Now I feel compelled to state my anxieties.

The main one is the big worry that this kind of process--even an invitation to participate--might cause a composer to feel appropriated, “just part of a database,” or worse, “background music” for someone else’s show.  Or devalued by being part of a “random selection” process.  Or that such “random couplings” represent aesthetic mud, cheap solutions, or easy virtue.  My thoughts on these quite plausible objections are:

·      The oracle is part of a website, websites have links, and if a musical work is on the web, there is some presumption that the composer wants it to be heard.  However, I am well aware that this is different than a straight link reference—it is including something “elsewhere” on the web in a “somewhere” that is another environment.  Hence the worry about someone feeling used.  My solution—to respect completely anyone’s wishes to not have links to their work.  And if this notion about including music in this way in the Glide oracle produces a hue and cry, to quietly retire the whole idea.

·      Being part of a “random process” an item in a database, etc.  This goes to the heart of how I think about an oracle to begin with—obviously I’m someone who values the process on many levels, who considers oracles much more than fortune telling toys, and for whom the activity involves a profound (and profoundly playful) meditation about the nature of time and synchronicity. So creating a framework that invites the cyber spirits to play at combining 1) the symbols of a visual language, 2) short translations of such, 3) rich graphics, and 4) electronic music to make a multi-mediated work, does not seem out of hand.  Each work would have a particular meaning, very private, to the person asking about their life, the universe, and everything.  It seems to me an experiment worth trying.  It also seems to be a way to create an asynchronous (as it were) “social environment” for our individual works to have a little party with each other, do a custom-crafted dance for an interactor, that may never happen that way again.  The number of combinations is quite large already—there are more than 1100 situations entries, 729 transformations entries, hundreds of graphics.  I’ve tested this, arranging glyphs, working on translations, and listening to various pieces of music.  For me, each element affects the others, in unpredictable ways.  They interact.  A feeling in the music slants the meaning of the words in a certain direction.  The deep tones of a graphic color the mood.  A “noisy” graphic, a “smooth” musical soundscape, an edgy statement, each is its own mini-environment.  The intention is that the meta-glue will be the user’s degree of engagement in the process of interpretation—searching self and provided experiences for meaning. 

·      “Aesthetic mud”—a real concern.  I have a trust in myself and in my long-term collaborators that we can do a coherent and pleasing job both with the functionality and the overall design.  You can get the look and feel of the aesthetic by visiting the existing site.  And I am including shots of the oracle interface as well, with background graphic examples.  Put on a piece of your music and see if it works for you.  I’ve done due diligence, listened to a lot of work on the web.  But especially as regards the metalist—I have a fair degree of certainty that a wide variety of music and sound environments already available would partner in an exciting manner with the oracle activity at the level of the spirit behind it all.  This has been particularly verified by the evolution of the metalist in the past few weeks.  It’s a sense I trust.  I will also say that I reserve final editorial judgment. 

      Bottom line:  I’ve immersed myself enough in the works I’ve discovered through Metasynth, U & I, and the associated lists that my gut says it will work, and be wonderful.  (And yes, I’ll filter out singing Pepsi commercials and “screw you and the horse you rode in on” music.)