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Our genome, we have been told, is the carrier of vital information. But what exactly is this information? At a basic functional level, you could view an individual gene as a recipe for a given protein. (Yes, it is an old gastronomic metaphor.) A complex cellular system reads this recipe off the gene and whips up the necessary protein. A gene therefore is nothing but a segment of a DNA molecule that contains the information required for the synthesis of a given protein. And proteins, as we know, are the workhorse molecules of life that accomplish a fascinating variety of crucial tasks: everything from catalysing chemical reactions to defending the body and running the cellular power station.

Now, just as those little boxes on the hillside are made up of ticky-tacky, proteins are made up of amino acids. And there

are twenty different kinds of amino acids. Without going into (un)necessary detail, you can imagine the DNA molecule as a sequence of chemical bases strung out in space in a very particular way. Yes, that’s the famous Double Helix, that you now see everywhere from screensavers to bus stations. These DNA bases come in four flavours: Adenine, Thymine, Guanine and Cytosine – lovingly nicknamed as A, T, G and C. Therefore, you can imagine the gene as a language with a four lettered alphabet.

And like a finely tuned thermostat, preferably with Dutch engineering and Slavic styling, there exists a precise relationship between each of these twenty amino acids and the four chemical bases of the DNA. In the genetic cookbook, each amino acid is specified by a sequence of three bases.

The amino acid Glutamine, for example, is specified by the base sequence CAG (i.e Cytosine - Adenine - Guanine). Methionine is specified by AUG. In case you are curious, there is a handy name for these nifty three lettered words: codon. So essentially, each amino acid has its own codon. However, it’s not exactly a ‘single gene - single amino acid’ scenario.

The interesting thing is that in reality, a single amino acid can be specified by more than one codon. Codons specifying the same amino acid are termed as synonyms. Serine for example is specified by six synonyms: UCU, UCC, UCA, UCG, AGU, and AGC. UUU and UUC are the two synonyms for Phenylalanine. Valine on the other hand is specified by four codons.

Here, please don‘t get confused by the presence of a new alphabet, U, in the codon. The U here is indicative of Uracil, the base in RNA that corresponds to the T (Thymine) in DNA and yet differentiates RNA from DNA. Since RNA plays a crucial, intermediate role in transcribing the code embedded in the DNA, the codons are generally written in terms of the RNA bases. At least that is the convention that molecular biologists seem to have agreed upon.

The verdict, however is simple.

You can continue your haptic exploration of Serine. You can enjoy the furry pleasures of running your fingers along the bond angles and admire the beauty of its hydroxyl group. You can also speculate on the deep linkages between Serine and your Central Nervous System, but don’t expect to discover a seventh way. There can be only six ways of cuddling up to Serine.

Shifter 14 • Benedict

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Four and a half billion years ago my shattered fragments recombined to form you

You are the missing limb that emerges at night to haunt me with your fl oating memory

You pull me reminding me of your severed connectionYou glow from far awayBut your surface is ashYou call me - come to me Im still a part of you

But you are dead when I arriveand I cannot breathe You suck out my breath

When I reach you I realize there is nothingOr rather there is something but it is deadOr rather you are nothing at its very limitYou are groundlessnessYou exist when I desire you but in front of you I am groundlessThere is no I or you anymore

I can only name you when I am far enough away to see you in your entiretyWhen I reach you You become unconstituted and I forget your name

Or rather, from afar You are the object of my desirebut when I reach you I realize that you are not the cause

the cause of my desire remains at the same distance

Yet you constitute the curved space of my desirePulling me, sucking me in

Perhaps, the quickest way to realize my desire is to bypass youto circulate around you

Maybe it is best to postpone our encounter

More satisfaction is gained by dancing around you

Shifter 14 • Premnath

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Shifter 14 • Premnath

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Iyer

This questionnaire may help you track, evaluate, and organize your own response to a musical experience.

I. SItuatIonWhat is your own relationship to this musical occasion / performance / piece / recording?

Who is creating and/or performing this music, and why? Who is listening to it, and why?

