Jason Snell

Knowing that Sehmon and Jamie have similar themes in their topics, and we discovered we are all reading the same books (Ways of Being by James Bridle), we met to discuss our projects.

I gave my normal pitch about the EEG work and got feedback about the identity politics / attribution topic. Jamie questioned whether my work only using inspiration from indigenous plant medicine rituals or Mayan drumming or Eastern meditation, and what about music creating transcendent experiences like the Grateful Dead. We discussed what is citing inspiration or research versus what is name dropping for credibility? Is it necessary to mention my dad taught me about Taoism and Buddhism when I was in elementary school? Other things fit into the narrative more easily, like “I learned to meditate after meeting other ravers who grew up in TM” or “I learned about Mayan trance rituals when researching the effect of repetitive beats on the mind” I want to avoid using parts of my history just as a credibility token, while weaving inspirations and references into the narrative more organically during my presentations.

Sehmon asked how I plan to show my research and background of the project at performances and suggested I make a type of guide / website / zine to distribute at shows. It could cover:

– What an audience member can expect to happen during the experience, inclduing descending down through the brain states, what that feels like
– Description of brainwaves
– Explanation of the technology
– Include my background research, citing sources and inspirations

This could be a take-home guide which is an on-ramp for meditation

Also wondered if the performance be a techno set? Downtempo morning set with such small changes that they are imperceivable, but after time, you know the entire soundscape as completely transformed.

Jamie also wondering if pressure sensors on the floor and movement could help author the composition. I had mentioned I wanted to exploring blurring the authorship line by having audience members wear EEG or heart sensors.

Notion page
https://www.notion.so/jasonjsnell/2023-04-02-Sehmon-Jamie-f054dfcdaee34594a8ba6428774f3c1f?pvs=4

Did a useful exercise with Ai, Yiyang, and Siri where they workshopped a thesis issue for me. I talked about the challenge Rothberg and Zurkow brought up about the potential of cultural appropriation / extraction with my project.

It seems like the concern was about using meditation, which could be seen as extractive of Eastern religions, and psychedelic experiences, which plant medicines and rituals with repetitive beats are associated with indigenous cultures, like Mayan.

It was interesting to speak to 3 students of Asian background about this. Some of the feedback was they didn’t consider it as extraction, and didn’t even consider that until I brought it up. If I were doing something more directly Asian, like showing a large Yin Yang symbol or was demonstrating Tai Chi or Chi Gong, that would be cringier. They seemed to see some usefulness of bringing up that my dad taught be about Taoism and Buddhism when I was young, and learning about meditation from my rave friends who grew up in the Transcendental Meditation movement. But overall they didn’t see that type of extraction in my presentations and aesthetic to date, so they hadn’t considered any of this.

An interesting distinction came up about my own experiences with hallucinogens: they were largely with LSD, which is not an indigenous drug but rather created by Albert Hofmann a Swiss chemist. So my reference point for the chemical experience is lab-based rather than plant-based (I disliked mushrooms and psilocybin, and haven’t done any other plant medicines).

However, the repetitive beats is something from Mayan culture and is something I easily already cite when I present my repetitive beats research.

One standing question coming out of this discussion is the idea of obviously using a cultural influence (and risk appropriation) versus something I’d call perhaps “extraction” or “distillation.” In my mind is what happened with the transition between jungle music to drum n bass music: jungle music’s rhythm used samples from Black jazz musicians (which itself may have been appropriation /extraction), creating one of the most innovative new genres in the 1990’s. Over time, UK artists dropped the samples and distilled the rhythms into simple, easily repeatable drum machine patterns. Optimized, extracted, systematized, not sure the exact word, but it was renamed drum n bass and became a “new” genre. Is this process of optimization a normal artistic practice of inspiration and evolution or is it self another layer exploitation where all the original forms are stripped out? I consider this because if when people see my presentations and don’t think of the history of meditation or the history of repetitive beats, is that a success of my art, or a practice of stripping out the history of my influences?

https://jasonjsnell.notion.site/Production-Schedule-6d10a236c0c849f88e9b7ecf790bc331

Met with Marina and a good continuation from the last talk, even through my thesis focused into a different topic (prior I was thinking of a climate exhibition where the room would become more intolerable as more people moved in it). Particularly James Bridle ‘Ways of Being’ – a book she suggested last meeting – has landed well and became a continuation point.

