An invitation
Dada Duende Record Club would like to invite you to contribute work for our third official volume for the subscription. We are soliciting musical, visual and literary work for our next set. Each set contains a lathe-cut record, a soft cover visual and literary art book, and an 8x8 pigment print of a piece from the book. Each of our sets is prompted by a theme, and this set’s theme is: Apophenia
We wholeheartedly encourage you to take a look around on our site to find out what we are about. You can check out the two published sets we have finished, Volume Zero Maquette , Volume One The Xenophile, AND Volume Two: Duende is on the way — due out at the end of November!
When I think of apophenia, I think of all the ways the universe tricks us—and the ways we abide. It’s natural to make connections out of what we perceive. We often build a story or at least imbue significance into the chaos that presents itself. I imagine there are long-buried reasons for this particular tendency. It’s likely that patterns, trends, signals and cues were largely existential to our ancestors—frankly, they still are.
However, do we go too far? Do we squeeze meaning out of the guileless commotion all around us? I’m sure we do, but I’m not sure that’s always a terrible endeavor. Dabbling in numerology is far less impactful than harboring conspiratorial notions—both are examples of apophenia.
Check out this quick read on Salvador Dali’s “Paranoiac Critical Method”
What we are asking of you:
Musicians: up to 7 minutes of original music inspired by or related to the theme (for example, a suite or two shorter songs). We will work with you regarding licensing and duration of use for the music. We will also work with you to record, mix, and master the music for our lathe-cut record medium (if you are near Minneapolis this means studio time, if long-distance we can still collaborate on recording and production).
Literary Artists: 2-3 poems, or an essay, or a short work of fiction if you like. The world is your erster!
Visual Artists: 8-10 visual artworks in your wheelhouse (photography, illustration, collage, painting, printmaking, etc) to fit on pages sized 8.5x8.5 at 300 dpi resolution (if you are local and need my help with digitizing work I can do that!) — they do not have to be square, just letting you know what size page they will be on and print resolution.
One visual contribution will be chosen for the 8x8 pigment print that we include in our sets, it helps but is not required that you be open to us choosing your work for the print. We make a hundred of each themed set for subscribers, so we would make 100 prints of your work to be included with those (plus the artist-proof sets for each of our contributors). As I mentioned, you can opt out of this if you do not want us to use your work in this manner.
Due Date: we would need digital copies of your artwork ( visual art size specs listed above) to place in the book layout by January 8, 2023 Musicians can work directly with us to figure out schedules for recording and we hope to have that on track and in process by Jan 8 as well!
We would appreciate it if you accept or decline by November 25th, to give us time to reach out to other artists if we need to.
PLEASE NOTE: should you choose to accept this mission, you do not have to create new work specifically for it, though you are welcome to and encouraged to, of course. We are sending you this invitation because we are familiar with your work and see things there that we feel fit this theme. If you want us to let you in on which of your works spurred us to tap you with an invite, we’ll happily message you privately about that!
What do you get out of this? A chance to play, inspiration, and an opportunity to work with a community of other artists who you may or may not already know. It’s interesting to see/hear/read your work when paired with another artist’s musical/visual/literary response to the prompt. We strive to be inclusive and to build a community of both established and emerging artists. : )
As yet, we are not able to pay contributing artists, but we do give each of you 2 copies of the finished set (valued at $60 per)—one for you and one to share if you choose to. For now, we are only making 100 copies of each set (plus your/our artist’s proof copies), these go to our subscribers. For more info on what we are making, see our home page and our previous sets. At the time of sending this invite, Volume 2: Duende is still in production but it will be available in late November and we are super excited about it! You can see some of the contributing artists for that one on our blog page or garner more info by signing up for our newsletter.
apophenia
noun
ap·o·phe·nia ˌa-pə-ˈfē-nē-ə
: the tendency to perceive a connection or meaningful pattern between unrelated or random things (such as objects or ideas)
used in a sentence: “What psychologists call apophenia—the human tendency to see connections and patterns that are not really there—gives rise to conspiracy theories.”—George Johnson
-Merriam-Webster Dictionary Definition
“Apophenia is an error of perception: The tendency to interpret random patterns as meaningful. It can manifest itself in many different ways. Did someone say something in Hindi—meaningless sounds to a non-Hindi speaker — that sounded like English? (There are some hilarious videos on YouTube with English subtitles for Bollywood hits. Benny Lava, for example, or the Indian Nipple Song. Lip reading without audio, for example, can result in Bad Lip Reading.)
Pareidolia is visual apophenia. An example would be seeing the face of Jesus on a grilled cheese sandwich, the Virgin Mary in a water stain on the subway wall, the Man in the Moon, or faces in the clouds. 50 Things That Look Like Faces are also good examples. When a photo of the World Trade Center Twin Towers makes you assign special significance to “11,” that’s pareidolia. When something indistinct in the sky is interpreted as an extraterrestrial spacecraft, that’s also paredolia.
Apophenia results from the evolution of human cognition: The ability to spot and recognize patterns — patterns that represent things to eat, things to avoid, or things with which to try and reproduce — is an adaptation with positive feedback for survival. Birds do it, bees do it, even uneducated fleas do it. Plants do it. Even one-celled microorganisms do it.”
We encourage you to take a look around our site to get to know us, especially the Dada Duende Journal linked at the top of the page. Please know that if you are not able to opt in for this edition, we will happily reach out again in the future (unless you tell us not to!).
Thank you so much for considering this!
~Hannah Lynch, photographer and one of the cohort of Dada Duende Record Club based in Minneapolis, Minnesota