Journey into the World of Dimensions

I see my work as a kind of "imprint" or "footprint" left by an exploration of life.

Program Note

Starting in 2012, I returned to a fascination with quantum mechanics and physics that I had held since childhood. Physics's imaginative research into "parallel universes" and "dimensions" moved me deeply, while a further series of books on dimensions — the Seth Material — reached even further into the interaction of consciousness across dimensional realities that physics cannot explain. From this, a flowing image of the universe's dimensional structure arose in my mind, and I longed to give it a distinctive musical architecture. Together with a commission from saxophonist Chun-Hao Ku, this gave rise to Journey into the World of Dimensions.

The concept of dimensions covered by this work is immense, so musically I simplified the vast idea behind it into symbolic form, built primarily on a unique, transformed variant of total serialism. But because these ideas about dimensions are little known, and overturn most people's assumptions about life and dimensionality, I cannot avoid first laying out — at some length — the background knowledge behind the cosmos's dimensions, and the image of how dimensions operate in my own mind, so that listeners can understand the work's intent more deeply, rather than simply hearing its electronic music as a surface-level, naturalistic soundscape.

Dimensions, From Physics

Although I am not a physicist, there are many popular-science books and videos that explain the concept of dimensions accessibly for a general audience. The most popular research in physics, string theory, holds that our universe^[1] should, by mathematical calculation, possess eleven (or more) dimensions. But because the other dimensions are "curled up" within our space, we can only sense the three dimensions we know (three-dimensional space). Because the international physics community defines the scope of physical discussion as limited to what instruments can detect, research into our perception of "dimension" remains quite limited — confined, for now, to mathematical inference, since by current physical accounts the other dimensions are "curled up" and cannot be perceived.^[2]

The Seth Material's View of Dimensions

Although a multi-dimensional world may seem beyond discussion within physics, there is indeed a series of books that has explored the reality of multi-dimensional worlds and dreams — known as the Seth Material, promoted in Taiwan today by the New Age Association and by Dr. Tian-Sheng Hsu, a psychiatrist and family physician. This series was received by an American woman writer of the 1960s–80s who, through trance, channeled the teachings of "Seth" — a personality from an unknown dimension — on how the multi-dimensional universe operates, touching on quantum mechanics, psychology, anthropology, biology, history, and medicine. Though it cannot be verified by present-day scientific instruments, its content radically overturns conventional ideas about the dimensions of the universe and the nature of the soul; as a result, from its publication until her death, the author drew the attention of physicists, psychologists, and others internationally who examined and discussed the material. The original Seth manuscripts are now held in the library of Yale University.

The Seth Material emphasizes that the origin of the universe is a body of conscious energy — what may be called universal consciousness, or what human culture generally calls "God." This origin divides itself and leaps into different dimensional realities, and the three-dimensional reality we call "Earth" is one such reality. Every life, every dimensional world, therefore originates from the same energy, each a part of "Him," and "Him" develops and grows through the interactions of every life He has divided Himself into — in other words, through the experience of every life, inner growth is achieved, and the evolution of the universe's collective consciousness is advanced. Life is thus a continuous process of experiencing, learning, creating, and expressing, working toward the "completion of value." And the essential nature of this universal conscious energy is "love" — so all energetic beings of life, from rocks and oceans down to cells, microorganisms, and pathogens, exist within a vast, mutually supportive love, seeking growth as a whole.

Seth says that, because of the limitations of our nervous system, our consciousness is "focused" within three-dimensional space. He uses a metaphor to describe the concepts of "multi-dimensionality" and "focus": dimensions, he says, are like different radio stations, each broadcasting a different program at the same time — just as multiple dimensions (even past and future in time) exist simultaneously — while our nervous system is like a radio's tuner, able to lock onto only one station at a time, unable to tune into every station at once; this is "focus." But unlike radio stations, the content of each "station" — the events occurring in each dimension — actually influence one another. Whether asleep or awake, information moves back and forth between dimensions within our consciousness, selecting or determining the events of each moment as well as past historical events. This view actually echoes contemporary quantum mechanics: because of the random uncertainty of particles, the idea of the "light cone" in parallel spacetime suggests that the present moment is in fact the "point" that determines the parallel spacetimes of past and future — meaning that the history we are familiar with is, in fact, determined only from this present moment, rather than being a truly fixed, unchangeable "fact" that has already occurred.^[3]

