Randy Gibson
Sound | Time | Art
On Time
Some thoughts about time for the Brooklyn Rail's Slow Art issue
September 12th, 2017

R. Andrew Lee performing Randy Gibson's The Four Pillars Appearing from The Equal D under Resonating Apparitions of The Eternal Process in The Midwinter Starfield in a setting of Quadrilateral Starfield Symmetry Tx4 Base 7:144 at the Nief-Norf summer festival. | Photo by Fistful of Tigers
Some thoughts about time for the Brooklyn Rail's Slow Art issue
September 12th, 2017
A few months ago, Arden Reed, the critic and writer of a new book about James Turrell's symbolism called Slow Art reach out to me. Arden was putting together an issue of The Brooklyn Rail about time and art, and, came to me for a perspective from the music world.
How can time manifest in performance, object, or environment? How, through the use of structure, can time be altered, shifted, transcended, and understood in our shared experience?
Of course, duration is not time.
Duration is relevant because I’m interested in glacial change that is beyond our perception, and that takes time.
It happened that I was in the midst of work on a talk for the Nief-Norf festival and conference about Minimalism to take place after a performance of The Four Pillars Appearing from The Equal D under Resonating Apparitions of The Eternal Process in The Midwinter Starfield, and I proposed adapting that talk for the issue.
The final text now appears in this month's issue, and it's called, simply, On Time.
You can read the full text here.