RE: [microsound] the soothing sounds of max/msp

[Christopher Sorg <csorg@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> From: eric@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:eric@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On
>
> Does anybody else notice how these threads' devolving into jokes pretty
> much guarantees that this thread will crop up again and again unresolved?

Well, it's probably more like, okay, we agree to disagree.  I think it would
be hard to argue with the idea that Max/MSP presents a certain paradigm that
involves a way of thinking about structuring sound data and/or sound itself.
Processing signal data, patch cables, mathematical formulas and such to
permutate sound.  Whether this is applied to MIDI data or samples, it is
still a particulate and objective way of organizing music.  IMHO, it is
certainly not the same approach to sound as say, Morton Feldman would take
to structuring sound.

The question is, does this make something sound like a Max patch?  That's
difficult to determine, as there are so many different ways that one can use
Max/MSP.  One could use Max just to pan sounds around a room, or create a
reverb.  You could go a bit further and play traditional instruments using
Max just to delay and loop sounds.  Max could be used to create algorhythmic
compositions with MIDI data that control external sound generators.  It
could be used simply as a software synthesizer.  It's a pretty open-ended
piece of software to say that it has a distinct sound.  Perhaps it is that
in this particular forum people are using Max/MSP to similar effect with
similar results.  Although I would have to say that Oval's music with
Max/MSP is entirely different from Eliot Sharp's.

We should probably ask the question, at what *level* does a program like
Max/MSP affect our conceptualization of sound?  It doesn't necessarily
restrain us to a grid concept (i.e. notes/duration ala serialism), and
allows us to experiment with spectrums of sounds with fine controls over
filters.  As a tool, I would suggest that Max(and its offspring) opens up
the possibilities for us to experiment and experience sounds that have, at
least from the Western concept of music, been limited in our culture to the
grid concept.  Of course, one could easily procede with this kind of audio
investigation and composition without a tool like Max, say, for example,
Cage's modified piano pieces or Stockhausen's Kontakt.  In that case, what
does "real" sound offer over virtual or processed sound?  What kind of
limitations do the object/FFT paradigms place upon our aural experience?
What advantages do objects and materials provide over process boxes?  Where
is our mind, culture and language at when it focuses on abstractions and
simulations inside a computer, when we involve ourselves more deeply in
constructing a reality rather than experiencing and manipulating the one in
which we exist?  Essentially, Max/MSP is just like mathematics and physics,
in that we approximate an aspect of the world around us, without it
*actually* being that world.  It is a language, and if we look at it as
such, it has the potential for expanding and focusing our perception in
certain areas while limiting our perception in others.

___________________________
Christopher Sorg
Multimedia Artist
Adjunct Professor
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
http://www.enteract.com/~csorg
csorg@xxxxxxxxxxxx
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