meaning: concrete or always in transition?

Michel Focault in his article "What is an Author" states: Today's writing has freed itself from the theme of expression." But expression of any sort is a pattern that needs to be read/viewed/heard/observed to be understood as to what it stands for or what is it signifying in terms of its context and structure, and how thoughts are interlinked and relayed in time and space in any culture.

And if I apply this statement to John Cage's experiment again, then music definitely is a means of expression. But he intervened in the process of experience in a specific space and created an opportunity to observe the self evolving expression.  But we still call it "John Cage's" experiment hence he is the author, standing just on the peripheries of his created environment and did not relay any experience through his music per se, but let the environment (people and all the attributes of the space) unfold in the continuum of time and space.

So the meaning of expression in my point of view now becomes the experience or meaning that the user creates for his/herself based on his/her cultural background. And meanings (culturally speaking) are always in transition, because we neither live in isolation, nor understand things out of their context and here memory comes into play, allowing us to navigate/retrieve the data to make connections, hence leading towards a thought.

medium, user, and the message

so when john cage conducted his experiment of not playing the symphony but recording conversations in space and time, so was he actually contrasting the pattern as to how a space with users could be turned into an instrument (medium), creating their own rhythms and patterns in terms of sound and body language, glances etc., a performance in its own right? 

 

so here we go!!

A few days back I was watching an interview of a mathematician, who also folds paper (origami) to solve different equations, and he said: "When you put in a crease in a piece of paper, you are essentially changing the memory of that piece." So that one fold (in any direction) becomes the unit pattern combined with all the creases to give any form to the paper.  And it also becomes synonymous to how memory works.  In the broader context of living in any society it can be said that behaviors are the result of conditions provided, programming the memory to act or react according to the norms.

And if memory is the seat of the conventions we are taught to make meaning through different mediums, then probably we are following a loop.                                  

There is always a possibility of breaking the above mentioned cycle in the form of self interpretation or self reflection that people have been doing over centuries, but I think realization becomes the first step in terms of how we act and what are the leading consequences of that action, as Plato said: "An unexamined life is not worth living."

http://vimeo.com/34182381confronting patterns