Dreaming is the moment when a person is freed from neurological limitation and receives the most multi-dimensional information — but most of that information cannot be fully understood by the nervous system, and so our brains process it, through feeling, into distorted images; this further explains why our dreams are often so chaotic. When awake, multi-dimensional information often appears in the form of "inspiration," or further as "apparitions" — these inspirations merge with our thoughts, consciously and unconsciously influencing every choice we make in life, further creating the events of our lives (even collective events) and the state of our physical health. But a human culture centered on science flatly denies multi-dimensional information, thereby limiting the perception and correct understanding we ought to have of other dimensions; rather than simply denying it, we instead distort it into religion or superstition, neglecting and denying our own capacity — and responsibility — to create our own reality.

Seth also notes that not only are events across dimensions interconnected, but every particle, through the perception of different biological systems, plays a different role across different dimensions — meaning a single object may take on different faces in different dimensions. For instance, a hat in our space-time might be a mountain in another dimension, and air in yet another.

My Vision and Motivation — The Transformation of Physical Law Between Dimensions

This further led me to imagine that perhaps the physical laws between dimensions work the same way — that the physical laws of one dimension transform into a different set of laws in another. Suppose the universe has eleven dimensions; because of our sensory-nervous system, we experience only three, while the other dimensions are "curled up," or "out of focus," within our nervous system — and so the physical laws we experience must obey the speed of light, with spacetime continuous and connected. Yet perhaps beings in another dimension, through their own unique perceptual systems, receive three or four of the other eleven dimensions instead — perhaps able to perceive time, perhaps not, or perhaps perceiving time in another way entirely (faster than light, or extremely slowly) — for example, perceiving time the way we perceive space, able to "see" different times simultaneously, the way we might look at a chart of different countries' histories, with their space overlapping, and so on. Naturally, then, a new set of physical laws would govern them — and between those laws and the physical laws of our Earth, there might exist some transforming "equation"^[4] that links them, so that the physical laws between dimensions are at once interrelated and entirely distinct. This idea gave rise to the creative motivation behind Journey into the World of Dimensions — I hope, through this piece, to present this concept of worlds between dimensions and the transformation of physical law.

Creative Concept and Approach

To express the world of dimensions through music, though it cannot carry the credibility of science, can guide listeners to imagine and explore such worlds and possibilities in a manner similar to science fiction. Journey into the World of Dimensions is therefore presented as an "abstract, subjective travelogue," in the form of a suite of six movements, describing a protagonist who departs from Earth, journeys through the subjective experience of four different dimensional worlds, and finally returns to Earth. Because the protagonist has, through experiencing other dimensions, inevitably "developed" the ability to sense information from other dimensions, their experience of Earth upon returning must be different — so although the final movement describes Earth, it is, to the protagonist, an Earth "different from before": in other words, compared to the Earth before the journey, it is another, "parallel world" version of Earth.

Because of the spacetime of parallel universes — in which every choice made by every person opens onto a possible parallel spacetime — combined with the limitations of the nervous system, we can almost say that any world or dimension is only called "existing" because there is such a "protagonist" to perceive it. In other words, the existence of any world is "subjective"; without a feeling "protagonist," to claim such a "world" exists would be meaningless. So in composing this piece, it became essential to imagine the subjective experience of an "Earthling" entering a multi-dimensional world. As mentioned earlier, because the human brain and nervous system cannot process most multi-dimensional information, that information is inevitably distorted into images or sounds familiar to us, and so appears as chaotic and illogical as a dream. The six movements, then, each subjectively narrate the experience of a journey through the following six worlds:

1. Earth, born of the sea, feels comfortable.
2. Arriving at a world with metallic air and ground as hard as steel, I feel quite exhilarated and excited.
3. An extremely dry and desolate world, with nothing but sand, wind, and patches of mud — I feel bored and impatient.
4. A blazing, violent world — I sense that a war seems to be taking place.
5. A world made of gas and spirits, in which I feel "time" alternately stretch and contract.
6. Returning to Earth, yet still able to sense the previously traveled dimensional worlds coexisting with it — the ocean's place in space-time is inverted, or the sensation grows chaotic, but in the end, calm returns.

