dear dullard, here's your body : two junctures of sound and thought

["tobias c. van Veen" <tobias@xxxxxxxxx>]

    [[[aside:    dear dtaylor,

        Who wrote:

        "[... etc] Talk about music here, or shut the hell up, dullard."

        It is always fascinating, still & after 10+ years of net.culture, t=
o
        watch others embarrass themselves on the international stage -- for
        this is what this mailing list is. Still more hilarious when one
        meets certain people in person. When one, that is, touches their
        body.

    And as with Trace's request: this is not a reply; just a little aside
    before the meat.. tV]]]

 .. ---> In any case, I'd like to mention two things that shed some light o=
n
the links between sound, politics, the Net, and the body.

[1] The first is the "music sound noise [msn]" thread at
http://www.electronicbookreview.com, which will become active soon. Browse
the archives for some fascinating discussion that merges thoughts on sound
with the nature of the Net, textuality, and criticism.

[2] The second is a new column, which I think I can tentatively announce at
this moment, in the upcoming new electronic and experimental music magazine=
,
"e|I" -- http://www.ei-mag.com . e|I will launch in March. The column which
I am writing, to be tentatively titled (almost guaranteed)
"immediatism"--which some might recognise from the writings of Hakim
Bey--will explore the nexuses of electronic music, net.criticism, net.art,
digital and sonic politics, and its transitivity through the body.

In other disciplines or domains this is being shaped as "the politics of
touch" -- a name which I think begins to explore a re-opening of the body t=
o
gesture, to sound, to motion (which it always has been) in the study of, fo=
r
example, things such as sound. Sound is not separate, not an intellectual
moment which happens without the sweating physicality of the skin, the
organs, the ears. I find that in much music criticism and writing on sound
the body is often forgotten, displaced, played-down in its transactions wit=
h
other bodies through sound, in sound. (And all criticisms of Kahn's _Noise
Water Meat_ aside, his positioning of McLure is important in this respect).
Obviously "the body" has been a preoccupation since the dawn of "performanc=
e
art," but strangely it is the physicality of the body that is often mislaid
as the listening-interpretation necessity, similar to how N. Katherine
Hayles, in her new book called "Writing Machines," draws attention to the
differing materialities of textuality (the Net, the screen, papers, fibers,
layouts ..) -- through an invented personality, "K" (and is this also a
constructed body?).

 in cold Montr=E9al,

tV

tobias c. van Veen -----------
http://www.quadrantcrossing.org
http://www.thisistheonlyart.com
------------- tobias@xxxxxxxxx

[immediatism Columnist]
e|i magazine=20
http://www.ei-mag.com

[Literature Editor]
Capital Magazine
http://www.capitalmag.com

[Panarticon Columnist]
Discorder Magazine
http://www.citr.ca/discorder

[Resident Sonictician]
http://www.incursion.org
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