Interview: Jacob Marshall
I have found that in just about every area of life “control” is a type of illusion built on chaos.Jacob Marshall
~Jacob Marshall
Jacob Marshall, passing through Pittsburgh on a farewell tour with his band Mae, graciously agreed to the following interview for The Renaissance Mob. In addition to being a skilled drummer and founder of Mae (Multimedia Aesthetic Experience), Jacob is a true polymath and social entrepreneur.
RM: Thank you for agreeing to this interview, Jacob. One point of interest for this blog is how one deals with the unpredictable nature of life. Some of the events which happened to you, leading up to the formation of your band Mae, were out of your control and impossible to predict. What insights can you share about coping with chaos in your life?
JM: Thanks for including me, I love what you are doing with this project and I’m honored to be a part of it. I got my first understanding of chaos on the ski slopes as a kid. It’s perhaps metaphorical to think of it in those terms but unless you surrender to the force and “chaos” of gravity you will never enjoy the freedom of riding. I have found that in just about every area of life “control” is a type of illusion built on chaos. In the grandest sense, our universe is built on the chaos of quantum mechanics and (potentially) m theory. In the most personal sense, our experience of the world arises out of the chaos where physical sensation meets mental perception. The mind’s ability to aggregate all of those vibrations into a perceived “reality” is truly remarkable. If you have had the pleasure of reading Oliver Sacks you know how delicate that experience of “normal” perception is.
“Every act of perception, is to some degree an act of creation, and every act of memory is to some degree an act of imagination.”
~Oliver Sacks, Musicophilia
RM: The name of your band stands for Multisensory Aesthetic Experience, and you’ve done some innovative things like spraying your CDs with scents and using multimedia in your concerts. What has been Mae’s goal or driving philosophy behind this multisensory appeal?
JM: In 1911, a Russian painter named Wassily Kandinsky wrote a book titled Concerning the Spiritual in Art . He had an elegant way of describing different forms of art as different languages trying to tell the story of truth. He is often credited for inventing abstraction in art and used his experience with synesthesia as the basis for visualizing music in his paintings. The idea for MAE came out of a two year research project I did back at Old Dominion University on the various relationships between color and sound. I believe that the emergent result of synergistic multisensory expression is just starting to be appreciated and art is evolving more and more in that direction.
Makoto Fujimura
JM: Mr Fujimura is one of my heroes and it has been an extreme pleasure to get to know him over the last two years. He uses the traditional Japanese nihonga materials in his painting but his form is a truly glorious take on abstraction and expressionism. There are always beautiful stories just below the surface of his work. We have really bonded over the artist’s struggle in the digital age and a mutual desire to plot a new course for sustainability. We have been exploring and building a model that marries financial capital, creative capital, and relational capital.
RM: You have a huge interest in the concept of emergence, which is directly related to Chaos Theory. You recently attended a lecture with Steven Johnson in NYC, who has written a whole book called Emergence. Any nuggets of wisdom you’d like to share from that event?
JM: That event was very special for me. We (mae) are in the middle of a two-month tour right now and we rarely get days off. We happened to have a night off in NYC on the exact night that two of my intellectual heroes were having a discussion about my favorite topic. Kevin Kelly and Steven Johnson both have new books out that respectively deal with emergence. Kelly’s book What Technology Wants looks at the big picture of tech and makes interesting comparisons between the evolution of technology and nature. Johnson’s book Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation looks at the types of environments that foster breakthrough ideas. He shatters the illusion of the “eureka” moment and reveals the emergent nature of innovation. To top it all off, the host for the evening was Robert Krulwich of my favorite podcast/radio show, Radio Lab. The main thing I took away from the evening was how the reality of innovation is much messier and than you might think. It’s much more like a flower slowly growing toward the sun than like systematic series of obvious steps. True breakthroughs are only ever obvious in hindsight. They require many mistakes. So when I am in the middle of any creative situation and feeling stuck, I will simply try to step back, see the bigger picture, and readjust my approach.
RM: Emergence has played a big part in Mae’s activities this past year. Can you tell us a little about how your “Make a Difference” project has employed the idea of emergence?
