Re: [microsound] Re: grabbing people by the balls (dumbtype et al)

[Jacek Staniszewski <jacek.staniszewski@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> > Karkowski/Sensorband managed to ruin a set of 23Five's speakers at their
> > recent SFMOMA performance as well (despite extensive sound-checking,
they
> > vastly exceeded the agreed-upon limits).
> >> > Those excesses are disrespectful to both the audience and the venue,
in my
> > opinion. Philip

very funny.
where's this post from????!!! melancho0lic aether of
postclickhopandsomecutstoo IDM???
 not everyone around here subscribes to this list??
I suspect the author of the opinion/statement above to be Philip Sherburne,
at least judging from
his earlier account of Karkowski's live show::::

http://www.neumu.net/needledrops/data/00010_needledrops.shtml
"""""Karkowski closes the night with the most brutal sound performance I've
ever witnessed; a co-jurist goes so far as to describe it as "Fascistic." It
begins without any indication of the levels it will reach, an absorbing
rumble that picks up where Sensorband's three-dimensional sound left off.
But Karkowski soon begins working the mid-range, drawing out tones that
nestle together in shivering resonances, and little by little they climb
higher and higher. He's working according to the specific resonant
frequencies of the room, and as a result, the tones seem to emanate from
within your own skull; it's impossible to determine where you end and the
sound begins. Ultimately, however, it's just too much. An endurance test -
you find yourself tensing up to shield yourself from the pounding waves.

A number of people flee the room, and I don't blame them, although I'm
determined to stick it out for the duration. The entire room is alive with
demon sound: the metal fittings beneath the stage are clanking as if rattled
by poltergeists; pieces of the ceiling occasionally come unstuck and plummet
into the crowd. Suddenly, there's a God-awful smell, something like an
electrical fire (and of course in the post-9/11 world, I can't help but
think of Ground Zero, even though I've never been there): one of the
subwoofers has literally fried itself. (The soundman, abruptly shutting it
down to prevent a fire, is not pleased.)

Finally, I can't take any more, and I clamp my fingers against my ears,
sealing them off as best I can. Suddenly everything goes quiet, but as I
grow bold and gradually open my ear canals, it becomes deafening again, and
I retreat. This is sound as violence; I understand suddenly how sound is
used as an instrument of torture. (Karkowski no longer needs arts funding, I
think; he can get his grants straight from a department of defense.) I think
of Chris Burden, the Los Angeles artist who famously shot himself in the arm
as one of his performances; Karkowski, with a manic glint in his eye, seems
like he's turned Burden's experiment outward, and we all bear the scars.

When I leave the museum and walk up to the Media Lounge, where a
silver-spandex-suited Felix Kubin will grind out a stomping set of
Vegas-inspired organ glam - a much-needed burst of levity - I feel vaguely
ill to my stomach, a physical side-effect of the sound assault, and I regret
having left my ears open as long as I had. Truly, I've experienced the
endgame of sound art, and I'm not sure I like what I've seen. The sadist
Karkowski walks by a little while later, chatting amiably with a colleague,
and I resist the urge to punch him. """"

punching """"fascistic"""" (is that even grammatical?) artists as a new
deconstructive strategy
of kikhop intelligentsia?
I didn't want to comment upon it, but it seems there's some enormous unrest
concerning
wandering electronic fascist Karkowski...

> Jesus, most of those shows are not particularly gentle at *all*.

 > But I digress.  I was really trying to find out more from the list about
the
> politics of music.  You've quite obviously got some "noise" politics
> (embattled with enviromental noise, fight din with din, so to speak) and
> more subtle uses of noise (like Ryoji Ikeda using it poetically), then
> others who use sampling to disrupt ownership of sound (such as
> Plunderphonics' Beck work, for example).  I'm just curious what else is
> going on.  I'm very interested in the idea that others are using sound not
> as some ethereal, b-line to the emotional centers of the brain, but as
> concrete "statements" or manipulations of other ideas and how they can
> connect to sound.  For instance, take some "big brain" concepts like
> post-structuralism, Marxism, feminism, post-colonial theory, etc.  Are
> people producing work, composing and trying to apply these concepts to
> sound?  There has been some talk about minimalism and it's relationship to
> current audio explorations, and also of Deleuze, so I'm curious what else
is
> out there.
>

post-colonial sound? sounds pretty sophomoric to me, just as many
other tightlipped quasi-Deleuzian, semi-Attalian or half-Virilian concepts
do. too much academic run of the mill talk. No constructive argument, just
the need to blindly deconstruct whatever that does not fit into safe frame
of >>intelligent<< music for masses.

regards

Jacek Staniszewski
(http://neurobot.art.pl/polycephal)