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Re: [microsound] oval armani

Giving up compositional decisions in favor of a chance procedure inevitably gives control to some other force. In the case of most music made on computers that force is another person, a software designer. My point is that this type of disinterestedness is politically and artistically dangerous. Maybe a violin or a radio isn't any different, but the marketing and construction of a contemporary software package is less benign than that of a radio or a violin. Put another way, a radio or even a violin can become a readymade whereas many software packages are paramaterized with a certain agenda. It's hard to shake off the packaging and see it as an unmotivated object.

It just feels bad.
I'm still trying to figure this out though. :-)

-km

On Friday, December 28, 2001, at 11:18 AM, David Fodel wrote:

      KM wrote:
One problem with applying Cage's ideas now is that it's impossible
not to recognize the influence of the tools we use.


maybe i just don't know enough about John Cage and Chance Music, although I
have read my share of his writings (and others) on the subject, but I don't
really see the issue of "recognizing the influence of the tools we use".
When Cage used radios as instruments, did the audience not recognize them as
radios? Apply that to any other "instrument" and it's the same sense of
recognition.... I never thought about Cage's music as having anything to do
with instruments, tools, or even sounds really... to me it always seemed to
be about process, in much the same way as the Fluxus stuff...

Stab a fork into some Jello.
Attempt to re-create the sound of the Jello on the telephone to your
Senator.
repeat until every Senator has been called, or the Jello no longer makes
personally perceptible sound.

But maybe I have missed your point?


David Fodel
Publishing Systems Manager
Wild Oats Markets
3375 Mitchell Lane
Boulder, CO 80301
Direct: 720-562-4831
Fax: 303-938-8474


----------
From: 	Kenric McDowell
Reply To: 	microsound
Sent: 	Friday, December 28, 2001 11:51 AM
To: 	microsound
Subject: 	Re: [microsound] oval armani

Hi,
      Here are some directly and tangentially related thoughts:

Lately I have been rereading Cage to understand any possible
relationship between chance and the glitch. So far I am able to conclude
that Cage valued chance as a strategy of disinterestedness and that this
bears little resemblance to the glitch in its most current incarnation.
For sounds to be themselves they can't be right or wrong; glitches are
intentionally wrong.

When glitches are captured as a sample or treated as a sound source
rather than a systemic condition they are not related to chance at all.
Glitches that are the result of a system (such as a MAX patch or a
faulty piece of hardware) are closer to Cagean chance in that they are
naturalized by their inevitability. In other words they are not judged.

One problem with applying Cage's ideas now is that it's impossible
not to recognize the influence of the tools we use. Maybe it's possible
to be disinterested in (and thereby unattached to ?) the results of a
probabilistic procedure but this seems to be a step away from autonomy
in giving a lot of unacknowledged control to other parties (in this case
software developers).


Hope the connections are clear.

-km


On Friday, December 28, 2001, at 04:18 AM, Derek Holzer wrote:

ÿivind, 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: ÿivind Ids¯ <plateaux@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [microsound] oval armani