The social construction of an aesthetic...

[Tad Turner <tad@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I think now is an auspicious time to try to grow a a new branch on this
rhizome. It's been interesting to read the range of responses to the
discussion about ownership: my previous experience with lists is that
concentration on their stated subject tends to mask the real variables
of the society that gives them life. Sort of like everyone wearing blue
suits.

I'm sure this phenomenon isn't restricted to the Internet. I perceive it
in my daily exchanges with the warm bodies of my universe.

This display of beliefs, from Milton Friedman to Ayn Rand to Joseph
Stalin, is quite striking to me. I didn't know those folks were into
microsound! I had a more uniform picture of this cultural coalescence.

So my question is: what is the social construction of the microsound
aesthetic? By this I mean not that the Internet or digital computing has
made this possible, (although that's a part of it) but what everyday
beliefs are expressed in the qualities and organization of microsonic
works?

How does a group of folks with such diverse perspectives come to make a
cultural product with such a (relatively) clear shape? Or how does a
defined cultural aesthetic come to create a society of such diversity?

I've just begun to think about this. I should point out that probably
anyone of you is more conversant with the body of microsound works than
I am.

I'd like to pick apart individual works and try to suggest how their
properties attract a kind of commonality of belief, or how their
properties come to be variously and widely interpreted in their meaning.

For example, there is the quality of the sonic choices, which are
unscored by a discourse that categorizes them as the leavings of our
epoch's paradigmatic mode of production: digital computation.

By way of contrast, the Pop Art of the 60's was also based on the
"cast-off" forms of the dominant culture: comics, advertising, trash and
the everyday. Yet these appropriations fostered a warm, though not
friendly, engagment with their audience.

Microsonics seems a more minimal stance, at least at first glance. (I
know I'm ignoring Curtis Roads here.) I seem to recall a comparison with
the Minimalist sculptors of the late 60's (Judd, Andre, etc.) which is
interesting because much of that work was conceived from a "political"
stance.

Minimalism investigated of how far sculpture could limit its spatial
concern and still be called sculpture, but there was also the "fuck you"
of how much a gallery or patron would pay for nothing.

So where does this place the sound of a laptop crashing? Or work
performed at the threshold of audibility?

The reduced use of harmonic sound signals a greater interest in rhythm,
perhaps even truncated to repetition. (again Minimalism?)

Microsound is also not primarily a vocal music. Is this a reaction to
Rap? Or in its abstraction, does it offer more varied interpretations?

The list had also been critical of Matthew Herbert's compositions with
expressed social concerns. I think I understand this now less than I
did. Is his work a "bad" example of socially concerned art? Or are
social concerns without a place in microsound?

Perhaps I've mischaracterized microsound. I love to get that "what is"
conversation going again. But I don't think we have to reach a final
definition, but just point to where the definition starts to unravel.

Hopefully some of the rest of you might be interested in contributing
your thoughts to those attitudes and emotions that must certainly arise
from daily life; and that find their expression not only in widely
varying social beliefs, but also in a society of microsound.

-Tad
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