RE: [microsound] grids and junk

[Christopher Sorg <csorg@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> From: eric@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:eric@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On
>
> Well, "time" is a grid concept, so we'd have to break away from that as
> well. Also, the way computers work, there is always a grid, but with a
> higher resolution than Western musical tradition is accustomed.
>

I would have to entirely disagree with you about time.  Time isn't a grid.
Sure, you can divide it up and measure it, and as a culture we love to do
so.  But time is a continuum.  Look at the errors linguists have made with
defining language phonetically, divvying it up into discrete units.  Only
recently have we begun to analyze sound as a continuity of sound shaping;
"phonemes" are formed and shaped relative to the sounds that come before and
after them.  They can be so simply defined as discrete units.

>...As much as they were to derive meaning from their processes,
> certainly the edgy composers of the mid century were asking similar
> questions of themselves as they decided where exactly to place the nail.
> How ridiculous is it to say "yeah, but it's just a piano with junk tangled
> up in the strings" when that's exactly the thrust of this thread?

I certainly did no say that it's just a piano with junk tangled up in the
strings.  I was suggesting that you learn something completely different
about sound by the manipulation of materials rather than the manipulation of
a computer which generates sound.  You learn different things about your
body, your ears, your fingers and certainly your back :)

I understood the thrust of the thread to be, Max/MSP sounds like some
specific sound.  And I disagreed with that, as you can use it on a number of
different levels, with extremely different results.  (and I said, for
example Oval/Elliot Sharp/some guy using it simply as a reverb unit)  So I
dismissed that level of the argument, because it's simply not true.  I
haven't scientifically tested the theory, but I find it unlikely that you
can spot Max under every circumstance.  What I think is suspect is how this
particular kind of music is generated with Max/laptop/DSP; it is as common
to this form of music as the guitar is to the blues.  That's typically how
it's done.

Really I was only trying to suggest a different, perhaps more fundamental
question we should be asking ourselves.  How does defining the world of
sound with a tool like the computer and Max/MSP (which I argued puts you in
a framework of 'virtual' sound) differ from actually interacting with the
world of objects that create sound.  Speakers are *not* "a piano with junk
tangled up in the strings", nor are they a microphone and miscellaneous
objects being dropped on a tam tam.  I agree with you in the sense that Cage
was asking himself, why does a piano have to sound exactly like it is
constructed, and breaking away from the entire tradition of planned
composition, the grid and allowing the unexpected.  But this discussion
hasn't entered the same level.  Even the way that composers in the "IDM"
genre are using glitchy sounds and computer noise, with the exception of a
few artists like Autechre (who are actually programming chance into their
beats), are fairly deterministic.

What does all this mean?  I don't know.  And my question really is, what
kind of worldview are we constructing when it is entirely developed inside
the computer?  It doesn't have to be a grid, because we can deal with a
continuum.  Well, relatively so.  I mean, 16 bits and 44.1 kHz is a
continuum, right?  Or is it?  If it is, then why are we so fascinated with
the glitches that make it non-analog?  So if a continuum only exists in the
analog world, then we remain attached to the grid while creating on a
computer, just as you suggested.  At least until neural net and analog
computers become the norm.

Chris
__________________________________________
Christopher Sorg
Multimedia Artist
Adjunct Professor
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
http://csorg.cjb.net
csorg@xxxxxxxxx
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