Re: [microsound] the black, the white, and the Mutek @ Stylus

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

hi Nicolas,

The discussion is becoming piecemeal--due to the nature of the "replying"
form--and so I think I will break it off here, as I do not wish to argue for
a "truth" of the matter in a dogmatic fashion. We have both raised some good
points and productive ideas that I will--and already have--incorporated into
my thought and living.

Although rather reductively, I think I can characterise where we might
differ.

1. I think what you are proposing as a model of "god" to understand the
unknowable is often called, in other discourses, a "negative theology." I
would be wary of this, for reasons I think I have somewhat explicated, but
also for other reasons, of which I will not enter into here. I think the
concept of the divine, whether used in an apparently non-hierarchical form
or not, needs serious thought, interminable thought.

2. Although rigorously different, both fascism and structures of religion
bear a similar relation to language: of mystification and mastery.

3. I do not think we have a "purpose," nor any telos, whether toward order
or chaos or disorder or unchaos, and that this telos is a sign of the
attempt or discourse to "mastery," of what you call "order." "Purpose" and
"perfection" and the narrative of progress toward the latter are often
linked, as you propose.

4. I am wary of the desire for order just as I am wary for the desire for
chaos. As you mention, chaos is death. We are facing a double-bind. Perhaps
it is worth thinking seriously what Hakim Bey means when he says: "Chaos
never died."

5. Chaos is always-already the condition of (im)possibility for order; and
vice-versa. They shall remain as such until we shift the register of this
discourse to think in other ways.

6. There is nothing inherently mind-controlling about meter, nor any type of
sound. There is nothing essential to sound. It is only the discourse machine
that programs such ordered meaning, that tells us, prescribes to us, that
there is order, meaning, or control in sound, that actually performs this
control (although never completely, never without leaks, never without that
which, in its immediacy, is other to it).

That is probably where we differ; you might have some further thoughts on
this, but I think that may be as far as we can go at the moment.

Again, thanks for your words.

best,

tobias

>> Is not that which defies explanation--the mystical, the unknowable, of the
>> chaos that nonetheless contains meaning--the very *basis* of religious
>> hierarchy, and ultimately, the self-destruction of the order to chaos that
>> is fascism?
> 
> Dear Tobias,
> Chaos is a label we put on what we cannot understand. I say we must push the
> limits of our understanding of the world by "fighting chaos", by creating
> meaning, by complexifying our art and not reducing it to it's simplest form.
> Religion and fascism treat chaos in a totally different way than what I try
> to:
> Fascism by exploiting it (political ignorance, anger) and generating even
> more of it to the profit of self-desctuction.
> Religion by making this chaos sacred and untouchable in order to convince
> people into blindly accepting arbitrary moral values.
> 
> When I make an analogy with religion, I never want to reproduce this blind
> fate that characterize it in my vision of music; it's just a way to
> illustrate the way I look at it. To continue this illustration a little bit,
> I'd say that music in its ideal form is a god that keeps growing and growing
> toward a perfect organisation of the universe. I imagine a process that
> looks like that:
> 1st - God exists and exerts it's fascination, the illusion lives.
> 2nd - He then is separated into multiple gods wich repeat the process, the
> illusion gets fractalised.
> 
> This is just a way to illustrate an ever growing complexity of music by the
> incorporation of chaos into it; music as an expanding life form of our
> creation.
> 
>> Thus, from the
>> chaos of the unknowable, comes the mastery and control that drives the
>> magical experience of fascism, thus:
>> 
>>> Experimental music is a way to push the limits of the thinkable, to look
>>> deeper into chaos and give it a meaning.
>> 
>> I would tend to believe that one of the most highly anthropromorphic and
>> humanist constructions is the entire power structure of mysticism, i.e.
>> "god" itself--at least in the manner of which you describe, of giving
>> meaning to chaos; that
> 
> ---> one of the most powerful marks of an
>> anthroprocentrism is the drive to give meaning to that which is >chaos--to
>> that which *is* unknowable, to that which is wholly other, >and yet always
>> translated.<---
> 
> Yes, chaos is the unknowable but when chaos is given a meaning, it's no
> longer chaos for us; everything we believe in, every word we use, everything
> we think really just is pieces chaos and repetition of chaos from an outside
> perspective. The meaning exist in us and we must make it grow, not let chaos
> take over our minds. I think our purpose is to make sense of this chaos and
> to transform it into order, not to see it as a god or as a justification to
> destruction. He who let chaos take over his mind is on its way to death.
> 
> But, (and that's a huge but... got it? :) there's a huge difference in
> 1 - incorporating chaos into our order and
> 2 - considering chaos as something magical and mystical that has it's own
> counscious existence / meaning / supremacy.
> 
> I choose the first option, I see the second one as a mind control tool and I
> hope you understood that I never meant to use it in my message!
> 
>> 
>> What if I were to say: let chaos be chaos, and let us dance to the
>> asignifying rhythms between milieus?
>> 
> 
> I say chaos will always be chaos, but chaos is the opposite of life; life
> exist as an organisation of chaos. To me, to let chaos infiltrate you is to
> let yourself die.
> 
>> One of the mistakes that Deleuze and Guattari identify in their chapter on
>> Rhythm is that of associating rhythm with meter. I would argue that both
>> experimental music and rhythmic-based music offer the potential for sonic
>> deterritorialization, just as both contain the underlying conditions for a
>> closed line of flight, a fascist experience, a stratification into
>> hierarchy
>> and oppression, and that what is perhaps most frightening is the (perhaps
>> unwittingly) dangerous argument here: that one exceeds the other in that it
>> is in touch with the creative power of the mastery over chaos, and that the
>> other is somehow reductive and *essentially* dangerous, and thus, must be
>> excluded and denigrated, to bow to the higher, mystical order of the
>> unknowable rhythm. This is a basis for extreme violence.
>> 
>> best,
>> 
>> 
>> tobias
>> 
> 
> I completely agree about rhythm being not directly associated with meter;
> every sound has its own beautiful rhythm. The line is hard to draw between
> what I label as repetitive music and music with a complex structure. I like
> techno when the sounds are in a sense chaotic, when they impose themselves
> as an opposition to meter, like a life form that has its own existence over
> a strictly mesured rythm respecting the meter, it's just that this respect
> of meter is often exaggerated in techno and thus pathological. What I target
> most when I speak of repetitive music is music that has too little chaos in
> it, music that is too focused on an illusion of perfection caused by meter
> and tonality.
> 
> The chaos we include in the song no longer is chaos, it acquires a meaning
> and make the musical experience richer, greater. It is by including the
> chaos in music that we somehow make it disappear, that we transform it into
> something that has a meaning.
> 
> I enjoy having this very interesting discussion with you! You've cited a
> couple of thinkers that I'll add in my notebook...
> 
> Best too,
> Nicolas
> 
> alias Dynamite Bob
> http://www.besonic.com/dnb
> 
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tobias c. van Veen -----------
http://www.quadrantcrossing.org
http://www.thisistheonlyart.com
------------- tobias@xxxxxxxxx
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