[microsound] abstraction for art's sake

[Kim Cascone <kim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Also, it's sometimes a case of abstraction being more interesting than
> reality.  I mean, wow, this new thingy i made uses lasers which detect
> dust particles in the air and morph their 3 dimensional coordinates and
> velocity with data on the current x-ray levels coming from the sun.
> That's really cool, but gee, it sounds like tape hiss.  Why did I make
> this thing?
> 
> It's abstraction for it's own sake.  Hmmm, that could maybe be another
> interpretation of the 'sound art', 'music' schism.  The language of the
> process is emphasized rather than/as well as the experience of the sound.
% I would say that this resembles more a science experiment which yielded
interesting data but (possibly) little aesthetic value...this is the focus
of 'experimental music' (not the term electronica has glibly borrowed): to
take a theory or idea and implement it to see if it yields anything of
aesthetic or intellectual value...that being said, not all (but most of?)
experimental music is more about appreciating the process rather than the
output and needs to be listened to in a yet different mode of reception...

much of this type of thing can be heard in algorithmic composition, music
constructed from prime numbers, fractal music, genetic music, etc...in fact
much of this sort of thing winds up in the praxis of sonifying (as in
sonification) data...


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