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Re: [microsound] MAP Series Guest Lecture: Ian Andrews
On second thoughts:
maybe bringing in Lacan wasn't such a good idea after all. His system of Imaginary,
Symbolic and Real might also be too narrow, too close to modernism (especially
Surrealism). I like the idea of the real as excluded third, but if you set up a
system as narrow as that too much will be transcendental.
As long as one perceives the world as made up of thinking subjects and senseless
objects or of spirit vs. matter, there will always be ghosts (i.e. all that is
excluded by the system of thought, filtered out so to speak, so that it can olny
return as 'ghost' or, worse, 'regression.') If one conceives the world in terms of
language only, one can deconstruct the fallacies as much as one wants, one will
never get to the outside, because you yourself posited it as the outside, which can
only intrude slyly or by force. Maybe starting from Deleuze and Guattari or DeLanda
would solve those postcartesian repercussions. Could it be that it depends on the
narrowness of the system what appears as "glitch" (in the sense of error or dirt in
the system)? Maybe if the system is too clean, the probability of 'errors'
multiplies. But they are errors only from the narrow perspective of the overclean
system. Would foregrounding of the glitch destabilize the overclean systems, expose
their vulnerability? Or is it the beginning of a broader perspective, of a less
exclusive system?
As I understood complex systems theory, a system is most vital the closer it surfs
on the edge of chaos or rides the wave between the small beach of order and the
large ocean of chaos.
Now of all the terms we used here I most distinctly dislike "avant-garde" because it
still transports the idea of a progress or progression of history where you can be
in front or in back. In that sense I fully underline a remark in Ralph Ellison's
Invisible Man: "What if history was a gambler, instead of a force in a laboratory
experiment (...)? What if history was not a reasonable citizen, but a madman full
of paranoid guile (...)?"
In terms of musical development I am also very suspicious of ideas of historical
progression; thus "avant-garde"? Too much caught up in ideas of originality,
Romantic conceptions of the artist as genius standing alone, too modern.
(I am getting further and further away from the intentions of your article, I know.
Please consider it as a kind of thinking aloud in a foreign language. But I'd be
interested in other people's loud thoughts. I only hope I don't bring up
discussions that have raged through this list again and again; I am a very recent
member and still haven't found the archives.)
Best,
Dagmar
dbuchwald wrote:
> 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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> > >> > For additional commands, e-mail: microsound-help@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > >> > website: http://www.microsound.org
> > >> >
> > >> >
> > >>
> > >> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
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> > >> website: http://www.microsound.org
> > >
> > >
> > >---------------------------------------------------------------------
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> > >website: http://www.microsound.org
> >
> > 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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