RE: [microsound] herbs&spice and everything nice

[Christopher Sorg <csorg@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> From: paul webb [mailto:paulwebb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
>
> a difference is that with a computer the 'how
> they are doing it' part can be more down to the
> machine.(a universal machine.) - I think you have to
> imagine that its as though you are seeing the Jackson
> Pollock without even knowing about paint and painting
> in the first place,
>

One would have to assume that the listener has never seen a computer before
or doesn't know what it is capable of, sound-wise.  In my experience at
performances of this sort (electronic, improvisational, experimental, what
have you...) you have the listeners who are usually either very serious
music fans or musicians themselves.  So they place importance on the
resultant sound generated and don't concern themselves so much with process,
or the listener is very involved with process and either "need to know" or
already are familiar with the process.  In either case, not knowing about
"paint and painting" is not really going to be a part of the equation.
We're assuming a pretty ignorant audience at this point, and I find that
highly unlikely.

A sound's meaning does not have to be "attached" to an object, at least not
quite like a painting's meaning.  But I still hold that the analogy stands.
The computer is like a brush and canvas in that it is an apparent tool; it
is capable of manipulating sounds in certain ways that are distinctly
different from acoustic instruments, and they can be extremely familiar to
an audience who can discern what those tools are without having to inquire
about them specifically.  Modular software may be open-ended, but they are
driven by FFT formulas for delays, filters, distortion, compression
algorithmic tools and other effects that have been in use for quite some
time.  So I'm contending that it isn't the tool that is particularly
significant, it's more likely the economic availability of that tool and the
modes of representation being presented with that tool, the "text" as it
were, that is.  Academic composers have had access to signal generators,
filter banks, DSPs, computers for generating and exploring sound and
composition for over fifty years.  But now the same tools are capable of
running on 70% of the general public's desktops.

If there is a small group of people asking "how is it done?", I find that
they're typically musicians and they would ask any other, computer or
traditional instrument musician, the same.  How many guitarists are
interested in that Jimi Hendrix sound?  Or the Segovia sound, for that
matter?  The question is just not remarkable to computer-generated sound at
all.  Every student asks about tools and processes; that does not
necessarily mean that the content is process.  "Tool is the message" does
not apply to all computer music any more than it could apply to any other
art form, even if the tools used do point to certain issues of status,
agenda and audience.  The tool will only convey part of the message.

I wonder if I can bring this back directly to IDM relevance.  Is the glitch
in the sound the message?  In calling attention to the tools we are using by
signifying their inherent flaws, is the message merely that we are using a
digital tool, essentially "hey, this is a computer, not some other
instrument I'm using up here?".  If that is it, if that is the message, then
I'm not sure it's really any different than what the French New Wave was
doing with cinema.  Not that didn't add an interesting layer to watching a
film, not that it didn't call attention to director-actor-camera-audience,
but they weren't going as far as to suggest that was all the content there
was in the film.  So if there are broader implications to be made by calling
attention to the tool itself, what is being said, besides the (at least,
now) obvious?

I'll take my answers off the air.

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