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Re: [microsound] oval armani
Øivind, philippe, Frans, et al........
interesting to see this thread go past the 'player-hater' phase and into
some rich areas. the economics of the underground remains one of my
interests, but this last comment touches on something even more important...
markus popp has brought the idea and sound of generative music to a wider
audience than ever before, even with the armani spot excluded. to me,
generative art involves two distinct things:
1) that the 'artist-as-virtuoso' (aka rockstar) has been undermined by
technology which removes performance from the equation.
2) but at the same time, the artist has assumed the role of engineer or
technician to create the micro-world in which this generative situation
occurs.
conclusion: all reports of the 'death of the artist' have been greatly
exaggerated.
by admitting 'glitches' and 'accidents' into our work, we acknowedge a small
part of the first point. john cage and others in the 60's pursued a similar
vein when they said that any sound that occurred in the performance space
was also the music (replace 'technology' with 'circumstance' in the first
statement). the second point has been explored most recently by
program-it-yourself art applications such as PD and MAX/MSP, and by
satirical looks at how software shapes what it creates like
auto-illustrator.
popp's work, for me, is a prime example of how an art form (generative
music) which originated in part to 'erase the artist', or to 'make everyone
an artist', has been subsumed by this new 'artist-as-engineer' movement to
create new rockstars. for convenience sake, we see 'markus popp', engineer
and composer, but we might as well give credit to Phillips, Sony, Microsoft,
Toshiba, etc for actually creating the tools necessary for popp's generative
environment. or own own... as for his 'source sounds', his debt to
christophe charles is jimi hendrix's debt to robert johnson and django
reinhardt--something we don't admit fully on CD liner-notes, but that anyone
with a sense of the music cannot ignore.
happy new year,
derek
some notes:
yes, i'm aware that 'systemisch', 'diskont 94' and 'dokk' are not generative
pieces, that they were manually chopped and spliced just like most any other
soundworks, with allowences made for accidents in the name of art. but with
popp's recent attempts to to "inscribe [himself] into this more musical
heritage [and contribute] to a historical musical discourse" with his "oval
process" (Lecture, SFU Harbor Centere, Oct 19, 2000), i think it's fair to
dissect him as a generative music technician on a theoretical level.
also, for an example of replacing 'technology' with 'circumstance', you
could do much worse than to look at the work of christophe charles himself.
his environmental field recordings are some of the most sublime i have ever
heard.
----Original Message Follows----
From: Øivind Idsø <plateaux@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [microsound] oval armani