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Re: [microsound] MAP Series Guest Lecture: Ian Andrews
Hi Ian,
Ian Andrews wrote:
> I find your refernce to Lacan's category of the 'real' quite interesting
> here. I've never really thought about aleatory and random processes that
> way before. It makes perfect sense that the use of these processes to
> transcend subjective boundaries and thus bypass aesthetic judgements
> (expression) would have some kind of appeal to the 'real.' But as long as
> the 'real' is not understood as some transcendental signified - some sort
> of 'truth' beyond human understanding - a common tendency of the 20th
> century avant-gardes.
I'm not sure whether you caught me falling into the logocentric trap. The Real
as some transcendental signified? I certainly have this way of thinking
somewhere on my back (and there are passages of Lyotard about the sublime where
you can't be sure whether he really got rid of the transcendental signified
either). I agree that my eulogy of chance and aleatoric approaches has a hue of
"negative theology" -- if you can't reach the real by signification or
representation, if you can only say what it is not, the only way (if there is
one) to make contact is to nudge it in by disclocating subjectivity, meaning,
code. If the real is not to be signified, if it is beyond codes and systems of
representation, it can enter the symbolic only as "glitch," as disruption of the
code, as noise in the channel. I hope my conception of the real as glitch is
not that logocentric as to refer to a transcendental signified; I see the Real
as 'X' that makes itself seen or heard only by ways of disrupting, interfering,
intercepting. From the perspective of the symbolic or systems of signification
it can only appear as chance because it is outside the syntax or horizon of
expectation. Now the role of the artist is interesting in trying to get rid of
his/her subjectivirty by trying to get rid of control, hoping a ghost might
haunt his/her machine, hoping that 'something' may happen.
Is this radically different from aleatoric approaches in high modernism? (To
come back to the main question of your article) Hard to say. In modernism
(Dada, Surrealism) a high degree of mysticism and superstition was involved in
inviting chance in; in Cage and the I Ching the underlying mysticism is even
stronger; the whole tradition of numerology and the conception of mathematics as
the highway to heaven is so ancient that terms such as modernism are ridiculous
in that respect. (One could go as far as to suspect some similarity to David
Bohm's conception of an implicit order that is explicated or unfolded in the
realities we know). I was never really sure whether the seemingly humble idea
of tinkering with glitches really excludes a faint hope that 'something' might
express itself in the glitch (whatever that something is). If you look at
interviews with kode9 for example -- modernism looms large but even larger is
the tapping of sources much older than modernity. I think of DJ Spooky's
apodictic remark
"The paradox is that as things become
more clear, you realize that, my god, they are far more
complex. The humanism
and enlightenment thing was such a waste of time and lead to
all those
murderous searches for utopias of nazism and socialism, of all
the huge wars
that were fought in the name of distorted ideologies as a new
religion. Now,
because of computer culture, it has all gone into micro-niche
mode. There is no
large overframing vision. "
(http://www.hyperdub.com/softwar/spooky.cfm)
This is part of a response he gave to kode9's question: "We are now in
the realm of the sound file. There is a movement
just now, as you know, which is concerned with the
positivisation of the glitch, or the digital accident,
the sonic accident and a population inhabiting this
space. "
I've been playing around with the idea that this is no longer a question of
post- or neomodernism but of para-modernism (the parasite looms large here also
as para-site). A (maybe futile) attempt to shortcircuit history by somehow
trying to compose as if modernity (not modernism) had never happened. As if the
humanist, modern subject had never happened, to go 'back' before the infamous
Cartesian subject-object split. Modernist art as painting could never get rid
of that. Painting is so fixed on the eye that I don't see how the
subject-object split could ever be disposed of. Music is different in that it
has effects on the whole body down to the tiniest elements (whether they are
particles or waves -- waves would be better for this argument, but for glitch
the particle approach is probably better). Sounds are multiplicities from the
very beginning. Maybe all comparisons to the visual arts are doomed to fail
anyway (unless we come to digital art and its glitches).
To sum up: maye the idea of a "transcendental signified" is merely the outcome
of a system of thinking which is too narrow anyway. Everything not containable
in this narrow system becomes willy-nilly transcendental. If we started from
the idea of radical immanence there was no 'outside.' No need for
transcendental signifieds. I have no idea how that relates to the 'glitch' ...
I stop before I am completely at a loss. Have to sort things out a bit more.
Yours,
Dagmar
>
> >eventually managed to read your article. It helped to sort a few things
> >out, but after while even more questions formed themselves.
> >
> >Sorry, if I just rave on:
> >Is the aesthetic of the glitch, the modulations, the 'errors' of the
> >material processes really a return to pure art? Is it not rather an attempt
> >to reach the 'real' (forever unreachable according to Lacan) in the slips
> >and folds of illusionary reality (reality as a social and imaginative
> >construction; the glitch as an eruption of the real, the non-human,
> >non-intentional).