What are the identity parameters by which you chose to describe the people named in the above question?

Are the performers and/or audience homogeneous or heterogeneous with respect to those same parameters?

Where is this music taking place, i.e. in what real or virtual space? How did this space come to be?

How did these creators/performers come to occupy this space/place on this occasion? What did they have to do to get here? How much did it cost them, in money, time, and effort?

How did the listeners come to occupy this space/place on this occasion? What did they have to do to get here? How much did it cost them, in money, time, and effort?

Do these groups of people resemble the local surrounding community, or do they seem to single out one sector of this community?

Do the performers and listeners have similar economic, ethnic, racial, cultural, linguistic, or age characteristics?

Is a certain identification (identity resonance) already in play before the first sound is made or heard? Does it have to do with assumptions about identity? If so, what are those assumptions?

Does the music’s environment seem more like a ritualistic space, somehow separate from everyday life, or is it evidently more continuous with everyday life? In what ways do the performers either enhance or efface this separation?

Do the performers acknowledge the listeners? Do they address the audience verbally and/or musically? What function does this serve? Is it necessary?

II. FormWhat is your first sensation with respect to this music?

What is happening in this music? What are its main parameters of expression? How does it vary over time? In what ways does it remain invariant over time?

What are your emotional and physical responses while listening to this music? Do they change or evolve over time? How do they relate to what is happening in the music?

How is this music constructed? Are its governing processes obvious or obscure? Does this matter to you?

Is this music made by bodies? If so, are the bodies audible? How many bodies are involved in this music? Do certain bodies dominate in this music? How would you describe the relationships among the various audible bodies?

To what extent is this music happening in “real time”? Are its real-time aspects highlighted or suppressed? Does this matter to you?

To what extent are you able to predict the events in this music? Does this matter to you?

Are there multiple ways to listen to this music? Is the music open enough to allow multiple aural perspectives? Does this matter to you?

Are there unknowns in the music? Is there discovery in the music? If so, how would you describe them?

Is there dialogue in this music? Is there narrative in this music? Is there emotion in this music? Where is any of it located in the music, and how is it expressed? What does it sound like?

Are the musicians challenging themselves or “reaching”? Does this matter to you?

When you close your eyes, does the music sound the same or different? Is it easier to listen to, or harder?

If you knew nothing about this music or its makers, would it sound the same or different?

Would you say that you feel this music? What does it mean to you to feel music? Does this matter to you?

Would you say that you understand this music? What does it mean to you to understand music? Does this matter to you?

Would you say you know this music’s antecedents or points of reference, musical and otherwise? If so, does that help you feel or understand it, according to your answer to the previous question?

Would you say this music belongs to any particular genre(s), idiom(s), or historical streams? If so, which one(s), and in what ways? How familiar are they to you?

III. ImplIcatIonSHow would you describe this music’s outcome or impact?

Does the music perform, propose, or foster notions of community? Does it celebrate individuals? Does it adhere to or reinforce an ideology? Does it perform ethnicity? Does it purport universality? Does it make a show of its competence, or mastery, or transgression, or experimentalism? Where does it situate itself in the music world, and how?

Does this music have extramusical or “real-world” repercussions? If so, what are they?

Do you feel that composers and musicians should engage with extramusical or “real-world” concerns? If so, how might they do so? Does this music do any of that?

Why does this particular music exist? What is it about, and what is it for?

IV. SummaryPlease compile your answers, and any other relevant details about your overall experience with this music, into a first-person narrative.

a lIStenIng queStIonnaIre

VIjay Iyer

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lIndSay BenedIct was born in Port Jefferson, New York, and currently lives in Brooklyn.

She received a BA from Williams College, an MFA from UC Berkeley and attended the Whitney Independent Study Program.

