods. Gillo Pontecorvo wrote the music for The Battle of Algiers, but because he was classified as a "melodist-composer" in Italy, he was required to work with another composer as well; his good friend Ennio Morricone collaborated with him. The solo military drum, which is heard throughout the film, is played by the famous Italian drummer Pierino Munari. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Battle_of_Algiers#cite_note-18

1573....Ask all the whys before you do something, and consider whether the motivation is either one's ego desires and/or the external forces from media manipulation. [This is why I think creating frameworks for creativity is more satisfying than just making another one of something without it being generative in some way, or derived from a generative process that anyone can use. It would be more rewarding, for example, to see how people use the elements you created. An example in music are lyrics, melody, and chord changes. (Remix can fit into this approach), but the derivative work is based on digital audio samples, rather than the human elements infused with the generative frameworks].

1600. Aphorisms are words in a frame.

1742....In art, the tilting of works can reveal the gap between initial intentions or visions and what actually happened. In many ways, a title is a kind of "punctuation" that can be supremely useful in resolving a piece of work. Sometimes the piece starts with that 'punctuation' and is the framework for the entire work, in which the intentions are preordained, with approvals unnecessary.

1895. Improvisation is more effective because it uses a framework or rules as an 'operating system'. Players can also make their own frameworks as well and it still counts as improvisation and has the same cognitive payoff.

1937. Technically, the end of the decade is 12/31/2020 so we have a year 'grace period'. We tend to celebrate numbers not duration. Celebrating numeric changes by multiples of ten is our way to 'drop-frame' the passing of history so that actual time matches the calendar.

2002. Both the artist and layperson can see the artistic value in random connections between disparate objects or circumstances, but it's only the artist that marries the two, to be seen theretofore as a 'framed' holistic experience that can be viewed repeatedly.

2037. Make art so you can really see it. Digital art simply viewed on a screen has always only been a partial aesthetic experience. Even if you apply it to a surface it is essentially a facsimile. (Viewing printed stills of film frames is not the same as having viewed them with all the other frames).