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ارض السلام

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" The land of Peace" is a sound track electro-acoustic music composition; A reflection on personal dreams by using rumi's mystical poems to articulate the feelings of the dreams.


“ The land of Peace”
It has been years that I dream of a peaceful place when I go to sleep. I feel happy, light and strong when I am present in that place. I can fly with my arms by just looking at my target and do not need wings to fly with. It is so real to me that sometimes I think my life here on earth is the dream and my real life is on the other side. The amazing thing is that this place is not a random place, I always return to
the same land, I know it, I live there and I meet peoples and birds there. I can talk to birds, as they are people. I wish I could only bring a digital camera with me there to record things and show them as proof to my friends and family, I just can not support any of the above using physical material. In this composition I hope to illustrate my visions of this place that I belong to.

This sound track contains the following elements:

 

1. Sounds of nature to create the feeling of a peaceful environment, I mostly used the sound of of water, birds, rain and walking on leaves…


2. Some unique software instruments that I created in Logic Pro , I used a Yamaha Clavinova CVP 900 digital piano as a midi controller to add musical interpretation of “peace” from my heart and mind to this peace. The instruments I created in logic have soft and velvety character with added reverb processing to make them somewhat un-touchable and fuggy, like a place you dream of, but it may not exist in this physical world.


3. Voices of three people who recited mystical poems of Rumi and prose poems written by me.

4. Some vocalizes to help create the dreamland atmosphere. 

By using the above elements I created an abstract collage of sounds that creates a sense of an unknown and meta-physical place.
 

Creative Art-Based Research:
In the method of creative art-based research the path of creation is the research itself. I need to create to understand the world around me. I paint, draw, make clay forms, make music, write poems, make clothing, dance, sing, I do all of these to make sense of my being. I am being a human, a very complex being that no scientist could fully measure in a quantitative or a qualitative way. Researchers have the tendency to observe, count, documents, come to an understanding and use that as a base for the future understanding, this may work for many things, but it certainly does not work for art creation, because creating art is different every time and follows no regulated rules. My body is a tool, is a machine that could be studied using measurable methods, but my thoughts, my feelings, my soul and my imaginations neither could be seen nor could be measured and labeled. My thoughts and imaginations are the source of meanings, which lead to art creations. My research methodology is to use my body to document my imagination and thoughts whether I make a painting, write a poem or make a piece of music. Unlike the scientists who would arrive to understand a truth of a phenomena through inductive and deductive methods looking at the three rationality rules; Ontology (reality), Epistemology (Knowledge) and axiology (Values), in art creation, I believe there is no “One” concrete and correct truth of the world; my findings will not be a path that others could walk on to help them understand the world just like I do. Mainly because, there are many factors that come together to shape a person’s mind, factors like social connections, cultural background, races, genders, geographic locations, religious belief and so on. I create my art because I was raised they way I was, because I believe in things that I believe in and because I am myself and I let me to be who I am. I don’t make
myself to be shaped to someone else’s understanding of the world. I am a thinker; an artist and I document my understanding of the world in an art form just to express my understandings not to impose my understandings to others or even trying to explain them to others. Elliote Eisner (1991) talks about “Transactive Account” which I found very fascinating and true, he describes:


“Since what we can know about the world is always a result of inquiry, it is
mediated by mind. Since it is mediated by mind, the world cannot be known in its
ontologically objective state. Objective world is postulated both as a general and
particular entity. Since what we know about the world is a product of transaction
of our subjective live and a postulated objective world, these world can not be
separated.”


Another word the physical world outside of one’s mind is interlaced with the person’s internal world and one could say the physical world outside is the extension of the person’s being. Although the internal worlds are personal to the individual creatures and each being has a stand-alone essence, which is unique in its way, the physical world is a shared place, which is used by other beings, like
other people, animals, plants, water, wind, air, etc. and that opens our eyes to see the fascinating detailed network among all beings.

 

As an observer of the world outside of me, I was never able to separate things from each other, it seems that I came to understand the world as a “Whole” and this has had a significant impact on my art creation. I like to explore how “ inspiration from the world outside” leads to creation and making meanings of the world for me. To describe what I mean by the “wholeness of the world” I like to share some examples: birds have been always an inspiration of mine and as an observer I could never decide to just look at their beautiful feathers and faces or just to listen to their wonderful voices or just look at their family and social activities. Or even separate them from the beautiful plants, trees, water, air, and grass surrounding them… and of course, I always see myself as part of this network, how I affect their lives or how I could affect their lives. This is what I mean by the wholeness. I believe none of us could be separated and be understood without the other parts of this equation. When it comes to art creation, I am faced with the same exact situation. I am not a painter, I am not a musician, I am not a poet… what am I? One may say you are none of them and the other may say you are all of them. I think I don’t seek to be labeled with a title. I am just being me. I create all kinds of arts. Drawings, paintings, ceramics, poems, music and dance movements, here is the important point I want to make: I use different tools of expression, based on things that I want to express. Art techniques are my tools for expressing and understanding my world and recently I have discovered a new wonderful tool to allow me to re-create my network of being by joining all aspects of my art creation, this new tool of mine is called “Technology.” Technology gives me the freedom to re-create my network of meanings, arts and beings and express the wholeness.


Unlike my creative art-based research approach to my creative process, technology could be studied and understood by the rationality rules and by both inductive and deductive methods, it also can be precisely counted. I see necessary to describe the technology I use and the theories behind it, just to offer insight into this tool (I will continue this in a future paper as it is outside of our topic for this paper), but my research methodology remains as a creative art-based research creation.

 

To come to a conclusion , I just like to state this is just the beginning for me and as I go forward with my research, I will be learning more about myself and hat should lead towards learning about world outside of me. My hope is to be able to articulate the creative process, step by step and document things that I will sense, feel and create in a manner that could be understood by others.

The followings are the prose poems that I have wrote for “The Land of Peace” along with some of the mystical poems of Rumi to support this paper:


By Pari Chehrehsa:
Girl: Where is this place? It is so beautiful…
Boy: This is home. Welcome back, we have been waiting for you…


From Quran:

Boy: Peace, Peace upon you for being righteous and killing your ego, you arrived
safely because of love,


By Pari Chehrehsa:
Girl: Look at me, I can fly with no wings, this is amazing… I feel so pure, so in love
and so light…
Boy: Come, come and see the garden, the plants, the birds, the water, the grass and
the flowers are waiting to greet you.

 

By Rumi:
Boy: with passion pray.
With passion work.
With passion be in love.
With passion eat, drink, dance and play.
Why look like a dead fish in this ocean of God?
The third person (myself) : The temple of love is not love itself;
True love is the treasure, Not the walls about it
Do not admire the decoration,
But involve yourself in the essence,
The perfume that invades and touches you-
The beginning and the end .
Discovered, this replace all else,
The apparent and the unknowable.
Time and space are slaves to this presence
Boy: Don't worry about saving these songs!
And if one of our instruments breaks,
it doesn't matter.
We have fallen into the place where everything is music.
The strumming and the flute notes rise into the atmosphere,
And even if the whole world's harp should burn up,
There will still be hidden instruments playing…

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