Multi-! Multi-!

Multitasking, one of the hottest buzz words of the decade. It’s the high bar for modern man. If you’re not multitasking, you’re in the dark ages, get up to speed.

Wireless and high speed connections have transformed communication. We’ve gone from mail by horseback, to telegraphs, to telephones, to televisions, to instant personal communicators in our pockets. It’s awesome, dude. It is. I’m not being sarcastic.

There’s just one hitch. All this information/communication/processing power is not what our brains have evolved to accommodate. Human consciousness is capable of one, and only one, train of thought at a time. Jumping from task to task and person to person is not multitasking. Every time you switch gears, there’s an adjustment to be made. You need to regroup to change your thought stream. Study after study has conclusively demonstrated that ricocheting from this project, to that person; from email to texting; from trying to listen, to read and to talk all at one time is inefficient. Multitasking impedes one’s ability to concentrate, it reduces the quality of work, and the big kicker, it increases the amount of time it takes to do any of the tasks at hand. Why? Simple. Each time you try to pick up where you left off requires a little backtrack to return to that frame of mind. If you’re bouncing around like a ping-pong ball, you never fully focus on any assignment. Without full attention, you make mistakes, overlook details, and frequently let glaring errors slip by, the kind you later look at, slap your forehead, and wonder how such a flagrant mistake went unnoticed.

There is no such thing as multitasking. There is only multi-distracted. When multi-distracted we are sorely unproductive. It’s stressful. It’s a time waster. And it doesn’t allow us to dig into any subject or endeavor with any degree of concentration or intensity.

If you think you’re a great multitasker who gets tons of stuff done, you are deluded. You’re so distracted with your busy-busy buzzing that you can’t see how superficial and inadequate your performance actually is. Take a break. Slow down. Get one something done. You’ll likely feel better, more relaxed and less frazzled. Later you’ll have more time to spend talking with friends, having fun, and developing some real social skills. A techno-wiz shouldn’t end up being a social numbnuts.

Now if you’re wondering what this has to do with art or audio, here’s the connection.

Most speaker systems use passive crossovers that divide audible frequencies into separate bandwidths for the tweeter, midrange, and woofer. But they require only one (two channel) amplifier to drive all three speaker ranges at the same time, in other words, the amp has to multi-multi-multitask. The Parallel Audio Project divides the frequencies before amplification to give each bandwidth to a single amplifier for driving each tweeter, midrange, and woofer. Dividing the work load makes it easier for each amp. The result : lower distortion, cleaner sound.

As an artist I have several clearly distinct bodies of work. Each one starts from a different view point, each with a different theme, each with a different style. Although there are common threads that bridge the bodies, those bridges are subtle. Curators like artists with a single, easily recognizable style. Instead of throwing everything into one pot, I divide the ideas I want to express into separate well defined bodies of work. Each takes on its own purpose, personality, and reason for being.

See for yourself in the galleries : [i dialoghi], [image of the gods], [myth of face], or visit [Parallel Audio] to learn more.