JM: After nine years of being singularly focused on mae, we knew that this was probably going to be our last chapter. We wanted to write an ending to this story that we could look back and be proud of. At it’s core, this “Make A Difference” campaign was forum for collaboration between mae and our listeners. We wanted to take the big picture of community development and break it down to the pixel level. In 2009, we recorded and released a new song every month exclusively through our website www.whatismae.com. Listeners from all over the world were able to download it directly from us for a donation. We committed all of the donated funds that came in to very specific humanitarian projects that we chose in tandem with our listeners. Over the course of the year we were able to fully fund and build a home for a family in VA with Habitat For Humanity. We also funded a variety of classroom needs with donorschoose.org and created a community service challenge for Destination Imagination called Project Outreach.
It’s so easy to look at the problems in the world and feel helpless. This project gave us and our listeners a chance to adjust our perspective and think of our individual actions as the pixel. Since a digital picture literally emerges out of the interaction between the pixels this served as a very appropriate metaphor. People took the vision and ran with it. We released one song per month and told a story over the course of the year musically. But the real story was being told by our listeners. Every time someone downloaded our music they were changing the pixels in a very specific picture. The solutions emerged out of the interactions between people as they were inspired to contribute humble pieces to a larger puzzle. We all worked together and the story that was written is something I will always be proud of.
RM: So Mae is disbanding, but, as you’ve said, the seeds from this project will continue to grow and take on a life of their own. You’re starting a new band now called “River James,” but what is next for you in your aesthetic and social entrepreneurship endeavors?
JM: The final mae shows will be in China and Japan in February. After that it’s all a bit up in the air. That is when chaos theory will completely take over my life 
I am working on a new music project called River James and you can download our music for free at www.riverjamesmusic.com. I am also slowly working on a book called “Bear t.ia mart.” Thank you for the interview, it has been a pleasure!
. Many of Taleb’s ideas proceed directly from Mandelbrot’s work.
,” in which Morgan Freeman played Mbeki’s predecessor Nelson Mandela, might not be conscious of current events in South Africa. The movie centers around Mandela’s first term in office, highlighting his use of South Africa’s national rugby team to unify his country. The movie may end with warm feelings of the inherent goodness of man, but “it is not as though the continent is standing still” said Mbeki last week. In the past two years since Mbeki left office, South Africa has felt the impact of the crippling global recession with a surge in the cost of living. Add to this an influx of an estimated 1.5 million refugees from Zimbabwe, and you have a perfect recipe for civil strife. Last month, President Jacob Zuma announced the deportation of Zimbabwe refugees, but a September 2nd 
portrays a violent Johannesburg dealing with dumb aliens (called “prawns” for their shrimp-like appearance) which have been forced to take up residence in the city due to a breakdown of their spaceship. The movie follows the activities of one social-worker (played by real-life Johannesburg native Sharlto Copley) tasked with the eviction of thousands of aliens from their refugee camp. Watching the movie, one get’s the impression that the violence is over-dramatized to the point of a horror movie. However, the following Euronews report shows that, if anything, real life in Johannesburg is worse than the fiction of District 9:
, starred in 
and even dabbled in the music industry (with 
, for instance). Beyond pop culture, he has applied himself in just about every area of science there is: from medical research (studies in lung disease) to computer science (the study of complex systems at the 
). In fact, the only area of study scientists have had trouble applying the Chaos Theory to is… anthropology, the study of humans. Why? The short answer might be stated simply: we’re just too darn chaotic.
humbly admits that he did not create Chaos & The Fractals, he simply discovered them. What he was studying at the time were cotton prices in the stock market. What he found in that chaotic data were recurring patterns. In every study Mandelbrot has done since, he has begun with chaos and ended with order. But… “The Order Theory” just wouldn’t do for a rock star. It needed a stage name: “Chaos” has appeal to a …wider demographic.
” you know that rock stars are difficult to manage. In fact, Chaos has burned through every manager he’s ever had. This is because he’s virtually (although not entirely) unpredictable. But that’s also why he’s a great artist. So… it’s complicated, or better yet… “complex.”
