[microsound] the landscape(s) of microsound

[Glenn Bach <gbach@xxxxxxxxx>]

I have a question for the group.  How many of you practitioners are 
influenced or inspired by a sense of place in making your work?  By 
place I mean a specific geographical location (the city or town in which 
you live or were born, or visited), a dialogue between general and 
specific space (desert ecology vs. Joshua Tree, CA), or a sense of the 
vernacular landscape (apartment buildings, public plazas, billboards, 
freeway overpasses, storefront signage, etc.)?

The timbre and structure of microsound and its related tributaries 
generally suggest an abstract non-place (no there, there) or 
interstitial subatomic realm, as opposed to, say, phonography and field 
recordings, which are sonic snapshots of specific analog locales and 
which can also stand for a "type" of landscape (barking dogs recorded in 
rural Kansas, for instance, may also suggest a similar sound experience 
in a suburb in New Jersey).  (Apologies for the U.S.-specific references!)

(As an example, one of microsound's predecessors, Detroit Techno, has 
been interpreted as reflecting in some ways the stark and industrial 
landscape from which it emerged.  Does this carry through to its 
evolutionary/devolutionary strains?  Tobias?)

Is this something that you think about--your work being grounded in the 
place it was made?  Or is the "utopia" of the internet and its absence 
of material geography (although signals are filtered through servers and 
routers that sit in air-conditioned rooms that exist SOMEWHERE) a model 
for a disembodied aesthetic?  A combination of the two?  Neither?  Other?

G.


Kim Cascone wrote:
> have all the microsound philosophers been driven off the list
> due to the noise?


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