Re: [microsound] laptop hell & Hegel

[Ian Andrews <i.andrews@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>First of all want to say that I find that ressurection of the W Benjamin's
>Aura very interesting. In fact the intensity and value of the live
>experience depends on the way the performer can create "the right here and
>right now" context. Much of that relies on the sensation of a unique and
>non-repeatable performance (notice I say sensation because it hasn't to be
>exactly true). Before I advance to my point just want to remember the
>aesthetics of Hegel in which he considered the judgements about technical
>aspects of the art piece not belonging to a true aesthetic experience. Not
>that I go along with this but I thought it would be interessant to dig this
>out. In this regard the performer would resemble an illusionist who create
>magic hiding out the mechanism of the phenomenon he produces for the senses
>of the audience. What happens in this case is that the audience is invited
>to leave their cultural baggage and knowledge to enter in an evolving
>experience.
>The problem is: can the laptop performer create this state of aesthetic
>experience? Well, I think no. I think the laptop performer is in a situation
>of ambiguity where he neither does offer the means to make his process
>transparent nor hide it away totally, he doesn't manage to create an
>"experience" neither one way nor another. Would dare to say that he is in a
>situation where he wants to fit the traditional performance model but not
>being able to. What would you say about this?
>To me the solutions is in trying to find new relationships between audience
>and performer. The laptops performers still maintain a oneway direction
>attitude toward the audience. You can tell me musicians always look for
>feedback on the audience. Ok. But it doesn't go further than this.

Yes Hegel considered the technical aspects of music as bearing an external
relation to spirit. Also I find his theorisation of the artwork as _Idea_,
the unification of concept and reality, interesting in regard to live
performance. I'm sure that Hegel would have regarded the laptop performance
as an artwork without the concept, as pure sensuous reality. And I think,
even though I don't particularly agree with Hegels theory of art in the
Aesthetics, that this opens up a way looking at the laptop performance,
which in some ways links up with Benjamin's concept of "aura." While the
laptop performance could be described as  an artwork in which the concept
is hidden, there is also the opposite: that kind of artwork in which the
concept/ process is extremely interesting but the sensory output is weak,
eg. some installation that captures data from distant planets, via a radio
telescope, which then ends up as dull farting sounds of no aesthetic
interest.

The question here is: is the laptop performance an artwork. I think it is
(or should be) but when the processes remain ambiguous, for me, it can come
very close to resembling the work of the DJ. Now I don't think that what
most DJs do could be classified as an artwork.  They are superb technicians
in their inaudible suturing of music, they are great arbiters of taste
(aesthetic judgements), and have the ability to create moods. They are more
or less like interior decorators. They are very creative of course, but I
what they do falls more into the category of craft than art (of course
there are  rare exceptions).
But even though the laptop performer is doing something extremely
interesting, creating music on the fly, creating a unique composition, in
the "here and now," the concept is vacant unless the audience are able to
associate the sounds with the process. There is nothing wrong with this,
its just that for all intents and purposes, what the audience receives is
for them essentially the same as what they would get from a DJ (who plays
his own recordings). The performance lacks the aura of the unique artwork
in the "here and now" because the audience don't have the means of bridging
the concept with the reality, which constitutes the artwork, or at least
the aura of the artwork. I don't think that being able to make a vague
guess at the process is enough to unify the the concept and reality of the
performance. At least it is not for me.

Benjamin grounds the work of art in ritual. Hegel also sees the begining of
art as ritual but sets up a historical narrative, or teleology, which sets
up a hierachy, in which at the top is abolute spirit (and the end of
art/history). But Benjamin, who takes his cue from Nietzsche, avoids this
dialectical teleological movement. But still I find Hegels definition of
fine art useful here. The idea that a work of art is more than a single
unitary phenomenon, but more the coming together of disperate sensations
and concepts, though perhaps not in a dialectical movement as Hegel argues,
but more, as Derrida suggests, an oscillation.

So can the laptop performer create this state of aesthetic experience?  I
think you are right to say no. But there is much to consider: modernism,
post-modernism, various problems associated with the avant garde, the
bluring of distinctions between high and low culture (which raise the
question: is microsound art? and if so is it possible to opt out of art and
still be microsound, or avant garde).

I'm also wary of the opposition between "original" unique artwork, or
event, and mass copy. I would not like to simply privilege the unique
artwork over the copy. But in the situation where electronic experimental
music is performed in the presence of a live audience, I must admit that
something quite wonderful happens when the performer is able to merge the
concept (in experimental music this is often the process, or ideas related
to the process) with the reality (the sensuous experience of the sound
itself) in the "here and now". Where this does not occur, when the laptop
performance only gives us raw sonic experience, I often find it less
interesting (and less satisfying)than the copy (in the sense of that
pleasure that you get when you buy a new CD and take it home to listen to
for the first time in the privacy of your own home).

Ian Andrews
Metro Screen
Sydney


Email: i.andrews@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.metroscreen.com.au

Metro Screen
Sydney Film Centre
Paddington Town Hall
P.O. Box 299
Paddington NSW 2021
Ph : 612 9361 5318
Fax: 612 9361 5320