Chronos and Kairos
chapters/sections
1. Time (fabricated) [6.35] MP3 excerpt
2. Time (retrograde) [4.45]
3. Sine (of the Times) [6.00]
4. Pavane [10.18]
5. Kairos (storm) [6.02]
6. Chronos (night) [7.20]
Patricia Fortini Brown, in Venice and Antiquity, notes that the ancient Greeks distinguished two kinds of time, "kairos (opportunity or the propitious moment) and chronos (eternal or ongoing time). While the first... offers hope, the second extends a warning." Kairos is the time of cleverness, chronos the time of wisdom.
The Clock of the Long Now by Stewart Brand
(New York, Basic Books, 1999)
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These two concepts of time are central to the structure of Chronos and Kairos, both in terms of audio and video. Beyond the obvious use of clock sounds (processed and unprocessed), the various melodic and harmonic material was (largely) derived from the words themselves, using an alphanumeric translation system to draw note values from letters. The theme also suggested other methods of playing with time musically, such as the overlapping and mismatched pulses of sine waves which create transient rhythms in the course of their interaction (Sine (of the Times)), or the sometimes random overlaying of deep drum beat and modulated waveform (Pavane).
Time's presence is also manifest in the relationship of image and sound. The flashes at the end of Pavane could be explosions (the delayed bomb impact from the jet's passage) or lightning (the prelude to thunder). Durée is evoked in a variety of other ways as well: a comet's orbit may span many lifetimes and thousands of years, or less than a hundred; crickets live a short life by human standards though their song is a kind of natural metronome providing a heartbeat pulse to many a summer's evening; plants and trees live a cyclical life, bound by the rhythms of the seasons and the flow of night and day; and, of course, the reappearing clock images are a very human reference. After all, we invented time.... right?
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