Earlier this week I was in Philadelphia to meet some of the Pew Fellows, which was a real treat. I got into a great conversation with Bhob Rainey about music, technology, improvisation, randomness, algorithms and all kinds of great stuff. He introduced me to a book called Realist Magic: Objects, Ontology, Causality (New Metaphysics) by Tim Morton, who holds the Rita Shea Guffey Chair of English at Rice University. I’ve only just started to dip in, but the book is an investigation into the field of object-oriented ontology, first proposed by the philosopher Graham Harman. Object Oriented Ontology (OOO) is (according to Wikipedia) “a metaphysical movement that rejects the privileging of human existence over the existence of nonhuman objects”. I’m really looking forward to reading the book and starting to think more deeply about all the possible meanings and implications of “objects”.
Later in the week I had dinner with composer Troy Herion and continued a similar line of investigation about the relationship between aesthetic development and the nature of attention. This seems related, somehow. Not quite sure how it will all tie together!