The Ideal Game provides a model for talking about thought, events, chance and the two readings of time as known by the Stoics: Chronos - the time of the present, and the Aion, the time of elongated pasts and futures. The Ideal Game has no rules, the rules change with every move, no winners or losers and it affirms and ramifies chance. The Aion is the ideal player of the game. Ordinary games divide an apportion chance. They have rules based on hypotheses.
"The Lottery in Babylon" short story by Jorge Borges affirms the role of chance and also supports the subdivision of time as done in The Aion "The Book," the uncompleted magnum opus by 19th Century symbolist poet Stéphen Mallarmé provides an example of the Aion as the ideal player of the game. A description of it is here. Not in the video but should have been: The Ideal Game can only be played in thought and the only result it can produce is a work of art.
The Ideal Game seems pretty Discordian in nature, I like that. If it "can only be played in thought and the only result it can produce is a work of art", then it also reminds me of a Platonic essence.
ReplyDeleteI greatly enjoy many of the works of Brian Eno. Have you ever collaborated professionally with him, Oz?
Deleuze hopes to replace Platonic essences with events or sense or singularities, terms he appears to use interchangeably. Not sure how thought fits in there, at the moment.
ReplyDeleteI sort of collaborated professionally with Eno. I recorded John Cale singing one song for an album Cale and Eno did together called "Wrong Way Up" that Eno produced. When I got booked on the session, naturally I hoped Eno would be there, but instead he faxed in instructions for me. He was in England where they'd done most of the album, but Cale had come back to NY and needed to do a vocal for the last song. It was cool working on their multi-track tape, Eno had bounced down all his ambient stuff in stereo to two tracks. Cale was an intense, but friendly guy to work with. He was writing the lyrics as he went. I wrote something on the track sheet intended for Eno to see, but never heard anything from it. They gave me a credit on the album which was cool. Two other musicians I've worked with regularly, Bill Laswell and Fred Frith hung out with Eno at different times so I've heard a few stories about him. He was a big inspiration for me when I was starting out. John Cage too.
Right, I could see a connection with what you exposed from the series in previous videos, but wasn't sure what to do with it either.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the cool story! Wrong Way Up is such an oddity, I keep on forgetting about this album and am always pleasantly surprised to discover it again every time.