Re: [microsound] re: oh...

[Joshua Maremont <thermal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> I think, when you throw the concept "bourgeois" as wide as, say, 
> "privileged few who maintain the hegemony" (and that's how I'd use the 
> term) you're damn near fucked. Computers are a joke - what proportion of 
> the world's population has even used a phone?

Well, the bourgeois is a concept of which to speak (A) within the context 
of computer music and (B) on an internet mailing list with only the most 
knowing of Monty Pythonesque nudge-nudge wink-wink 
know-what-I-means.  Anyone who can afford to run the software and hardware 
required to generate much of the music discussed on this list IS firmly 
bourgeois, as is anyone who discusses this music by way of the internet, 
for after all, is not much of our bandwidth devoted to the reified products 
of creativity - CDs for sale, software for sale - rather than to the 
abstraction of sound itself?  Which is NOT to criticize the discussions 
here - on the contrary, the high level noticed here is certainly not to be 
measured on many music lists - but to point out that our very context is a 
bourgeois one.  And the bourgeois itself is chiefly a topic of conversation 
among the bourgeoisie - those above such a class need not be bothered by 
such trivialities, and those below have more pressing matters for word and 
thought.  To crawl toward the topic of the 20" to 2000 series, I can 
understand how one might get offended were a musical product to wrap itself 
in counter-bourgeois claims (one recently departed French philosopher is 
popularly abused for such purposes), but Noton - unless I missed a part of 
the "campaign" - made no such boasts, its series appearing instead to aim 
at a purely aesthetic set of effects.  I cannot speak for the entire 
series, but given that it included a lovely morsel by Senking (the 
installment I own) and was unified with a striking and minimal design I can 
find no aspect to which one might attach such theoretical fault.  It even 
avoided the jewel case in favor of less wasteful (and less breakable) 
packaging, making it if anything praiseworthy in materialist terms, and it 
was not priced in the high-stratospherics of arcane pre-auction 
collectibility, calling into question any claims of market 
exploitation.  And in experimental music the only difference between a 
limited edition and a normal edition is the notation of "Limited Edition" 
on the former, although I suppose one could offer some discourse upon the 
commodification of scarcity were one really inclined...

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