Re: [microsound] influence vs. replica

[Andy Graybeal <graybeal@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

if being absolved of influence were available to us in some way or 
manner, you wouldn't be asking about such a thing a listserve, simply 
putting your idea out there and watching the responses is going to 
effect you and influence you.

the only imaginable way, but still my imagination is influenced by my 
surroundings, so therefore not pure enough for the hypothetical 
situation in which you are imploring, is somehow complete isolation... 
and then you are still being influenced by the world of nature itself. 
though i think this is somewhat more pure than to be influenced from 
peers or history itself as far as civilization or culture is concerned.

art is entirely subjective and i believe it's somewhat rebirthing all 
the time.  rebirthing into what might be a question... but not a very 
good one.  art in the contemporary sense, is something manmade, there 
needs to be a sort of spring board from that.. for man to be entirely 
uninhibited in this world is to be either completely isolated from 
birth, which i don't believe to be possible.  "Art" needs a womb to be 
birthed from: the art itself.  we are only instruments in a divine 
procession ourselves... as some grandious musician knows the score and 
uses us to listen/create the master opus.  i think that is where the 
'new' comes from.  saying anything 'new' is a fallacy in the context of 
the english language.  there is nothing new.  surrealism was radical.. 
cage was radical.. conrad schnitzler was radical... there is more to 
come.  i would agree with you that recently things have become 
stagnant.. but it's within the medium to fondle change... i believe.  in 
general, we've just spun ourselves so fast into this digital world that 
we're still experiencing whiplash stages from it and our theorists went 
from adept philosophical ideas to theorists of one's and zero's.  the 
philosphical theorists are catching back up as the price and 
availability and simplicity is making computers more of an instrument 
instead of a scientific 1 and 0 device.  i believe our medium of our 
music generating and recording tools to still be in their infancy... in 
regard to visual art.  if you think about it... auditory recording is a 
fairly 'new' medium. visual art has been around since primitive times. 
auditory recording has  been recently overtaken by computers. it hasn't 
had it's time to discover itself, if you will, to grow upon itself. 
baby steps from analog into digital.. and we can now lie to our parents 
with our machines (if you will) with our "microsound" ... it being the 
more or less ... post-punk.. punk being noise, such as merzbow and co   
(punk being loosely defined as a full-on, all-out rush for a loud, 
abrasive, offensive sound...  in respect to the political overtones of 
that era, merzbow and co. is more of the same in the metaphysical or 
psychonautical overtone).  microsound is a more refined stem.. fragile.. 
based upon the eccentricities of error in machines, and not openly 
killing the machines to create sounds such as noise might be loosely 
thought of.  minimalism is true in the form and sense that is how are 
lives pan out.. that is how our generations survive.. that is how we 
evolve.  minimalism is definetly an interesting idea coupled with sound. 
avante garde the one before it.. was such a wide construct that no one 
knew what to do.. everything was a play toy.. was avante garde more for 
the participators?  or was avante garde the participators?  microsound 
takes the eccentrics of both minimalism, avante garde and noise.. and 
combines them into a refined, meticulous concoction .... somewhat 
unpinnable by the listener.. but "undefined" is hopefully within it's 
essence.  
creating a grey, i feel, is all that we can accomplish at this time.. 
and wait until we can mature enough to give birth to another prisoner / 
patron to be exiled and exalted by the onlookers.  we have to respect 
where we come from to understand where we are heading.  right now i feel 
that we are too young to be able to do anything more than just fiddle 
with lego's and look up into the lofty atmosphere as it feeds us 
infinite into our senses.  we need to mold definition into the 
undefined, the grey, the abstract, we need to create a womb for 
something to be born from.  i feel we are on the right path, and we are 
working collectively on this goal.. this juncture, we need to wait till 
we can be mature enough to bear fruit though.  we are still young and 
still gullable.  to know the answer is to assume we don't know enough... 
to not know the answer is the key.  for things to be defined into black 
and white i feel is our weakness.. we enslave ourselves with our present 
predjudices and thought process.  it needs room to grow right now.. it 
needs room to become fertile.. it needs room to start within itself. 
none of us can go off.. and be from inhibition.. to be from influence.. 
this is an impossible and treachorous task to take upon ourselves. 
collectively.. we are creating the 'new art' if you will.  we are 
creating a birthing ground for something "other".. we just have to learn 
to be patient.  it may not be in our lifetimes.. as art has a lifetime 
of it's own.  we are only the instruments of art itself.. it's using us 
to build.. to grow.. we are it's vessels of transport, and passage.  it 
seeks the inner regions of our minds to compell us to keep moving 
forward.  it wants us to expell the undefined, the amorphous androgynous 
:) ... it wants us to conquer the instruments we have at our hands.. and 
use them for the weaknesses and strengths that they present.  i used to 
get so frustrated with my lego's for their binary precision, there was 
no room for me to askew something.  we are creating a fertile ground for 
this 'art form' to produce itself by letting go of our own ego into our 
artwork.  by resigning our ways to a collective.   as cage puts it .... 
"My work became an exploration of non-intention."
when kim cascone (or whomever it was.. so forgive me if i'm wrong.. as 
sometimes this list seems very fundemental) mentioned 'post-digital'  -- 
i thought this was a tragic exclamation at the time.  coinciding too 
quickly with it's obvious counterpart, 'post-modern' .. as far as "art" 
is concerned inside the medium that we are working with.  later though i 
have grown fond of it.. it still hasn't fully settled with me.. as i 
still feel it is a very futuristic thought.  but i do believe it is not 
a trajic statement.. we are using the tools for what they are.. the 
good, the bad in a very pratical sense.  seemingly we have done a full 
circle in direction and can intertwine the old and new without feeling 
that we need to be righteous about our theories.  i've fallen head over 
heals with terre thaemlitz's work  as well as the work from tetsu inoue 
in the same vein as thaemlitz.  i still think that post-digital is 
futuristic thinking.. in the sense that glitch isn't still "new" in the 
sense.. but it still has to grow up a little.. to be branded as such.  

