Mid-August marked the public release of innovative multimedia artist Brice Salek’s latest project, “Avant-Garde Meditations,” The project consists of eight audio tracks created for meditative purposes and four accompanying video tracks arranged in an aesthetically pleasing manner conducive to meditation.
“Avant-Garde Meditations” is the follow-up to a five-year ringtone project in which Salek created more than 2,000 ringtones, each expressing a specific concept. Though he realized much success with the ringtones, he felt that the project was too commercial and wanted to get back to his spiritual roots, leading him to his current project.
Salek believes meditation is something everyone needs to relax while living a busy contemporary life. While he also enjoys creating art to please himself, he always aims to help others through his work, by giving them something that they need. He’s aware that the world is becoming increasingly technological, so while working on the “Meditations,” he wanted to experiment with as many different digital audio creation techniques as he could. At first he was only interested in working with audio, but realized that with all the imagery available through the Internet, most people expect some sort of visual stimulation while listening to something.
Watching the images move back and forth on the screen while feeling the vibrations of the audio aids with relaxation and helps in achieving a meditative state. If listening to the audio tracks in order they should tell a story—from the initial surge of energy at the beginning of meditation to an ideal state of meditative relaxation at the end.
Salek doesn’t identify with any specific spiritual orientation, but is a spiritual person in general. He was raised in the Santa Monica, California mountains and attended rainbow gatherings as a teenager, so he learned to connect with nature for spiritual purposes. He also believes that letting energy flow in and out of ourselves and into the world promotes spiritual healthiness—he hopes his audio tracks will allow listeners to experience this kind of energy flow.
For his next project, “Ocean Waves,” Brice is sticking with meditation as the theme, which will include ocean sounds and imagery, bird sounds and guided meditations. Salek hopes the guided meditations will assist people who are having trouble meditating on their own.
If you think “Avant-Garde Meditations” may be a good medium to help you with your own meditative practice, and you would like a sneak preview of the audio tracks before you purchase them, visit Brice’s website. You can buy Avant-Garde Meditations on iTunes.
Watch the “Sleeping Buddha” video here:
image 1: illusivemind (Creative Commons BY-NC-SA)
