Re: [microsound] data -> sound examples; subjectivity; pattern; rawness

[Mitchell Whitelaw <mitchell@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> on a tangent, i wonder if anybody here works with
> using something like soundhack to gather data for
> instrumental composition...

Gavin Stevens has posted on the databenders group about some piano 
pieces made by going bitmap -> WAV -> MIDI -> score...

> > > > forgetting (at least)
> > > > the subjective and relational dimensions that are involved.
> > > -Thereby reducing the inherent quality?
> > More subjective process always equals better art?
> better art strives or points towards the objective

Now we're getting somewhere :) To continue the pattern I will say 
"subjective." Or at least, this tendency strives towards the objective 
but the direction it's travelling reflects where it's coming from (the 
subject).

> It maybe that this urge to
> find unmediated sound structures ... is a
> very contemporary form of reification

Could it also (or instead) be idealism, an interest in "pure" pattern 
or form, with a consciousness of the arbitrary / limited nature of any 
realisation? Once again we're getting into Western Art Music territory 
here. In microsound/etc I think any such urge tends to be balanced by 
the sensory pleasures of _feeling_ data, wherever it may come from.

On the possibility or not of "raw data", maybe "pattern" is a concept 
that would help - so pattern could be opposed to format - it's the 
abstract content of the data. Question is, does the data contain one or 
many patterns? If the answer is many, then any mapping, any format, any 
ordering or scanning, will produce _a_ pattern, and are they all 
equally valid (or raw)? If the data contains _one_ pattern, then how do 
we find the format / mapping that reveals it? Or do we have to listen 
to all possible formats/mappings, and get a kind of Gestalt pattern? I 
think again you end up with subjectivity, as in use value or 
applicaton. The pattern you're seeking depends on what you want to do 
with it, on what you're listening for...

In the Listening to the Mind Listening project it was amazing how may 
reviewers were impressed that sonifiers had successfully turned 36 
channels of EEG/body trace into "music". Eureka! The brain, listening 
to music, sounds like music! It all depends what you're listening for.

Mitchell


Mitchell Whitelaw
Visiting Advanced Audio Interfaces, CSIRO ICT Centre
http://www.ce.canberra.edu.au/staff/mitchellwhitelaw


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