i consider my work to be ambient with the aesthetic feel of microsound 
built into it.. i also feel that both minimalism and avante garde is an 
intricate part of this... if we compare ourselves to painters.. we are 
mearly young teenagers.. we are out of our infancy.. still somewhat in 
our rebellion and eager stages and still somewhat mallable by the 
environment that surrounds us (the recording industry and the recent 
partners of such)... we have to wait till the art of 'music' itself 
isn't such an attractive commodity.. isn't so marketable.. isn't so 
tangible to those who want to make money scamming us into using their 
service ... enticing us with 'fame' and 'riches'... we have to wait till 
all of this dies down.  we've been in the middle of it since it's 
incarnation, it's hotter than ever.. and i'm so sad that 4'33" owns 
silence... these weasels are strangling art.  we cannot let them scam us 
anymore.. we must retract from their promises and independantly go about 
this.  i feel if cage were alive today, he would smile at the fact that 
someone used (what i consider) his most influential peice in respect to 
him.  i feel in no way the lawyers would have gotten a part of this.. 
they are just looking for something to pounce on.  ever watched a flock 
of pigeons near a public place?  throw down an insufficient amount of 
bread and they all scramble for the biggest peice ... with no respect or 
regard to anything else... even though it won't fill their stomach. 
cheap and sleazy fools taking advantage of a system that was put into 
place to keep rapists and murderers from molesting our children and 
killing our friends.

we are still so young.. we are still so gullible.  we need to see past 
this.. we are simply instruments to "art"... building blocks for 
some"one"/"thing" else.  we need to see past the glamour of these 
sleaze-mongers.  they are like a virus to our birthing ground.. they are 
what is keeping us from birthing.  they are making this a hostile ground 
where things cannot simply grow up and live a life... "in a beautiful 
place out in the country."

