Re: [microsound] overclean systems

[csorg@xxxxxxxxxxxx]

Quoting Kim Cascone <kim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

> > Would foregrounding of the glitch destabilize the overclean systems,
> expose
> > their vulnerability?
> IMO this is exactly how the critique of digital audio comes about... 

I had an interesting intersection today with this very topic in one of the 
courses I teach at the Art Institute.  Students are showing their work, and we 
began talking about the "overclean" studio system in the 50s/60s, the film work 
and editing and how the cuts were purposely made clean and imperceptible.  With 
French New Wave and Bertholt Brecht's writing the cuts become purposefully 
"glitch", where the system behind the narrative is made apparent, the "man 
behind the curtain" if you will (just to bring the acousmatic into the 
conversation --again--:).  Here's the rub:  as my colleague pointed out so 
well, it has become an ineffective technique, as MTV and commercials and film 
in general has absorbed this "oppositional" technique into its general 
framework and the language of film and video.  While I don't see an extremely 
strong trend towards this absorbtion of glitch into mainstream audio production 
yet, I do expect than somewhere along the way this will be inevitable, as it 
seems that any "other", like folk or punk or indie, has been convolved.

The challenge with this opposition/absorbtion pattern is that it becomes 
difficult to maintain the critical stance when you(it) becomes the very thing 
it critiques.  I suppose that saying, "Well, it was a valid critique, for a 
while..." could be satisfying, but there certainly must be more ways to 
ingratiate oneself pursuing audio concepts.  It's also rather naive to think of 
oneself as punk (glitch is electronic punk, right?, the audio production world 
turned on its end again?) and not expect to be engaging in that continuous 
cycle.

So what of other paradigms for critique that are perhaps *not* engaging this 
binary didactic?  Can glitch participate in other forms of critique?  I'm 
interested in discussion & conceptual forms which disengage from the either/or 
proposition, such as Derrida's critiques that use two texts next to each other 
to resonate rather than oppose.  I'm just curious what else is out there, what 
the potential is...just musing...
__________________________________________
Christopher Sorg
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
http://www.enteract.com/~csorg
csorg@xxxxxxxxx

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