[microsound] "Post-Digital" and: [ot] Derrida

[Keith Dreizehn <dreizehn@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, 2004-01-18 at 14:17, philthom@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> > In a world
> > where we can all become music producers, where complex instruments are
> > relatively inexpensive because they're all on the computer, I'm curious
> > what you mean by 'post-digital.'
> When I say "post-digital" I am using (admittedly uncritically) Kim
> Cascone's term for recent digital music/audio, which isn't post-digital in
> the sense of not being made with digital technology (DT), but in the sense
> of having a less utopian attitude towards the potential of DT. For
> Cascone, "glitch" is post-digital because of its use of glitches and
> errors which highlight the imperfections of the medium in which it's
> presented.

i see the same term in the same light as post-punk or post-industrial -
an attempt to link something familiar to something "new" for purposes of
interpretive "legibility". i just did my first live show in years, using
a laptop running soundplant triggering samples of things i'd created in
PD and CSound that have absolutely no analog component until it hit the
D/A portion of my soundcard. while my methodology is completely digital,
the result could be (and was) called "post-digital", in that it
subreferences "digital" forms - hip hop, techno, house, ambient,
powernoise - but in a way that is only to "glue" the interpretive form
to what i'm actually doing.

similar arguments about "installation" art also apply. it's art because
it's in a gallery. it's art because it's in a museum. on the street
behind my apartment, it's just a pile of bricks. the genius loci
determines the interpretive format.

while i often agree with Kim's theory, in this i have to disagree - the
medium is the medium, the tool is a tool, and the message is the
message. what's vibrating our eardrums is simply what's vibrating our
eardrums and communicative interpretation is up to the
audience/observer. we can manipulate the context, but not absolutely
control it. legitimation isn't our problem - it's de facto through the
process of presentation.

in short, we're less composers and performers than producers. which
seems intimately related to Derrida's take on Barthes - the creation
seems to be over, but the critical process is what matters *now* at the
end of history. which makes the ultimate creative process examining an
individual's life.

but i think such navel gazing can be utterly counterproductive for the
most part. 

YMMV. have fun.
love, keith


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