Discussed my EEG work and she centered in quickly on appropriation of healing modalities using repetitive beats or psychedelic experiences, and asked my background, why am I drawn to this. In a way, “am I a tech bro who did Ayahuasca”? (my words, not hers). The value of my past came out as I explained my Dad teaching me about Taoism (and some Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Judaism) as a child, reading Tao of Pooh and Tao Te Ching in college, meeting fellow ravers in the mid 90’s who grew up in Fairfield, Iowa in the Transcendental Meditation school system (MIU and the high school), learning about Vedic and Hindu traditions from this community, seeing TM applied in David Lynch films and television shows,  learning to meditate from an LSD experience in 1996 (where the chemical experience itself taught me where to go in meditation), then keeping that interest going throughout my adult life, getting sober at 21 and not using chemicals anymore to achieve personal growth or insights, but rather non-chemical tools like meditation, reading Be Here Now in my early twenties and learning more how Richard Alpert went from LSD to meditation. This type of history and possible citation could help contextualize my work to new audiences.

Discussed a number of artists to look at (in notes link below) and discussed if my work could be a connected to the “more than human” world, as discussed in “Ways of Being”

https://jasonjsnell.notion.site/2023-03-28-Intro-to-Thesis-Project-62af517e96f04f83b18f323441dfef1e

In an ecstatic experience during neurofeedback in 2019, I saw a spinning image in my mind. I’m exploring if a spinning stimulus, light and sound, helps the brain spiral up (or down) via its feedback.

Using a Muse EEG to relay my brain activity, the spinning goes faster when my brain is stimulated and slower when I am relaxing.

Warning: flash lights in video

Met with Sarah and reviewed my Thesis Proposal feedback:

https://jasonjsnell.notion.site/Proposal-Feedback-182d1b8486ab4914b29c6168b05868cf

We covered all the feedback, and spent the most time on a few topics.

One comment in the feedback was being aware of my “positionality” (new term for me) of being a white, male, American using methods and having inspiration from Eastern religion and cultural practices. Is using the act of meditation in my performances somehow extractive to the Eastern cultures that use meditation much more than Western or Christian culture (which has some form of meditation, but is often described more as reflection or contemplation). I’m so used to meditation (I began in 1996) that I hadn’t thought of it through the same lens as the extractive practice / industry of yoga, where an Indian practitioner can’t get a job at a yoga studio, but an attractive white woman gets it. My Eastern influences began early – my father taught my brother about all the world religions from a young age (his closing prayer to our Sunday lessons who say “Jesus, Moses and Muhammad, Confucius and Krishna, Lao Tsu and Buddha”) and was exposed to a meditation practice at age 19 from friends in the Iowa rave scene who grew up in Fairfield, IA, the location of Maharishi’s Transcendental Meditation university (MIU, later renamed MUM). But these experiences don’t change the immediate perception that I’m a middle aged white man meditating on a stage with an EEG. It seems like it’s a deep topic with many layers and it’s important that I explore it, even if I don’t come up with a fix or universal answer to the issue of cultural extraction.

We also discussed the NYU IRB and I emailed them after the meeting with a question about do I need a review to do play testing with other classmates and when I cross that threshold for needing a review of my project.

