material...

[Christopher Murphy <chris@xxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Mitchell,

For what it's worth, I've a notebook full of thoughts re. your original
post. Email me - offlist - and I'll scribble you some thoughts/transcribe
them (Conrad, my partner @ Fällt has written an interesting paper which ties
in exactly with your original post, I'll dig around and see if I can find
it/forward it to you...).

<the sound of _data_ ... which is often electricity, but need not be.>

Think of: HardDisks - peaks and troughs of data; CDs, etc. "burnt into" -
there's a physical expression if ever there was one...; or, better still,
vinyl...

<<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'?>

Yes (actually 'Waves and Particles') and one out soon on Fällt called
'Assembler' - with "audio 'assembled', lego-like from component building
blocks..." There's another physical manifestation.

<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 and interpretation.>

Is that 'psychical' anchor or 'physical' anchor? (Just thinking aloud.)

Also, not just an anchor "for listening and interpretation" but a
metaphorical anchor for the idea of sound being constructed from objects or
components, hence the use of chemical metaphors. Christophe Behrens' chose
Polymer (cf. http://www.fallt.com/catalog/polymer.html) precisely because he
wanted to emphasise the building block nature of the sounds he was using.
Yet (and here's the paradox) he was well aware of the fact that the use of
computers as a composing device is actually moving us away from the idea of
precisely definable building blocks, i.e. musical notes...

<talks about snd's 'makesnd_cassette': 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?>

In this instance (my cynicism?) would suggest the former - there is an
interesting genealogy of this stylistic form of purple-prose which can be
traced back through The Wire to c. 1998... (still, it does make you want to
fire up your modem and buy makesnd_cassette, doesn't it...?).

<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.>

Perhaps the 'digital' domain in the widest possible sense of the word.
Consider the analog/physical-meets-digital of artists like Philip Jeck,
Pierre Bastien or Christian Marclay where the unpredictability of vinyl
collides with the pin-prick precision of (often) digital editing. Again, all
three are artists for whom the material/tangible/visual aspects of sound is
of equal importance to the auditory.

<what's more it approaches that domain  as if it were a kind of matter>

See above. (cf. also, Christian Marclay's analog 'Record Without a Cover'
and it's corresponding digital corroboration in Oval's scratched CD-skipping
digitalia...)

<sure, data is always embodied, but it only works as data because its
trans-material... hence
the joy of downloading .mp3s>

But... the " joy of downloading .mp3s" is always tempered - thankfully, in
our experience as a label/publishing house - by the need to own a physical
embodiment (and here we are at square one again): a material 'object'.

<Matter has more cultural value than it perhaps ever has, it's evolving,
miraculously capable... 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.>

Absolutely! We've come full-circle. We hoped (in that  - 2,001 ­ A Space
Odyssey - fantasy) to become disembodied, to become truly mental beings
discarding our bodies forever (becoming pure data) and yet, ironically,
we've discovered the limitless potential of concepts like nano-technology
which allow us a glimpse of what we've always wanted:

The ability to have our cake and eat it...

Just a thought or two.

Best,

Christopher