Meditation Music, Structuralist Film

Meditation music “balances the human organism through rhythmic pattern of tones, which are in harmony together”

modern age white noise – technology has audible and inaudible frequencies in the air. Need to maintain ecological balance, escape from techy sounds into friendly, meditative ones to escape from chaos and neurotic environments

sounds should be soft and soothing, organic and rich in sympathetic overtones. This influences inner organs and sympathetic nervous system.

If you pay attention, you can hear the pitch and tone of everything change as the day goes by, as seasons change – insects, birds, animals, even the pitch of your own voice.

Each hour represents a different mood and state of being. Listening to music synchronized to a certain time of day helps us to flow in harmony with our environment. Cycle of the day can also be seen as the cycle of life.

Morning should be tender, calming, refreshing – helps us to step out of sleep and enter a harmonious sleep

Evening meditation should inspire feelings of joy, confidence, satisfaction, inspiration, and calmness of moonlight.

Mantra – comes from word mantrana, which means advice or suggestion. Every word is a mantra, essentially – it’s a sound pattern that suggests the meanings inherent in it, to which our minds immediately respond

Repetition of mantras, with attention directed to the source of the sound, completely engage the mind. Not just focusing on vocal chords themselves, but on the mind – whose source is self. Thus the mantra is a suggestion of getting in touch with oneself.

Beat and speed of repetition is really important, as it changes the pace of the mind. Fast chants can be positive in the way that they exhaust the mind and heart; neither has any time to fantasize, and the breath and relaxation comes after the chant is over

http://www.sanatansociety.org/indian_music_and_mantras/sounds_of_tantra_mantras.htm

“Structuralist” films – until these avant-garde films, filmmaking was only used as a medium to reproduce reality, not reconstruct it. Ernie Gehr, perhaps most important structuralist filmmaker – “Film is a real thing and as a real thing it is not imitation”. Does not reflect on life, it embodies the life of the mind.
Some structuralist films: “Hapax Legomena”
“Nostalgia”
“Poetic Justice”
All destabilizing works that make you reconsider film as a medium for portraying reality.

“Paul Sharits’ T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G also has a similar effect especially in its use of sound. The word “destroy” would go unnoticed if it were used once in a sentence. However, when it is repeated over and over again our brain starts being tricked and we lose the certainty on what the word is. This is very destabilizing because we are used to understanding the words so that we can put them in the context to make a sense of the film. Although we hear the same sound, we hear many different words or phrases, most of them having violent meanings. This is very much related to the violent content of the image on the screen. We also start interpreting the image according to what we hear. It is a proof of how our perception can be easily manipulated and how this manipulation is so powerful that after a while any perception is interpreted based on what our brain remembers from the past. This becomes a metaphor for the film viewing (and hearing) experience; except that it is taken to the extreme in this case.”

http://waysofseeing.org/struct.html