Re: [microsound] techno-mysticism (ne purple) with a side of Ae

[Joshua Maremont <thermal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The comments below by Alondra hit a bit more firmly against the same wall I 
was attempting to sketch, and I am rightly questioned on an unclarity of 
phrase.  Whereas unmediated aethetic experience is not really thinkable - 
such experience must be mediated by way of our structures of consciousness 
and perception as well as by the means by which we divide the aesthetic 
from the non-aesthetic aspects of our perceived world - I have what I admit 
is a romantic hope that human experience of music can approach 
asymtotically a more direct connection with the music itself, bypassing the 
overwhelmingly logical (at least in form if not necessarily in result) 
processing through which we tend to filter our perceptions.  Yes the 
pleasure of the text is a lovely one, but I think what has attracted me 
toward deconstruction (textual glitchplay?) in the past is its realization 
that it is playing funny games (and the reference to the rather grim film 
of that name is intentional) with language - that the text begs to be 
played (my pun is intended) - but that there is not necessarily any Truth 
in that language at any point in the game, and that it is in fact the very 
unreliability of and lack of univocity in language that are left with 
trousers embarrassingly ankled.  Here indeed is the point at which the 
pleasure may become excessive:  we paw and claw blissfully at words like a 
catnipped kitten with a toy mouse, wearing ourselves out in the process, 
and, while enjoying every moment of our play, we are left hungry with only 
the dregs of a stuffed rodent for company.  What is fascinating to me about 
electronic music is that it is generally non-representational (except maybe 
to the geeks among us who can picture the mechanisms by which the sounds 
have been made), allowing the pattern-matching overlays generally imposed 
upon perceptual experience to be left aside and giving the subconscious and 
unconscious realms of the listener's psyche a chance in which to direct its 
experience not by logic but by emotion and association and recollection; 
yet at the same time, music is composed and structured - and in the case of 
digi-music even generated and conceived - in a highly logical manner.  I 
cannot pretend to state a Truth here about music, as I have merely 
attempted to explain how I fit it into my view of the world, but as a 
rational and generally logical human as well as a musician I find music is 
one of the ways out under the drawbridge of the sometimes oppressive 
dominion of reason and logic.  So while the games of the text are 
delectable in themselves, I wonder if the playful structures and concepts 
generated therein are really useful in approaching the subject of the text 
- whether music is more vital and stimulating to us after their 
application, or whether instead we are left with the sonic equivalent of 
the kitten's unstuffed rodent, to be nosed under the couch before the start 
of the search for the next plaything to be tattered and scattered.  To put 
it a different way:  are our language games really increasing experiencers' 
insights into the purported subject of the texts - the music between the 
speakers - or are the games really reflexive, offering words about words 
(the encyclopedia again) and directing experience back toward words and 
concepts and away from what I might better have called a 
differently-mediated exploration of the sound itself.  I was impressed that 
Wittgenstein in the Tractatus was willing to say that logic had no business 
in aesthetics - that some realms of wisdom existed about which logic could 
not rightly speak.  So I suppose I should take seriously his concluding 
admonition to remain silent therein - but, short of unwitting Viennese 
Cageisms, where is the fun in that?

np - Wong Fei

At 04:27 PM 3/29/00 -0500, you wrote:

> (3) does the addition of a mystical layer enhance the making or enjoyment 
> of digi-music, or does such an addition represent a mystification, an 
> additional opacity in the way of more direct
> aesthetic experience?
>
> I doubt the cognitive clarity you beg for in your analysis is 
> tenable.  And much less when it will posit an unmediated access to 
> aesthetic experience.
> What would that be?
>
> I agree that some time back criticism of digi-music tended towards the 
> banal, nostalgic and mystifying.  "New Age" conjures that time.  But I 
> don't think that's most of what's going on now.  Rather we are all run 
> over by other opacities.  The approximation of musical experience through 
> words is rarely a perfect fit--rather its going to be either too large or 
> too small.
> But that's not in itself a bad thing.
>
> The Wire vs. Spin, you are right to point out the relevance of contexts.
> And, granted, some will pass for criticism what is neither lyrical nor 
> critical.  But if language is the (hidden) joy of discourse, critical or 
> otherwise, shouldn't the key word here be "enjoyment"?
>
> Don't get me wrong, I am as invested in congnitive science as anyone.  And 
> I almost prefer your elegant expository method to my own.  But you point 
> out the pleasure of these texts yourself.
>
> To come back to Barthes via Bataille, isn't the pleasure a bit on the side 
> of excess (pardon the pun)?  I suspect that's as close to the aesthetic as 
> we get.
>
> Case in point, the cliched equation between electronica and technology 
> (notably emerging out of the deeply humanist loose threads of post-1950s 
> sci fi) is totally unstable yet still productive.  Somewhere between 
> mystical proyection and technological fetishization there is space (pardon 
> the pun again) for enjoyment.
>
> Of course, I could be wrong.
>
> Alondra


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