“Bioresonance and the Implicate in Musicking” is the name I gave to my dissertation, a 600+ page text that encompassed complex dynamical systems, quantum physics, cognition, philosophy, sound, consciousness, and of course, music. 

Interspersed with the text chapters were various meditations on sound, gestures of attention which interwove a field wherein intelligence beyond the linear, reduced, and objectified could be engaged, deeper than the confines of the traditional dissertation and intellectual approach would allow for. 

Pauline Oliveros had been on my dissertation committee before her passing, and I had written the dissertation with her in mind: I knew that she would get it, what I was trying to convey, and so felt I could be more adventurous, in terms of making so bold a gesture as to critique the ontological underpinnings of the academic structure I was operating from within. I was a bolt critiquing the machine that I bolted together.

After she passed, there were times when it looked like I would not get my degree, that I may have married what I had discovered to be deeply true within, and my professional life, more than the machine was comfortable with. But I did, in fact, in the end, receive my degree. 

The committee convinced me to write a more traditional introductory chapter which “framed” the entire text as a musical composition. This was the compromise that laid a bridge between where we are, and where we are going, and which also incidentally told the truth, as the entire field the text weaves is in fact a vibrational unfoldment, like music, more than it is a reifiable conceptual object. And that is one of it’s “points”.

And so it was an apt metaphor. The text did not “need” the extra chapter, but the chapter needed to exist to frame my dissertation “as a musical composition”, as an avant-garde happening or piece of performance art, in order to be digestable by the music academics on my committee, until such time as it could be presented without this crutch.

The core of the content is contained in section 2. You can read just the second section, and “perform” or engage in all of the sound meditations throughout the entire dissertation (just search for the phrase “attentional inquiry”), and you will get the crux of what the work is all about, as well as the most critical of it’s original research. 

The first and third sections go deeper into perspectives of the implicate order, quantum physics, process, intelligence, science, and many other important subjects, for the more adventurous.

If you read the text all the way through, please begin with “Manifesto" (page 26), and the sound meditation right before it (page 25). 

The dissertation included three musical compositions, which interweave with the text; these are included on the ProQuest page linked above. 

To learn more about these compositions, refer to page 559 (Appendix A) of the dissertation (for information on “Non-Local Butterfly” and “PHI X 174”), and page 551 (for information on “Drinking Water by the Selling”).

Filenames of musical compositions available for open access download on ProQuest page:

“Piece for Non-Local Butterfly” - NLB.wav

“PHI X 174” - PHIX174.wav

"Drinking Water by the Selling" - DWBTS.wav