On the auditory level, then, the subjective experience is expressed through the saxophone and piano parts, while the imagery of each dimensional environment — the sea-like Earth, the metallic world, the desolate sand, or the gaseous world — is expressed through the electronic music.

Instrumental Framework — Symbolizing the Laws of Physics

The physical framework between dimensions exists within the piece's internal structure. This work uses a transformed variant of total serialism as its primary underlying framework, with a small degree of permitted flexibility added to symbolize the vitality with which each dimension still strives to exist independently. What follows first examines the primary framework, then the changes and flexibility allowed within its principles.

Primary Framework
Because all physical laws are hidden and unseen, in order to express this quality, the instrumental part of the first movement, Earth, was composed freely. Once complete, I then analyzed and recorded, in strict chronological order (measure by measure, beat by beat — see Appendix C), the sequence of five musical elements used: dynamics, intervals, rhythm, register, and articulation. This recorded sequence of five musical elements symbolizes different matter and the physical laws of Earth.

In the second movement, the first movement's dynamics sequence is applied to the second movement's intervals; the first movement's interval sequence is applied to the second movement's rhythm; the first movement's rhythm sequence is applied to the second movement's register; the first movement's register sequence is applied to the second movement's articulation — and so the second movement is completed. The remaining movements are composed in the same way, each transforming the musical-material sequence of the movement before it, using the same transformational method, to symbolize the relationship and transformation between the internal laws — the physical frameworks — of each dimension. (See Appendix A for the transformational relationships between musical elements.)

Permitted Flexibility — Symbolizing Each Dimension's Vitality in Striving to Exist Independently
Logically, a piece composed entirely according to this base framework should return, in its final movement, to the original form of the first. It does not — because the transformation of musical elements tends to simplify certain material, affecting the movements that follow. The framework must therefore permit a degree of flexibility, the way nature preserves, through mutation, the range of possibilities a species needs to develop, "enriching" back what had been simplified away. Two points of "mutation" freedom are therefore permitted within the framework: the dynamics of the fourth and sixth movements are not built on the articulation sequence of the preceding movement, but are freely chosen instead. In addition, from its midpoint to its end, the rhythm and articulation of the sixth movement gradually become free, breaking from the laws of the other dimensions, so that the piece may fully return to the feeling of Earth before the journey began.

The Layering of the Electronic Music — Symbolizing Dimensions "Curled Up"
Finally, in composing the electronic music, in order to express the idea of certain dimensions being "curled up" within others, from the second movement onward, the electronic music of the preceding movement (sometimes including its instrumental parts) is distorted and transformed, using the software Mammut, into different sonorities that serve as the electronic-music background layer of the current movement. This background layer is usually distorted beyond recognition as belonging to the previous movement — only faintly audible in its register or structural contour — and in this way, the physical concept of dimensions "curled up" within one another is made present.

Furthermore, in the movements that follow, the electronic music contains not only the electronic-music information of the movement immediately before it, but, in theory, the information of all preceding movements as well. For example: in the third movement, since the second movement's electronic music already contains the first movement's electronic-music information, the third movement therefore simultaneously contains the electronic-music information of both the first and second movements — only the second movement's information is present at a greater multiple than the first's (the first movement's electronic-music information has, in effect, been distorted twice, and its volume reduced by a corresponding multiple). And so on, until by the sixth movement, the sonorities of every dimension are contained within it, curled up — in terms of both volume and sonority — according to this same proportional logic.

[1] Present-day physics limits its scope to the universe we ourselves inhabit, and does not address other possible parallel universes.
[2] See the related video: sciencechannel.com
[3] For the related concept of parallel universes, see the discussion of Heisenberg's "Uncertainty Principle" and "Schrödinger's Cat" in quantum mechanics.
[4] Perhaps this "equation," much like the one in the film Interstellar, is built half on the physical laws of our own three-dimensional space, and half on the physical laws of another dimension. Only, perhaps we do not need to fly to the singularity of some distant black hole to find the other half of the equation — perhaps it can be found through dreams instead.

Note: the third movement is not included in this recording.

Appendices · 附件