Re: [microsound] a microsound issue

[Aaron Ximm <ghede@xxxxxxxx>]

Heya Jim,

Out of town doing a show last weekend, so it's taken me a while to return
to this... :)

Let's see, sharpen the dharma widget here...

(to reset the scene, the original topic was Jim's observations about
'incarcerated listening', see his provocative essay at
www.freelistening.org)

> order to better conform to (or profit from) the state.  I'm more concerned
> with the social norms which have been established around listening,
> especially binary oppositions such as noise vs. tone, music vs. sound, sound

My immediate reaction: the evolution of most of these 'oppositions' is
derived from the physics of the world, and more importantly the
bio/physiological constraints on our perception of it.

E.g., there are extra-conventional qualities of the world I can point to
that correspond to most of the terms you evoke (tone/noise for example:
surf is white noise and a sine way is tonal, historical circumstance
aside; and most cultures agree that a pentatonic scale is consonant).

Of course the boundaries surrounding the lax lay use of terminology can be
battlefields: "turn down that racket!" comes to mind.

But I don't think I read as much into that as you do... I've lost my love
for language such as 'site of control,' and when I hear one generation
dismissing another's innovation as dissonant I don't feel compelled to do
more than smile.

> The system you give is a great example of a group of components which are
> directly controlled by the political economy.  Modern recording technology
> (non-coincidentally, an outgrowth of military tech from WW2) contains all
> sorts of embedded codes from the system in which it was produced.  Modern

Also I no longer see 'embedded codes.' I suppose our real differences
begin when we consider the detritus and artifacts of our culture.

To wit: I do not see a world pregnant with signifiers.  I see an old
choice entailing a new one, I see the unintended consequence of
small-scale disputes, I see left-overs, the vestigial, laziness leaving
well enough alone, and the convenient.  In other words I see at best
evidence from which we might guess at the psyches of our ancestors and
ourselves.

I suspect you see more, with footnotes by Foucault...?

We both study and appreciate.

I know then that this is to some degree a difference between our
languages, but it's also a difference of fundamental mindset; and a
different set of presuppositions about the world and how we humans
function in it.

For example: what does it mean to say 'non-coincidentally' in regards to
the eventual evolution of, say, the walkman, from technology that may have
been originally developed in the war effort?

What I hear is an implication that there is some quality imbedded in the
design, or patterns of behavior in the use of, the walkman that engender a
recapitulation of the military mindset, or the imperial will to power,
etc.  And I can't help but feel that while this is rhetorically
titilating, ultimiately it is what a wiser generation than ours dismissed
as poppycock.

I place significant stock in the difference between recognizing the uses
to which a device might be put, the opportunities it creates for use and
misuse and reuse, and going on to claim that it an artifact embodies (in
an apparently supernatural way) the behaviors it affords ~ let alone,
those that its ancestors or design-informants did.

Common analogy: guns kill people. But I submit that's because people are
homicidal xenophobic highly competitive animals living for the most part
in a state of perpetual unprecedented arousal.  Not because guns 'encode'
killing.  They enable it.  They afford it.  To our minds, they are
perceived to suggest and perhaps encourage it.  But show them to a Vulcan,
and the Vulcan walks away.

The funny thing is that as I wrote last time, my *practice* as an artist
is probably indistinguishable from a distance from one in total accord
with (what I infer is) your position.  I just no longer think in capitals.
Perhaps that's an evolution of my own: more doing, less dwelling, more
thinking, less theory.

> recording tech makes all sorts of not-neccessarily-universal assumptions
> about what is an what is not important when dealing with sounds.  Just like

I certainly disagree, unless by universal you mean something more than I
know you do (if we could hear to 40khz, in other words, I'd agree).

I cannot think of a limitation in [the direction of] current recording
technology, in terms of what is 'important' about sound, that has
as its motivation anything more than (a) convenience, either engineering
or marketing; or (b) accident, in the sense of an arbitrary decision made
for reasons no more sinister than the petty power plays they no doubt
resulted from.

Eg, why stereo and not 5.1?  Because it's convenient and much easier to
record (and synthesize) on analog decks.  Why 44.1K?  Because crystals
will oscillate so as to produced harmonics in that range. Why no flat
reproduction to 1 Hz?  Because it's mechanically a pain in the ass, and it
annoys the neighbors to boot. Why not N sound sources to reproduce N
elements in a composition?  Why digital?  Why reproduce at all?

In other words, most questions have either rational answers (setting aside
the 'situation of engineering for efficiency' which is 'presumed' by a
capitalist society aside...(!)) or obscure ones (CDs purported to be 74
minutes and hence 5 and some inches wide, specifically to allow
Beethoven's 9th to fit...) or arbitrary ones (Fahrenheit temperature).

Only a few have political ones, only a few are 'sites of control' ~
arguing otherwise distracts us from the rare moments when a fight is
genuinely justified (e.g, digital 'rights' management, SCMS, politically
skewed discourse surrounding fees for webcasters, the just-proposed hike
in minidisc/blank CD surcharges in Canada...).

> These mistakes are not to be paid attention to.  Let's face it: outside of
> this list, most people don't enjoy listening to a scratched cd.  The errors
> devalue it.  That's one of the primary myths of hierarchic political
> organization: "That which is ordered and rational is to be appreciated and
> valued, and things outside of that order - chaos, mistakes, deviance - are
> to be shunned."

I don't think it's a myth, it's a useful heuristic for a functioning
society (at least, given the material constraints of the present age).

There is of course a meta-rule, which is another heuristic my father likes
to quote: "One of the more important rules is, if you don't know when to
break the rules, don't. It's important because it implies its
contrapositive: if you do know when to break the rules, do."

Visionaries break the rules (make music out of noise), in other words.
 But it is insidious to suggest that someone should enjoy, accept, value
all things [equally].  A scratched CD is *correctly* rejected by someone
who wants to listen to the music it promises.

I love serendipity and chance more than most people I know, but that
doesn't mean I want avocados in my burrito when I ordered it without.

I may think someone an idiot, for the music they like, but I rarely
question their politics (there are exceptions... :) ).

Is the delay between an accident becoming possible (because of a new
technology) and its becoming desirable political?

> personal reality, and that many of the ways we structure our "consensus
> reality" are contingent, and politically determined.

Again: most are not (apologies to the Marxists in the audience), most are
physiologically and neurocognitively determined. And as a result more
given than contingent.

> notation or concert halls.  I would just again emphasize that your assumed
> values in the characterization, specifically the valuation of optimization
> (efficiency) and wide dissemination (market saturation), are political ones.

Again: if everything is political, nothing is.  You can sey that
everything is political, and I can say that everything is physiological,
and neither of us is right.  But I'm more right. :)

Reactionarily yours,
 and wishing you well and good spirits,

 aaron

  ghede@xxxxxxxx
  http://www.quietamerican.org

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