Ecce Coder - ne, max/msp

[Joshua Maremont <thermal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 01:12 PM 6/1/01 -0700, anechoic wrote:
> oh yeah, and Gregory is absolutely right about buying Haruki Murakami in
> hardback!

Murakami Haruki, yes, but a hard-cover of the "Nejimakidori" size is, 
perhaps, less compatible with cycling (at least on my bicycle) than might 
be a lighter soft-cover edition.  Maybe I am just having a Mac 
issue.  Hmmm, I wonder whether kanji or romanji is preferred for Murakami 
in microsound lifestyles.  I am happy to see this name pop up twice in the 
same day!  (No-one has raised the Flann O'Brien dilemma of toe-clips here 
to my surprise.)

But more seriously - and not with reference to the post above - I find we 
are trudging into some murky territory here with the implied dyad
[coder = true innovator / coder = tweaker]
of recent discussion.  Music is the result of the creative use of tools - 
whether acoustic instruments, found objects, hardware electronic devices, 
or software applications - and should be judged as such.  Whether the 
origin of the tools lies with the musician or with a factory (or coding 
shop) seems irrelevant to the question of whether the use of the tools is 
successful in expressing the creative consciousness of the musician.  Yet 
it seems that the anthem of building it oneself pops up in all areas of 
music.  In the early 1990s retro-analog synthetic movement it was a badge 
of honor for some that their synthesizers were homemade or hand rewired (I 
remember one famous person who claimed to use homemade boxes and then was 
found to be using standard commercially available instruments), yet upon a 
listen to the music itself the birth of the equipment seemed often to make 
little difference.  In the same period, one of the most fascinating - and 
enduring - records to be released was Anthony Manning's "Islets in Pink 
Polypropylene," which used only a Roland R-8 drum machine and yet managed 
to come across as if it were an album of academic electronics.  As a 
guitarist I recall in childhood the hushed tones of reverence with which 
Allan Holdsworth's custom-made guitars were discussed, yet I found myself 
moved more by the playing done on off-the-shelf instruments by Robert Fripp 
in the same period.  And what of the older innovators of composition?  Was 
Harry Partch superior to Charles Ives because the former built his own 
instruments whereas the latter wrote insurance manuals and composed for 
existing devices?  And how far back does the autheticity of one's tools 
go?  Wrote the code but not the compiler?  The compiler but not the 
chip?  What about the soundcard drivers or the OS?  Likewise, one might ask 
with synthesizers:  did you build the synth from existing or invented 
schematics?  Did you make your own circuit board or use a kit?  Or in 
acoustic instruments:  did you grow the trees for the wood?  Did you make 
your own strings or drum heads from animal guts and skins?  Did you hunt 
the animals yourself?  I have been playing the electric guitar for many 
years, and I still have not come close to exhausting its possibilities, so 
in my case the need to reinvent the tool itself in order to express my 
ideas has simply not been experienced.  Similarly, as a relatively new user 
of Reaktor building instruments there from scratch, I have yet to come up 
against the wall at which I wail:  I must code something in order to get 
around this impossibility.  A focus on code also ignores the other work 
musicians undertake in their creations; Kim mentions mathematical research, 
and others are researching history or biochemistry in pursuit of conceptual 
structure or algorhythmic genesis.  Rather than alternating between a 
geek-macho of self-coding-worship and a left/right brain stereotyping of 
what artists should and should not be doing with their creative energies - 
so it seems the divide has been shaping up today - we might look instead at 
the direction of musical consciousness and the needs of the creative 
work.  Does one's creative process work in code (or for that matter in 
circuit boards, in luthiership, in carpentry) or does it seek out the tools 
at hand in order to bring its fruit into the world as quickly as it 
can?  Does a piece require a new instrument in order to come to its fullest 
flower, or can the same result come from an instrument ready to 
hand?  These, finally, are questions of aesthetics rather than - I want to 
say - artistic ethics:  being a coder as part of one's musical activities 
does not make the music Better (approaching some asymtote of binary 
authenticity) or Worse (earlessly process-obsessed); it simply alters the 
path by which the musical result is reached, a path taken by musician 
rather than by listener.  To lift again from the humorous Lifestyle post of 
this morning, the fact of Glenn Gould's vocalisations during his playing 
does not make his performance Better; rather, the vocalisations are another 
product of the unique process by which Gould's creative expression came to 
such great fruition.  If someone can take a preprogrammed instrument from 
the Reaktor library and make an original and interesting piece with it, 
congratulations should be in order, just as they should be if someone can 
make an original and interesting piece after hammering out some assembly 
language for a newly invented computer.  Kit Clayton and Monolake are 
developing software; Sun Electric and Vladislav Delay are using existing 
software; all are making great records.  My own feeling is that music - or 
any other creative extruding - will express itself by whatever means it 
can, with one's self and one's consciousness as Its instruments; if one is 
a coder, it will get to the speakers through code, whereas if one is a 
carpenter, it will be born with the aid of drills and saws.  But after this 
birth, by what ever means, what does this child do, what does it 
sing?  That is the question.

Respect to all.

np - "Clicks & Cuts 2" CD 3 (nice work by listmembers!)

Joshua Maremont / Thermal - mailto:thermal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Boxman Studies Label - http://www.boxmanstudies.com/