Re: [microsound] failure redux

[Joshua <thermal@xxxxxxxxx>]

>>>
i think this was meant as a sort of short-hand for people who have put a
lot of time and energy into exploring the range of computer music artists,
>>>

I find this commentary quite on the mark.  I tend to look at the situation
as somewhat analogous to that of a philosopher and "new" idea:  a language
is a set of signs and logical relations peculiar to itself and generative
of language products of a certain character, yet a philosopher must at
once speak in an existing language in order to be understood AND force
that language to express something it has not previously been able
(or ENabled) to say if [s]he is to utter a new idea.  The expression of a
genuinely new idea, then, becomes a strategically partial breaking of
language - a hernative assault into new meaning realms.  In this sense,
one must know the language to understand its breakage - must be fluent in
order to even notice the presence of the adept, who to the nonfluent will
seem a mere nutter.

In "art," however, we encounter a strange remapping of this arrangement,
wherein the rules of language are adjusted to accomodate the designation
of the most favored nonfluent as adept, and what is new is no longer the
expressed in language but the perceived.  This distinction of course leads
down the slimy sewer of the intentional fallacy, but I have conjured it in
order to suggest some of the recirculations available following the dawn
of the Serious in this discourse, and to suggest that the determination of
Seriousness is not severed from considerations of Market, as critical
exaltations over any number of now "priceless" masterpieces have made
clear in the realm of visual art.

Which brings me to a particular befuddlement, and I must ask whether only
I am experiencing it.  It is common - and I think sensible - to comment on
the developments in computer music and online dissemination as democratic,
as potentially dismantling of the repressive centralized structures of
production and distribution.  But these developments are among the least
significant byproducts of a highly industrialized and Capitalized world,
whose smallest participants must have at the very least a fast computer, a
fast connection to the internet, and the most recent software.  (For
example, with a five-year-old computer, three-year-old software, and a
14.4 modem at home, I can take advantage of almost none of these
technologies at the moment.)  And at the same time the schizoanalysis of
Deleuze and Guattari, two quite skilled breakers of philosphical language,
pops its head through the door and offers an explanation - and, I will
add, a fine one.  Is there, I wonder, any irony in the use of such a tool
in the justificatory apparatus of a creative culture which, from an
unflattering angle, might be seen as existing only within a bourgeois
consumer class?  Can, I want to say, desiring machines become virtual
machines?  AND:  can there be a political economy of sound within sound
itself?

Oh, I really must go and generate some surplus value now...

Joshua / Thermal / Boxman [Hako Otoko] label
mailto:thermal@xxxxxxxxx
http://www.wenet.net/~thermal/

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