Re: [microsound] hidden from the audience

[ndk <ndkent@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> an evening of minimalist electronic sound performances
> at which the artists will be hidden to the audience

Somehow I keep thinking that if a tree falls in a forest, but you only
hear it, is it still a performance? ;-)

I'm not trying to pick on just this one statement, I just chose it as a
starting off point.

I see validity in several things I would rate as secondary side issues.
One would be exposing people who might be biased to seeing something
like a laptop one perceives they'd be biased against. Okay a noble
enough motivation. The hiding acheives this but doesn't one have
something really compromised here as a result? Like when I think of live
music I have some expectations. That its produced in real time so there
is a real element of skill and risk involved in getting it out. And one
also sort of thinks that the environment including audience reaction has
a sway on the outcome. So if one were to remove those aspects, what
added interest does the live performance obtain. Lets say we have that
goal of exposing without bias, wouldn't it suit the goal better not to
compromise the music and play a recording specially chosen because its
extra effective and suitable rather than go through the motions and not
benefit much from them? Or you tell me where would the benefit of a live
performance stem from? Being able to say you did a live gig at such a
place? Being paid for a live gig? Making some kind of anti-spectacle
statement? The latter at least is interesting at first glance but what
does it really say? The conceptual statement outranks the musical
material's quality? Does something like this work over and over. Or is
it the sort of thing where the satisfaction comes predominantly from
writing about. I think Duchamp was a vitally important and thought
provoking artist. I'm all for experimentation too. I just don't think
Duchamp (or some other theorist) should ever be used as some sort of
perpetual license or stamped validation.

Just thinking too that for those who blame, one shouldn't blame the
audience for what smells to me as material that just doesn't hold up in
a given context or blame the venue unless of course they promised one
thing and gave another. I'm sure some here have read about issues in the
early days of tape music. Like how do you put it on in the concert hall.
Lets say it should be presented there, though thats not a given. No one
is saying laptop or whatever music should or must be presented live, but
the opposite isn't being said either. These issues I guess are still
around today. It requires a somewhat wider viewpoint I think.  It might
take real work but conceptually its no big leap to relaize that if one
wants to present something potentially lacking in a performance context
then elements should be added or different material selected to make it
into a compelling experience rather than complain about how rock acts
have it easy or audience pre-conceived notions are to blame.

I guess what is being proposed here is in a given context, a live
performance, one changes the context to a new one as a means of dealing
with it. It is conceptually creative in a sense but I'm don't think the
result strengthens the work itself any, maybe it just doesn't hold up in
the first context so recontextualizing it may not be justifying it.

nicholas d. kent

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