resonance
I’ve had a few people ask me why I use “resonanteye” as a name. I’ve been using it since before the internet, as a pen name at first and then with the advent of email, as my address and username.
full explanation and some interesting stuff after the jump
I was very interested in physics. Always have been. I found the concept of resonance fascinating, and still do. Not just in its technical aspect but also in its more esoteric forms, and as a metaphor for how I create things and where my ideas come from.
Resonance is a state in which things move in a particular rhythm. The basic thought is that when something is struck with a force that matches its own innate, natural rhythm, it will start to move in sympathy- resonate.
If you play the right note next to a tuning fork, it will vibrate.
This is of course just the basic scientific idea of resonance. But I’m a fan of using half-assed metaphors from scientific thought to explain otehr things in life. When I was younger I had done a lot of reading; notably in this case reading Jung, Tesla, and Sheldrake.
Sheldrake’s theory of morphic resonance is pretty interesting, even if not proven. That living things should always follow their predecessors in shape due to a repeated preference in evolution for that particular design is a simple enough thought. But proposing that unrelated creatures would also influence each other is a bit more of a leap. I find it interesting, though, and would love to see some work done to test the idea further.
Tesla’s work with resonance is purely done from a physics perspective, but has its implications.
Jung, of course, talks a lot about the collective unconcsious. Now taking into account the other things I just brought up, you can see where I’m heading. If everything has its own natural rhythm, its own note, then why would the human mind be any different?
As the world around us changes, as events occur, the hive mind begins to shiver. Every worker bee shakes its ass to the same beat. (with exceptions– although I’ve always found some pride in being a rebel)
I always felt like somehow the things I saw with my mind’s eye were just reactions to the world around me, reactioins that I didn’t control. I have always been a fan of the surrealists. How do you paint a dream? And does what we make, as art, come from some inner vision? How do you represent the impossible, visually? How do we make a picture of the mystery?
Everything I make is a product of the world’s rhythm, and the things that strike me in just the right way, with just the right amount of force, and with the proper chord, will resonate. I will move, and what my eye invents will come out through my hands and into the world. Like a note from a tuning fork. I don’t act in rhythm with the world- only when it hits me just right, do I resonate. Only the things with which I resonate, do I respond to this way.
I don’t think that I can explain much more clearly than that. I actually did think about all this when I picked that name; at the time I thought it would be a short-lived name, but it has stuck for more than fifteen years and I don’t think I’ll be changing it any time soon.
Especially in tattooing, I work with the zeitgeist. I see trends. I can almsot, if I squint just right in low light, see the future. Art shows us where we are going, where we are, what we’ve been. Art is the Cassandra of civilization. We see the consequences, and without trying to propagandize even, we express the effects of change in the world through what we make. My hand can draw the future out on a piece of paper, and I can sell a thousand copies. But whether or not people pay attention to art as an indicator of our coming dystopia is another question, one I don’t have an answer to, one I haven’t finished wrestling with yet.
for more about resonance on this kind of level check out :
Terence McKenna
philip k dick(especially the valis books)
Kurt Vonnegut
the writings of Salvador Dali
the futurists
Jung’s theories about collective symbolism
Morphogenesis
collective intelligence
Alex Grey
any revolutionary propaganda art
