Re: [microsound] What a press kit should contain

[Nathan Snider <snider@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> its very easy to label stuff as post-modern, but does it mean anything?
> do really understand the term modernity? i respcet alot of the stuff that
> people do in the clicks scene. AFAIK i am the ONLY dj who will play this
> kinda music in his set.
> but i feel the term post-modern has become a cheap way to claim a sort of
> pseudo intelectual tone.
> *u will have to excuse me english is not my mother tounge*
> the fact that micromusic is intelctual does not mean that this is a post
> modern music. i don`t see any connection between derida and SND.
> you might say deconstuction -but this will only be on the very shallow
> meaning.
> TCB

I might have overstated myself earlier.  Let me try again with a couple
examples.

Glitch is music that expresses awareness of the structure that it inhabits,
playing with it, exposing the limits.  Glitch can only exist within a
structure, since it "lives" by shaking that structure apart.  Perhaps it is
only superficially deconstructionist, but I'd be hard pressed to find ANY
example of music that is "deeply" deconstructionist in a Derridian sense.

Generative music requires that the artist strike a balance between imposing
and exposing structures, and the results are necessarily self-referential.
This seems quite postmodern to me.  It does contain a strong hint of
modernism, like a kind of deism where the artist is god, but ultimately,
it's more like a reference to modernism than modernism per se.  If we're
still talking Derrida, then in generative art, the artist designs a "center"
for the structure, but in doing so, must acknowledge that the center is
arbitrary.

I think that it would be slightly disingenuous to stick to these schematic
parallels between art and philosophy, though.  Artistic movements are a lot
less monolithic than their philosophical couterparts, and they
cross-pollinate like mad.  Postmodernism contains elements of both modernism
and romanticism, each of which contained elements of previous movements,
etc. etc...  The oppositions between art movements are present, but not to
the degree that they are in philosophy.  The term "postmodernism" has become
over-used, and as such, it's an easy target.  It's inevitable that we will
move away from it artistically and philosophically, but I don't think that
has happened yet.

-nathan snider