visual art.. had the chance to see past this.. and became an 
interpersonal exploration of beauty and nature, of expression and 
surrounding.  we are the fragile peice of music that is slowly lingering 
in that direction..  we are creating the "new art" but we have to be 
ever so patient.. ever so meticulous in this territory right now..  this 
world is so hostile at the moment.. we feed off of each other, and they 
(the profiteers) do not understand that.  we are indirectly helping each 
other.. we are not supposed to be bound by contracts.. we are not 
supposed to be bound to record deals.. we are dealing with information.. 
we are dealing with not only information.. but an exquisite type of 
information., a delicacy.  we are dealing with the most refined and 
influential type of information we have been giving the power to 
manipulate.  we did not earn this,  it has been giving to us.  this was 
birthed from an inquisitive man and then was swept up by the 
profiteers.. a byproduct of profit is what has given us the ability to 
work with this medium.. we have to let the profiteers leave us alone 
before we can really start working, because this medium is in a sense.. 
their stolen child in the first place.  

each of us find an enlightening and compelling energy that mesmerizes 
us..  keeps us going.  we are feeding off of whatever this energy is.  i 
feel it.. i know all of you feel it... else you wouldn't be here on this 
list.. as inquisitive as you are.  when we feel that mesmerizing 
enlightenment come over us... that is our "solo", our time in some 
spotlight,  if you will, in the grand opus that "Art" itself is 
writing... we are only the instruments.. and i cannot express that 
enough.  we need to have an open forum to share and learn and not be 
hindered by laws or rules that say we cannot take this or that... in the 
name of profit.  it is sad that we have to make money in this world.. 
and i feel that we should not make money from the expense of "Art" 
itself...   i'm not saying that making money from music all wrong or 
anything.. but to be bound by a contract and to withhold what is clearly 
something that should be able to be "shared" with the whole as a 
learning experience.. that is what is wrong... it's taken something too 
far because of greed, greed is spawned because of fear.  we've been here 
for ages.. yet we are still afraid. we don't know ourselves.

i'm going to define "new art" into something less agressive and 
offensive to my sense of language.  implicity there is no such thing as 
new.  'new' is a gimmick word used to cater to someones weakness.. and 
has recently been used to make profit, but i forgive the person who 
asked of this on the .microsound listerve (i do not intend this as a 
personal attack, more of an understanding of what i think you meant).. 
because it is something that is always in our face.. that we forget what 
it means.  "art" is another unlikely candidate .. who's meaning has been 
tailored to the making of profit..   art is essentially anything or 
any-non-thing that you find appealing in some sense. something that 
changes you to a certain recognizable degree, whether bad or good.  
i think the words more of 'recognizable or considerable change in 
direction of art, that gives way for more forms of expression than what 
is presently for-seeable'

in redefining the phrase "new art" i also came across my feelings for 
post digital:
i also find it somewhat offensive that to coin "post-digital" is in the 
same vain as the profiteers.. but as someone who feels for this type of 
art.. i find it okay in the sense that it soons becomes less gimmicky 
with time.  to define an era within an era.. must be a 'post-ism'  type 
of thing.  which brings me around to showcasing the subjective 
"weaknesses" and "sicknesses" (sorry for the negative co-notations with 
those words.. as i may play the more cynical role in all of this) of our 
culture... we have an addiction to definition... everything must be 
defined.. and the answer must be known.  this is somewhat subtractive to 
the avante garde era where definition was put to the wayside in effort 
to do: "else."  so there is some subtle balance between definition and 
undefinition..  we should not cage and entrap on what we don't know into 
a state of definition.. but we cannot work with something if it isn't 
all that mallable.

