RE: [microsound] Linzhoax etc.

[Joshua Maremont <thermal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 11:36 AM 9/11/00 -0700, richard chartier wrote:
> and at a kraftwerk show in the early eighties (computer world tour) a 
> friend that went told me that at the end of the show there was an 
> announcement that "the show you have just seen was entirely performed by 
> robots"

I read an interview with Kraftwerk in the late 1970s or very early 1980s in 
a rock magazine, in which the members expressed their desire to have 
franchise bands in each major city:  each local quartet would be hired, 
provided with the Kraftwerk equipment, trained to perform the songs, and 
trotted out on the stage of its own city for each stop of the "tour," while 
Ralf und Florian remained at home.  I thought it was a rather brilliant 
suggestion at the time, but of course when the reunion tour came around I 
did skip it.  (In the same interview they spoke of their habit of carrying 
pocket scissors and cutting the wires of speakers in elevators in order to 
reduce music pollution.)

But as the original subject of this message, perhaps the reaction stated is 
an indication that in electronic music we are pressing up against a 
threshold beyond which the idea of "live" or of "performance" is of 
questionable relevance.  Last evening for example I saw the China National 
Traditional Orchestra "perform live":  musicians produced sound from their 
instruments as we watched and listened.  But when one has to ask whether 
for example the sound from a Powerbook is being generated from interactive 
compositional software or from audio playback software, I wonder whether we 
should even be using such terms in digital sound.  By this I do not mean to 
say that a Powerbook is not a legitimate instrument for performance (I have 
used mine "live" and it certainly is), but rather to suggest that the 
contexts and term piles inherited from rock and jazz and classical and 
other musics are ill fitted to ours - that the distress in Linz perhaps 
involves not a twist of marketing but rather a crisis of language.

Then again, even to hear a nice experimental CD on a good soundsystem at a 
large event is a rare experience in my city...

joshua maremont / thermal - mailto:thermal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
boxman studies label - http://www.boxmanstudies.com/