Degenerate Art Ensemble

Buddhism says that time runs only in the mind, in the universe happens all into eternal here and now called Sunyata. It seems Buddhist are right. Let’s go together step by step: in the universe we can only observe movement and not time. The idea that movement happens into time can not be proved, it is a pure speculation. The symbol t in all formulas of physics indicates duration of movement that we measure with clocks. Clocks do not run into time, clocks run into space only. Motion happens into space that is a kind of energy. Time is not energy, motion can not happen into time. In physics term time can be 100% replaced with term motion.

Conclusion here is that time does not exist in the universe. Universe is timeless. But we experience motion into time. The question is: If time is not existing in the universe, where it should be? Buddhist have an answer here: time is a linear “frame of the mind” into which we experience motion. We will call it by now mind-time frame.

Motion is momentary: when X2 exist, X1 is gone, when X3 came into existence X2 is gone. You move a hand from the left to the right. When your hand is into place X2 can not be any more into place X1 and so on. We experience momentary movement that has no duration into linear mind-time frame, so it appears as that it has a duration. The basic measure of duration of all movements and material changes is a earth moving one time around the axe. We compare all the movements with this basic movement. We invented clocks to compare all movements with their movement. Duration of the clock movement 24 hours is earth turning one time around the axe.

Universe is a wholeness in a dynamic equilibrium. According to the first law of thermodynamics energy can not be created and not destroyed, it can only transform. Universe is made out of energy, so it can not be created or destroyed. Universe is eternal. Energy is one and has two basic forms: matter and space. In black holes matter transforms into QS of space, in AGN QS of space transforms back into matter. In the universe matter and space are in dynamic equilibrium. There is a continuous motion: matter - space - matter- space - matter. Time is a “mind-time” frame into which we experience motion.

We experience universe through our mind. Mind experience is analytic. By using consciousness as a research tool we become aware of the mind elaboration into “mind-time” frame. We develop a synthetic experience of the universe. Synthetic experience is direct without mind elaboration. It gives us possibility to experience universe as it exists: eternal wholeness in a dynamic equilibrium.

“Mind-time” frame has changed during the ages. By the old Greeks and by Maya mind-time-frame has a cyclic form. It was considered that time in the universe moves in a big cycles. Jewish tradition has introduced into European culture mind-time frame with a liner form. It was considered that time runs in the universe as a liner entity. Science of today is based on this linear mind-time-fraim.

Buddhist culture is the only one in the world that has discovered the difference between physical time (motion) and mind-time frame. They use consciousness as a research tool. Consciousness can watch the mind and become aware the way mind elaboration influences human experience of the world.
I think that modern physics has to learn a lot from the Buddhism.

FROM TIMEOUT NY: With a lead who sings like Björk, a penchant for the quirky and light overtones of Pina Bausch–inspired dance theater, Seattle’s Degenerate Art Ensemble could be grouped into a genre I call “whimsically disturbing performance art.” The group’s particular blend of media and performance modes, which integrates original instrumental and vocal music, video and percussion-dance à la Stomp, appeared unique in the preview they gave last week at the New Museum for “Sonic Tales,” a piece set to premiere this fall in their hometown. Whatever hints of clumsiness remain in this work-in-progress, the performers are so refined that they leave no doubts about the show’s future success.

The DAE successfully elicits audience participation in the show’s soundtrack in a nonthreatening manner, at different points getting audience members to make strange noises, which the performers direct like orchestra conductors. “Sonic Tales” begins with the band’s lead, Haruko Nishimura, dressed in a red gown one would expect to see on a manga Alice in Wonderland. Beginning with a narrative thread, the plot quickly dissolves into a pure celebration of rhythm as a bar hung with pots and pans drops from the ceiling and the musicians, dressed as ninjas, attack it with their drumsticks until they turn to their next victim: our protagonist, who percussively defends herself with a pan and spatula, while gyrating on the rim of a steel hoopskirt. Next, we see a film the group shot while in New York about the adventures of Bagel Boy, a bagel who must escape the threats of ingestion and menacing schoolyard bullies (the bagel is played by one of the group’s performers, a brown man who appears in whiteface, or arguably bagelface).

Silly and spirited, the common theme of the show is the power of things small against the universe’s larger forces. Case in point are the lyrics to the song “Appetite,” which address all sorts of hunger: “33 giants in one night, and even then I finish it of with a couple of dirty films.”—David Levitz