>
> The use of aleatoric elements as a device to invite the
> >"real" in? In that view, "the real" would be everything beyond human
> >intention and conception. Clicks&Glitch aesthetics might be an attempt to
> >see computers, the digital as "nature," their productions as something
> >partially escaping human conscious intention, nudging "chance" in. Somehow
> >our conception of the "Real" (as opposed to reality) includes "chance" --
> >in the sense of an order that is beyond human conception, appearing thus
> >more real (maybe because it disrupts our expectations). The modern and
> >postmodern condition seems to be unable to reach the "Real" unless it
> >disrupts reality as the unknown, inexpected, unforeseeable.
> >
> >Thus I am not sure whether this is exclusively a terrain of aesthetics;
> >seems to be there is some kind of ontology, if not cosmology behind it. If
> >the cosmos is noise, then music in the classical western sense is a filter
> >of that noise, just as our colours are filtered white light. If the
> >'errors' bring in an element of chaos, an element of noise, there is the
> >hope that by courting error and chance we can trick out the filters or
> >shift them or whatever. Since we can't aspire to experience the original
> >white light, nor the real cosmic noise, we beseech them to enter our
> >compositions through the backdoor. If the computer is our mirror (in the
> >narcissistic sense of being our product thus reflecting our wishes and
> >designs) we try to tinker with this mirror in order to get reflections not
> >of ourselves but of what may lie behind our backs ... (wrong metaphor
> >somehow, too much fixed on the eye.)
> >
> >[Maybe this is a very feminine perspective, conflating the Real with the
> >material. But I simply can't see matter as anything else but spirit on a
> >low level of vibration. Thus attempts to exclude the Real are acts of
> >cowardice, controlmania or ego-inflation. O my, a manifesto?]
> >
> >I don't see the 'aesthetics' of noise and errors as an attempt of
> >representation; there is often the ironic element, the element of
> >self-reflection of the medium etc. But what I find really interesting is
> >the music of noise as a creation process in its own right, not
> >re-presenting something but allowing that something to present itself as
> >the process of its own emergence. When noise condenses to structures (or
> >when structures are filtered out of noise) the emergence of order parallels
> >the creation of everything there is. On the other hand when 'errors' are
> >foregrounded, this outcry of the medium somehow introduces the "Real," the
> >chaotic which is the conditio sine qua non of emergence -- I don't know,
> >sounds almost like negative theology, or as if the "sublime" is imbedded in
> >the seams of reality.
> >
> >As much as I like Erik Davis's book Techgnosis I would take another stance:
> >maybe the digital aspires to a state of pure spirit -- but hell, give me
> >errors, give me something Real... I can't see in what sense this would be
> >"pure art".
> >
> >Merely some ramblings triggered by your article.
> >
> >Yours,
> >
> >Dagmar
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >Ian Andrews wrote:
> >
> >> A very rough version of this talk is now up at
> >> http://radioscopia.org/postdig.html
> >>
> >> On Monday, November 4, 2002, at 06:11 PM, shannon o'neill wrote:
> >>
> >> > MAP SERIES PRESENTS A GUEST LECTURE BY
> >> >
> >> > IAN ANDREWS
> >> >
> >> > on
> >> >
> >> > POST-DIGITAL AESTHETICS
> >> >
> >> > What are the characteristics of a post-digital aesthetics?
> >> > This presentation looks at issues concerning process, originality,
> >> > aura, error, neo-minimalism, conceptualism and performance
> >> > in relation to recent music, sound, video and online art.
> >> >
> >> > Ian Andrews is a video, film and electronic music/sound artist.
> >> > His work has been exhibited inter/nationally. He is currently
> >> > working on digital video and net based sound projects.
> >> > http://radioscopia.org
> >> >
> >> > 5.30-6.30pm
> >> > Wednesday, November 6
> >> > Lecture Theatre 3.510
> >> > Bon Marche Building
> >> > Harris St, Broadway
> >> > University of Technology Sydney
> >> >
> >> > FREE - All welcome!
> >> >
> >> > MAP Series is presented by Media Arts and Production
> >> > at UTS, and is coordinated by Shannon O'Neill. It features
> >> > artists working across sound, video and new media.
> >> >
> >> > For more info mailto:Shannon.ONeill@xxxxxxxxxx
> >> >
> >> > --
> >> > shannon o'neill
> >> > lecturer, media arts and production
> >> > faculty of humanities and social sciences
> >> > university of technology sydney (uts)
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > ---------------------------------------------------------------------
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> >> > website: http://www.microsound.org
> >> >
> >> >
> >>
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> >
> >
> >---------------------------------------------------------------------
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>
> 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
>
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