Art Brut & The Apocalypse [was: a variety of questions and comments]

[Keith Dreizehn <dreizehn@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

[avec snippage majeur]

Peter Becker at pbecker3@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> new topic- Art Brut
> 
> Is there space for Art Brut in microsound? I'm guessing no but am curious.
> I think that relative "intelligence" ( or at least the ability to read a
> 2,000 page digital music making user manual ) would prohibit a Brut take on
> making microsound. Am I off base here?

yes. no. possibly.

here's why - Dubuffet saw art brut as a final accomplishment of the
Surrealist goal of bypassing the conscious production of art in favor of the
compulsive act of creation. parallel to that was what art brut *became* - a
primitive, unschooled approach to art production that featured a divergent
aesthetic based on idiom (paint drips, chalk smudges, etc.) and evocative
response.

at least that's my take after a couple of art history classes that i rarely
put to use. YMMV.

so, does microsound fit any of these parameters? my main source of clicks
and pops are from the recording process, isolated and amplified - which fits
easily into the "idiomatic" portion. there's a considerable amount of
academia to microsound - the 2M pg. manual referenced, i think - yet there's
a certain punk/DIY aspect to the IDM/glitch n' bass/dub school of microsound
(well, at least for me - i'm just a punk who barely put up with the theory
class in high school band and never went further).

i think we've talked the instictive/intellect angle to death already...

so, again: yes. no. maybe.

> finally
> Tim Kugel mentioned,
>> Is microsound the soundtrack of an apocalyptic time? Or a [another]
>> return to> science in art? Is it divorced from such meanings for most of us
>> here? Or not?
> It always been the end of the world. The apocalypse is a myth. So microsound
> would indeed be one soundtrack of an apocalyptic time, the one we happen to
> live in at this moment. I don't think microsound is a -return- to science in
> art. That's been here all along as well.

1 - apocalypse is derived from the Greek word that best translates as
"revelation." if you can see noises becoming musical material, then an act
of revelation has occurred and microsound becomes apocalyptic soundtrack...

2 - in Christian dogma, the eschaton is imminent and the apocalypse as end
of world is at hand. any music that is being invented in the "End Times"
would thus be a soundtrack for the end of the world. look at the
contemporary criticisms of any "western" music created during the last
1970-some years and a recurring theme appears: the critic will often say
that the new music isn't music - it's noise. personally, i enjoy hearing
Beethoven dismissed as "absolute dissonance" and JS Bach as "cold and
indifferent" - it helps me realize that the bastards have always existed and
that it takes a special sort of loser to be a critic and always miss the
point.

keeps me from getting angry at the idiots who've been defacing my guestbook
at IUMA with their stupidity. i mean, how stupid do you have to be to
misspell "fuck"? 

love, keith

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