♫♪  Corin - “Vexations”

“Suppose I am a blind man, and I use a stick. I go tap, tap, tap. Where do I start? Is my mental system bounded at the hand of the stick? Is it bounded by my skin? Does it start halfway up the stick? Does it start at the tip of my stick?”
Gregory Bateson

“Performative materiality suggests that what something is has to be understood in terms of what it does, how it works within machinic, systemic, and cultural domains.”
Johanna Drucker

“In [Tristian Jalleh and I’s] most recent collaboration I was interested in exploring ways in which we could translate my live performance to a virtual platform,” Corin explained to Creators. In becoming partially digital, Corin transports her consciousness and art into a virtual world that leaves little room for the sense of touch. But like the blind man with a stick, she and Tristian use computers, cameras, green screens to feel into an invisible, crepuscule darkness where creation reigns supreme. Their sense of self — their sense of physicality — need not be abandoned.

When we interact with the digital, extending our mental systems into the virtual realm, we interact not with a discrete virtuality, but rather with ourselves and the very real physical environment we inhabit. Computers put us in a state of consciousness that feels far removed from the corporeal, but alas, is not. However far our mental systems reach into a void, the means of how we got there remain. Metal, wires, plastic, the glass on our screens. Series of ones and zeroes, microchips, copper. The physical artifacts that enable us to access a realm hitherto unknown — undiscovered? — are essential in grounding us, reminding us that however immaterial an environment feels, our world(s) are fundamentally physical. But where do we end, where does the realm outside of ourselves begin?

Stream the wonderful video for Corin’s “Vexations” below, and be sure to check her new EP, Virtuality, out now on Wondercore Island.

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CHOCOLATE GRINDER is our audio/visual section, with an emphasis on the lesser heard and lesser known. We aim to dig deep, but we’ll post any song or video we find interesting, big or small.

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