Can product development be a form of magic?
Ritual works by creating a synesthetic environment. Can products induce a state that transcends the assumptions of consumer culture?
Art originated as a technique to alter consciousness. This can take many forms, from the state induced by reading a book, to extreme trance and out of body experiences. Green Orb Artifacts aspires to create products that enable healing and spiritual growth. What states of consciousness must products produce for modern people in order to bring health and sustainability to our civilization? The notion of an archaic revival of the primordial and magical in a contemporary context is relevant here; clues lie in magical technologies of the past and present. For example, western esotericism, Amazonian shamanism and Asian Tantric techniques provide ways of working that we may be able to adapt as we reintegrate the primordial function of art into our practices.
We think a synesthetic, ritual approach to music is the proper framework for practicing this in contemporary culture.
Green Orb Artifacts’ first two records, Cosmic Vagina’s Subterranean Penetration and Big Phone’s Selva City (out July 2016) both indirectly address our culture’s mythic relationship to a specific biome.
Cosmic Vagina’s debut album, within the purposefully constructed genre Whale House, immerses the listener in amniotic, cosmic spaces that have been the domain of ambient music since its beginning. The experience of the return to the womb is one stage in the initiatory journey that modern culture looks to fulfill through potentially toxic means. Facilitating this experience sonically, in high-tech civilization, requires noise, dissonance and industrial texture that are well-expressed in hip-hop and techno now. Whale House, while inspired by the songs of cetacean mammals, will inevitably, in a time of acidification and irradiation of the oceans reflect a toxification of our species’ collective womb. How do we use music and other artifacts to deal with the trauma of the poisoned womb?
Subterranean Penetration can be purchased with a soft, black, meditation cloth that was immersed by one of our founders in the sacred waters of a wild Goddess-jacuzzi and waterfall overseen by a hermit in Costa Rica, then prayed over in ceremony for four nights. By touching this cloth, burning incense in the Green Orb Artifacts incense bowl and listening to Cosmic Vagina, GOA listeners will activate this ritual kit.
PTSD and ongoing individual and species trauma need healing with the ancient tools of the shaman: music and synesthetic experience. Is it hypocritical to speak of ancient healing practices that are harmoniously integrated with the biosphere, as inspiration for developing consumer products? Our products are experiments aimed at answering this question.
Our stance is that magic can be done with any and all materials. This is the nature of alchemy: turning poison into medicine, excrement into gold.
To imagine that an untouched primordial jungle full of noble savages will emerge, deus ex machina-like, to save us, is naive. Yet, the ancient knowledge of musical healing must be re-injected into our vast and intimate musical distribution network. Is it possible to do this kind of healing on a mass scale? We think the ascendance of electronic music implies that it is.
The revival of shamanic trance-dance via rave in the nineties held implicit fallacies about anthropology and at its worst attempted to sanctify mindless hedonism. However, a deeper personal experience of these practices might get us closer to a synthesis that works. Big Phone’s Selva City uses field recordings taken in the Peruvian Amazon during a ceremonial dieta in 2013, to construct a sonic coexistence of techno and the symphonic surround of the rainforest, producing a trompe l’oeil effect that is “fascinating” in the original sense of the term: a spell that works with consciousness and appearance, what in Vedic philosophy might be called Maya.
We cannot create a Temporary Autonomous Zone to party in while the world burns. Yet, all matter can be redeemed. This is a core belief of almost every ancient culture, and it is the role of the artist-as-magician to fulfill this archetypal role today. What does this sound like?