from this i feel there are atleast two forces playing against the growth 
of "Art" or us the artists (if we can be so brave to call ourselves 
descendants of Art).  it can be said in a lot of juxtopositional ways
on one hand it's the mechanical, technological world that binds us to 
the lawyers and money grubbers... but it's our dream of making a living.
on the other hand.. it's our lack of understanding the dynamics of the 
abrasive situation in which we are entangled in....  it's hard for us to 
be patient, and we want to define something "new" because it's what is 
sold to us on television.   our need for definition has almost become 
our pathway.. which i feel is going to be hard to overcome.  we'll start 
describing ages before they even come... and i hope it doesn't amount to 
much more than what would fall from a gypsy's lips.  when doing this we 
almost don't give enough room for the child ... with our anticipation 
and our strict rules we've already laid down for it.. before it's even 
been conceived.

i feel it too.. sadly.. but i'm willing to give up my work freely all my 
life.  i'm willing to give up my time for some birthing room for our 
child.  we are so interconnected.. yet disjointed.  it's sad to see the 
mascarade that sheepishly grins in our faces outside on the 
television... i hate seeing moby up there, as i took regard to his music 
when i was younger.  they are not the way to go.. it's the cheap sleazy 
path to a sterile road.  we have to recognize our humanity in this 
world.. and we also have to recognize the greater achievements as 
descendants of Art.

it's sickening to hear the fm radio... it's sickening to see that people 
flock to it as such... it's so disheartening.  we are here for a 
different reason than they are.  we are here to share our experiences.. 
to write "poetry" for each other.. just like the beatnicks did in the 
50's in NYC and SF... think about that fragile time for a writer...   
they were hindered by the control of profiteers, and the sensors.. we 
have to fight for our freedom of speech as musicians... it makes me 
rageful to think that i cannot be silent for four minutes and 
thirty-three seconds... william burroughs published naked lunch in his 
time era.... radical -- now that is radical.  we are being beaten down.  
john cage gave us...his movements of silence for us to grow onward.. and 
to look back upon with tongue-and-cheek.  he knew what it would spawn.. 
he knew that our world of music would be much more playful than his 
was.. because of some sort of aristocracy that cramped his time era.  he 
knew he was onto something.  i'm sure he would have felt a very warm 
gift... from a pupil, who understands his master.  

we need to recognize all of these things to help ourselves and to help 
birth another vein for Art to convelesce into.. and float upon and 
relish itself.  i hope you understand that this comes from my heart and 
i hope you understand that i love you all.



"it is time to turn the environment into art."  j. cage



-andy





post-face:
i'm speaking to a collective of artists as well as speaking to myself at 
the same time.. i don't want this to sound like some preaching style of 
thing.. but i want to express my feelings.. and i want to better 
understand why i'm here.. and why all this is happening right now.. i am 
here to make music.. that is all i know.  i am here to fight whatever it 
is that gets in the way of that.  i'm scared of that i guess.  don't 
take this as a personal attack and don't take this as some sort of 
hate-mongering person.  i feel strongly about things and i feel sad at 
the same time.. i feel i am at a loss for my expression on this 
subject.. so it comes out all preachy and hateful.. and i don't want 
that -- but i want to share my thoughts with you.. i want to hear what 
you have to say.. and i'm sorry it comes off as sounding like a bible.. 
this is what is not meant.  sorry for my lack of expression skills as a 
literary writer.









soren-microsound@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> Has it ever been possible to create entirely new music?  Everything
> in the history of music is just a new spin off of one or many old ideas.  
>
> soren
>
> On Wed, Oct 23, 2002 at 07:28:35PM -0700, j.frede wrote:
>  
>
> > i would like to present a topic. in this day and age is it possible to
> > create a un-influenced piece of art or music? i have been battling with the
> > idea that a NEW form of art or music is not possible in the day and age we
> > live in,,, other than a creating it by combining two or more mediums that
> > have already been explored?
> >
> > im not sure its possible to create NEW art (sound/music falls into this
> > category). something as radical as Surrealism was in its birth or any form
> > of Modern Art in pre-WWII era.
> >
> > are we left with only presenting new theories? or is new Art possible?
> >
> > j.frede
> > current location:los angeles
> > http://ritualdocument.com/jfrede
> > po.box 292045 los angeles, ca 90029
> >
> >
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> >    
>
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