Working in film, sound, performance, sewn text and photographic essay, her projects request exploration of social connections that demand a further examination of contemporary life. Often emotionally raw, the work is presented as a fragment, question, or gesture. Benedict has recently shown at PS 122 in Manhattan, the Berkeley Art Museum, and in the Emergency Biennial; she has screened at the Detroit Museum of New Art (MONA), New Langton Arts in San Francisco, and the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, CA.

joShua hart was born in 1976, outside Los Angeles, CA. He lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. In 2006 Hart completed his MFA at Bard College.

www.joshuahart.org

aBhIShek hazra is a visual artist based in Bangalore. His work explores the intersections between technology and culture through animated shorts and performance pieces that often integrate textual fragments drawn from real and fictional scenarios. He is also interested in the social history of scientific practices in colonial India.

http://abhishekhazra.blogspot.com/

VIjay Iyer is a New York-based pianist, composer, improviser, producer, and occasional academic. He tours worldwide with his various projects, and has released twelve albums as a leader or co-leader.

Most commonly associated with jazz, he has also composed orchestral and chamber works; scored for film, theater, radio and television; collaborated with poets and choreographers; and joined forces with artists in hip-hop, rock, experimental, electronic, and Indian classical musics.

Iyer received the Alpert Award in the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, and grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts, Creative Capital, the Cary Charitable Trust, American Composers Forum, Chamber Music America, and Meet The Composer. His writings appear in Music Perception, Current Musicology, Journal of Consciousness Studies, Critical Studies in Improvisation, Journal of the Society for American Music, and the anthologies Uptown Conversation: The New Jazz Studies and Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture.

www.vijay-iyer.com

pat palermo is an artist and cartoonist currently living and working in Brooklyn.

He received a BFA from Ohio State University and an MFA from Bard College in 2005.

His comic book, Cut Flowers, was a 2005

recipient of the Xeric Grant for self-publishing cartoonists. His work has been exhibited at Monya Rowe Gallery (New York), Edward Mitterand (Geneva), and Sutton Lane (Paris). He is currently writing and drawing Live/Work, a serial comic book set in the contemporary art world.

SreShta rIt premnath lives and works in New York City. He is the founder and editor of Shifter.

He received his BFA from The Cleveland Institute of Art, his MFA from The Milton Avery Graduate School of Fine Art at Bard College and was a 2008 studio fellow at The Whitney Independent Study Program.

His work has been shown at Gallery SKE, in Bangalore (India), Rotunda Gallery, Art in General, Bose Pacia Gallery and Thomas Erben Gallery in New York City.

www.circumscript.net

kIran SuBBaIah was born in India. He has studied and worked at various art institutions in India and Europe.

His creative production consists of 3-dimensional objects, site/context-specific texts, short stories, videos, and proposals for utilitarian objects. He has been making computer-specific art-objects since 1999.

http://www.geocities.com/antikiran

Shifter is a topical magazine that was founded in 2004 by Sreshta Rit Premnath. Premnath continues to edit the magazine in collaboration with guest editors.

Finding the internet to be the only inter-continental “commons” that is not policed by immigration policy, Shifter began as an online magazine. It was conceived of as a topical magazine so that dialogue remained centered around ideas that were not in themselves identitarian, and could be approached from different directions.

Shifter attempts to create a platform where individuals engaged in various fields including

visual art, experimental writing, cultural theory, philosophy and the sciences can view their work in relation to each other without any hierarchy. The online magazine remains free, once again to circumvent the inequities of the global capitalist marketplace.

For Roman Jakobson, a “shifter” is a term whose meaning cannot be determined without referring to the message that is being communicated between a sender and a receiver. For example the pronouns “I” and “you”, as well as words like “here” and “now”, and the tenses, can only be understood by reference to the context in which they are uttered.

As this suggests, Shifter’s topics have often focussed on issues of subjectivity and rupture in language, and contributions reveal an equal emphasis on visual and textual strategies. This is a project open to change and failure and does not depend on revenue. Each issue creates a community of artists and writers who may not have seen their work contextualized together, and in this way hopes to open a dialogue amongst them.

All issues, including this one, can be downloaded from the website: shifter-magazine.com

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