Meeting notes:

https://jasonjsnell.notion.site/2023-03-21-4298dab206914f03a9a92f6c074cc495

Received positive feedback and have a few questions about next steps

• How do I get access to rooms in Media Commons and lighting equipment? Do I set up / tear down the equipment each day, or can it be worked on for a period of time. Definitely want to explore this as the Spring Show gets closer.
• Who would I contact in Shanghai about using their facilities and lighting systems?
• Any recommendations on people to discuss lighting with?
• How do I cite my meditation influences (Taoism, Tai Chi, Buddhism, Hinduism, Vedas) with thoughtfulness and awareness of my white privileges?
• I’ve been interviewing neurotherapists and psychedelic therapists as a part of the Tech Venture Workshop and Future Labs InnoVention programs. I’ll include those findings in my thesis work.
• Dan O was very helpful in my initial conversation with him, but I also want to be sensitive that he’s on sabbatical. Any advice?

Spoke about what the role of the audience is, and that question has come up from multiple people recently (Hakani, Beth, and now Rothberg). A big breakthrough for me was realizing in my early shows (2019) I was essentially asking audience members to watching someone nodding out and somehow be entertained by that. The EEG experience is very internal, and even with the sound and visuals being output, the FEELING is still internal. So my recent sound bath “performance” (is it a performance? Is it a group “experience”? A journey?), the audience expectation was very different. They weren’t expected to watch a show, or be attentive, or be mindful (like in a group meditation). They were invited to lie down, be cozy, be *nurtured*, fall asleep, chill, space out. It was a very permissive space with low pressure, but also mixed with a larger vulnerability. To close their eyes in a group of strangers (sometimes people at raves do this too with the safety of the repetitive beat) and drift into their subconscious. For someone with PTSD, that is too much, to let their guard down and let go. And I had a vulnerability too, and it’s more shared. I’m allowing my heart and mind to be amplified, showing my fear or nervousness or fatigue or boredom. This format so far has garnered the most attention, a bigger crowd, more people expressing interest, more people wanting another show or to host a location – I think – because it is more of a shared experience. Next steps could be exploring sensors on audience members (which ones? All of them? Some?) and co-authoring the event (even if the sounds are still meditated through my musical choices).

https://www.notion.so/jasonjsnell/2023-03-06-1fdd2b54c60e4ac5b189f8f170ec70e6?pvs=4

Spoke with Sarah this morning about her thesis work, which has a lot of common interests, including repetition, neuroscience, sound, spirituality.

Her repetition work included turning pages in a book, prayer beads, a drum machine. She wondered how I could invoke repetition other than my usual modality of sound (and probably light), like through something in my life like eating the same meal all the time.

I can look at each incident of a repetition and then the space in-between them (which are like Bardo experiences), and the duration of the space in-between sets the frequency of the signal, like a pitch of a sound.

Looking at repetition, what does it provide for my brain? Consistency, safety. What does lack of repetition provide my brain? Novelty. So the exchange is novelty for a sense of stability, trust.

This parallels my experiences with relationships. I lived in Berkeley for a few years and spend all day, every day with a cast of friends who all worked remotely. It was deep consistency, and in that, deep love and friendships bloomed. I don’t get that when travel a lot or just see friends briefly here or there a couple of times a month.

On the flip side, I thought of the idea of “bonding agents” in that group was bonded around one person who ended up being very mentally ill and self-destructed, and the group fell apart. He was very charming and good at gathering groups together, but ultimately things fell apart.

LSD is a similar bonding agent for deep psychological experiences, but also can be dangerous or volatile. So a deep experience can be created, but the thing that creates the experience may itself be unstable, jeopardizing the whole system.

Notion notes:

https://jasonjsnell.notion.site/2023-04-03-Sarah-Hakani-f9c5dad072bc488c90a1257df661a249

Quick meeting, very very straight to the point:

• Work on the lighting needs first, don’t worry about the equipment used until later.
• What is the experience of the light on the walls, the surfaces, the space, can use anything available, screens and DMX lights are the same LEDs. The shape and spread might be different, but janky prototype with anything easy (like I did with my computer screen flashing during last semester)
• Look at dream machine and light wave entrainment
• Idea: have heartbeat be a big hit to the light pulse, but also have a theta waver as well that comes in as I drift into theta