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Re: [microsound] MAP Series Guest Lecture: Ian Andrews
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This may be out of sync with current discussion, but I sent it last
night and it doesn't seem to have gotten to the list yet. Sorry if you
end up getting it twice.
>Hi Dagmar,
>
>Thanks for your comments. I agree with just about everything you have
said.
>But I would argue that the return to pure art, and the aesthetics of
the
>glitch are not mutually exclusive. First of all I don't think that the
>foregrounding of the materiality of the glitch must neccessarily entail
a
>return to pure art. Rather it is the accompanying direction of
minimalist
>reduction, the exclusion of all other elements, that tends toward
purity.
>And even then it might not be such a bad thing as long as it can keep
well
>away from the kind of essentialism espoused by Greenberg, Bazin, etc.
But
>can it? Next I would argue that its possible for there to be an art
which
>is concerned with the foregrounding of errors and material process
which is
>pure (such as in the case of structural-materialist film) or hybrid
(such
>as in the case of Godard, Brecht, etc.) I know that these comparisons
with
>film don't quite fit because music is not concerned with representaion
as
>such. But I do think that much of the writing around these issues
(Wollen,
>Heath, Michaelson, Krauss, etc.) has some value in regard to music
to the extent that glitch is a critique of technology, it's not a return
to a pure art. but not all glitch is all that critical, and even some
that is tends to oscillate between criticality and technological
fetishism. I think the thing to keep in mind is that there are a variety
of approaches to "the glitch". I'm not sure if I get this multiplicity
from your analysis. Perhaps your contention that "post-digital" music
embodies a desire to return to modernism risks suppressing the
"post-modern" reality of the situation, which is more multiplicitous (to
the extent that "post-modernism" can be understood as a tendency towards
multiplicity, though that risks unifying "post-modernism as
"multiplicity").
>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've long been interested in the ways in which the deliberate use of
randomness and indeterminacy (errors, for example) entails at least a
partial decentering of the artist/composer-subject. But you're right
that it's been common in much modernist cultural practice (Arp's chance
collages for example), and thus not necessarily post- or anti- or
non-modernist. But I still wonder if a desire to return to modernism is
not itself postmodernist. And you may point this out, but it's worth
considering that the "post" in "postmodernism" may be as much about
"coming out of" modernism as "coming after" it. Postmodernism, it seems
to me, it not so much a rejection of modernism, but an acceleration and
proliferation of its logic. As one of my teachers once said, "'post-'
means 'business as usual, only more so.'" :) And the fact that a
cultural practice draws on or is inspired by aspects of modernist
cultural practice doesn't necessarily mean that it manifests a desire to
return to modernism. I guess I'm just unclear on what relationship
you're setting up between modernism, postmodernism and "neo-modernism".
It's arguable (though I'm not necessarily arguing itthat neo-modernism
is the postmodern case par excellence.
By the way, there is one sense in which glitch is a culmination of
musical modernism. Since Webern, much modernist musical production has
been concerned with the atomization of musical material. This
atomization continued with the serialist pointillism of the Koln and
Darmstadt schools, in which the "point" replaced the line (melody) or
even the "note" (as an element of melody) as the fundamental musical
element. The arrival of the click may be the final destination of that
trajectory of atomization. But I'm still not sure that this would
demonstrate a desire to return to modernism, or that a return to
modernism would entail an abandonment of postmodernism.
ph
>best,
>
>ian
>
>
>Hi Ian,
>
>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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>> >
>>
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