re: microsonic materialism

[mitchell whitelaw <mitchell@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

thanks to all discursive materialists...

mark richardson:

> I think a more apt metaphor for experimental electronic music
> is that of electrometric radiation; that is, much of this glitch music
> is simply the sound of organized (or not organized) electricity.

i agree... but it's also particularly (& more often now) the sound of
_data_ ... which is often electricity, but need not be. i would say that
pan(a)sonic is really the sound of electricity ... tone-artefacts from
complex analog systems.

> I seem to recall that electromagnetic
> energy has both particle and wave properties

doesn't pimmon have a cd out on meme called "particles and waves"?

rj@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:

> the use of words from nature
> and chemistry seems logical: abstract sound source requires more a tangible
> description for the source itself tends to breathe no light on the actual nature of
> the sound.

i agree here too, i think this is an important factor, but what's
interesting is that these physical-material descriptors can really say
little about the sound (what does an atom sound like?); instead they set
up a stable metaphor which gives us a kind of psychical anchor for
listening & interpretation. 

e.g. when philip sherburne in the wire [186] talks about snd's
"makesnd_casette": like mercury "sliding over itself, shimmying into new
forms", and "silted noise ... sonic dust motes scattered by the whirring
of a hard disk". is this just purple music writing, or is he picking up
on something? certainly these sounds are so abstract as to suggest an
equivalent kind of abstract dynamics, and matter is both completely
abstract and appealingly dynamic...

Kenric McDowell:

> Perhaps the
> post-digital aesthetic is (sub)consciously participating in this dialogue
> and trying to REALize or emBODY the sounds of the guts of the virtual

spot on (imho). it renders the informational as sensate matter and
develops a sensual aesthetics of data. rampant digitality/virtuality
re-energises the physical/material. 

re Ascott, i know his work, i've put in my 2 cents in a paper called
"towards the matrix", at the URL below...

joshua maremont:

> dialectical materialism, > the insertion of the sock, 
 
> it is in the generalized gear fetish
> rather than in digital culture that one might locate the desiring structure of the glitch > obsession.  harddrives and
> code fragments are printed now on CD covers where centerfold shots of impossibly obscure > synthesizer modules appeared not many years ago.

yes yes, but it's more than that. if microsound involves a gear fetish
then it's one that not only obsesses with the equipment but with the
whole domain of the "digital" which the equipment constructs & contains.
& what's more it approaches that domain _as if it were a kind of matter_
[something which strangely, it is exactly not! sure, data is always
embodied, but it only works as data because its trans-material... hence
the joy of downloading MP3s] 

re glitches, glitch is only one aspect of this proposed materialism... i
would argue that the metaphors embedded in the software also play an
important role. 

and another thing: i mentioned the dynamics of matter earlier... i
reckon that the so-called "new physics" has also been influential in
this sphere: i'm talking about complex systems theory, where matter is
self-organising, inherently dynamic, polymorphous, but also adaptively
forming itself.... an immanent substrate for life, culture, you name it.
right now matter has more cultural value than it perhaps ever has: no
more is it base, dead, entropic, heavy or dirty... now it's evolving,
miraculously capable (smart materials / engineered spider-silk), and
incredibly rich and varied. the atom is no longer this obstinate lump of
stuff, it's a treasure-chest which explodes in a shower of infinitely
strange and tiny wave/particle exotica.

damn, it's enough to inspire one to music-making.
 
mitchell whitelaw ::::::: http://www.spin.net.au/~mitchellw