Re: [microsound] aesthetics of failure: article in CMJ

[Jeremy Markowitz <jeremymarkowitz@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi, I just wanted to add a lengthy opinion...

Talking about this quote gets into problems of
'linguistics/semantics' pretty fast I think.  The
whole argument presented so far as it looks is a
question of context and scope, Jimi Hendrix and Bill
Frissell probably are expressing a similar message in
some contexts/levels, but not others.  Hendrix and
Frissell as guitarists are expressing messages more
similar in certain regards than politicians using paid
advertising and the media of
voice/television/advertising tools.  If we are talking
in a social context, the electric guitar does carry
symbolism and connotations with it.  Otherwise,
millions of kids would not buy them every year.

I too actally lifted Marshall McLuhan's quote and
rephrased it as "The Process is the Product" about
five years ago to give myself a personal artistic
philosophy.  I was simply saying that a product is
inextricably and undeniably informed by the process
which was used to make it -- only to highlight that
"process is important to think about in depth when
making a product."

With Kim Cascone's phrase, I read it to be
highlighting that a tool is created intending to make
a certain product, or type of message.  When someone
makes a hammer, they forsee it to be used to drive
nails into wood, for instance.  But you can also use a
hammer on a guitar to create "music" -- it is a
subversion of the intentions that informed the
creation of the tool.  Western philosophy doesn't
really have the idea of "karma," but this could trace
another reading of the quote.

With a piano, the "intention" is for it to create
12-tone melodies.  With a synth emulator, it is
intended to reproduce analog synth sounds.  However,
these intentions can be subverted.

I guess I would personally like to appeal that the
process has more to do with the final message,
because, as it has been noted, the musician seldom
creates the instrument.  Nevertheless, unless you get
into conceptual art, the hammer and guitar will make a
*relatively* finite number of sounds.  So in that
sense, the tools inform limitations on the product or
message.  I thik Kim Cascone is saying this is what
this kind of music explores.

With McLuhan's quote, I think the argument was that,
while you might express a personal message through a
media like print, that message is not a pure transfer
from one mind to the other.  It is "mediated" by the
facets of the media you used.  Media has both
synthetic and natural elements which are not your own
or directly part of your concieved message.  He went
to a sort of trancendental extreme saying that your
message is so tied to and thus informed by the media
that there ceases to be a duality between you and the
final message or your message and the media: the
medium *is* the message, well "massage," actually.

Saying "the tool is the message" is an extreme which
obviously gets people upset because it is like
throwing your hands in the air and saying, "I can't
prodcue a musical massage, because the tool is
ultimately constraining and or informing it to a
degree where I am not an idividual voice expressing
myself."  Of course I think microsound itself often
tries to express an obliqueness or obscuring of the
self.

I too feel the article didn't go too far in expressing
a philosophy of microsound, but this quote invites
meditation, for sure. The real jist I came away with
from this article, aside from "glitch music exists and
it is music, too," is that tools have shortcomings, or
limits -- a computer's processing power might not be
enough to run a sound program "cleanly" and producess
a pop, or vinyl gets scratched and worn the more you
play it or analog tape adds hiss.  The media/tools we
use are imperfect.  Just like a Marshall guitar amp
will "cleanly" amplify a sound only so loud before it
distorts the signal.  

These shortcomings can be amplified to become the
"massage" (or at least the aesthetic) of the music. 
Is there an underlying message behind "distorted
guitar?"  Can you argue the fact that one of today's
sound programs made to run imperfectly could pass for
a "sign'o'the times"?

At some point the tool or instrument has a limit
imposed by it's basic construction.  Can a violin make
any kind of music?  I believe the quote means this
basic construction of a tool/instrument is what cannot
help but resonate in the music.  Perhaps catching a
"glitch" or showing where the instrument fails to be
limitless in producing what an artist imagines or
desires to create expresses something about the human
condition -- or at least pinpoints an essence of
reality.  It is almost as if you get the instrument to
declare: "I am imperfect -- I can't do what you are
asking."  We westerners all know that machines are not
cogniscent, but the musicians are.

With modern day computer environments, musicians are
seduced into thinking we can produce any kind of music
-- we can virtually chain one hundred emulated
marshall stacks together and make programs that create
fugues just like Bach would have.  You are
theoretically limited only by your imagination and
programming ability. 

Incidentally, a programmer of music seems pretty
analogous to a composer who writes a score for others
to perform -- they have always been limited by what
their musicians could actually play.  Those musicians
(which could be analagous to a computer -- a tool --
which produces programmed sounds) obviously contribute
their own expressions in performing the music. 

Glitch music seems to reveal to me that if an artist
should not be limited by his/her imagination, in
reality, they are limited in their expression of it
through the tools they ultimately must use.  Making
music out of this imperfection is the message (or
rather, aesthetic) of glitch music to me.

Personally, I would encourage the social,
philosophical or even -gag- spiritual undertones of
glitch music be further argued/explicated if anyone is
game. I'm guessing that "tool is the message" was
originally created as a touchstone kind of phrase
which obviously lends itself to further discussion.  

Jeremy


--- Kerry Uchida <kerry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Kim and others,
> 
> Here's some message that got going on the
> [lowercasesound] list
> that we we're seeking input from you and others on:
> 
> 
> > don't mean to intervene on your discussion here
> but it is a public forum . .
> > .
> >
> > > anna piedmont wrote:
> > > > It sounds to me like he the art isn't so much
> in the
> > > > creation of audio work as much as in the
> programming
> > > > ("the tool is the message"). what does it mean
> to use
> > > > someone else's tool? if the tool is the
> message, and
> > > > you are using someone else's isn't it therefor
> someone
> > > > else's message?
> >
> > i think kerry misunderstands you, you're saying
> that _kim's_ point was that
> > "the tool is the message" right?
> >
> >
> > "Kerry Uchida" responded
> > > He's expressing that a great deal of the art is
> being
> > > created from the errors, mis-use etc....in using
> "tools".
> > > That people are not using the "tools" as they
> were
> > > meant for.
> > >
> > > So your saying that the email message that you
> sent is
> > > not really your message it the message sent by
> your
> > > computer (whatever that brand may be).
> > >
> > > If two different painters use the same brush are
> they
> > > expressing the same message?
> > >
> > > Are Jimi Hendrix and Bill Frissel expressing the
> same
> > > message?
> >
> > well, kim said that, that "the tool is the
> message."
> >
> > i would disagree, and i think anna would disagree,
> and you obviously
> > disagree. so we're all in agreement. and we all
> disagree with kim.
> >
> > but i also think that we misunderstand the
> article. i for one did not get a
> > real strong argument for the philosophy of
> microsound, and i doubt if one
> > could be formed because really each artist is
> quite unique and dogmatic
> > statements tend to be false. so i don't know what
> the point was.
> >
> > is kim on this list? he's on the microsound list,
> perhaps we could forward
> > this discussion there?
> > -jonah
> >
> --
> Kerry Uchida
> Vancouver,Canada
> 
> Now Playing: Industrial Harbour ambiences I'm
> loading
> 
> DJ Aural
> http://www.mp3.com/DJAural
> 
> Technomorph
> http://www.technomorph.com
> 
> MircroVan Radio
> http://www.mp3.com/stations/microvan
> 
> 
> 
>
---------------------------------------------------------------------
> To unsubscribe, e-mail:
> microsound-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> For additional commands, e-mail:
> microsound-help@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> website: http://www.microsound.org
> 


=====
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Deltadada Media 
"The Process is the Product" <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. 
http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/