Re: [microsound] toplap_manifesto

[vze26m98 <vze26m98@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Tobias-

I'll admit to intrigue as well and certainly am cognisant of the
authorial potential for this type of presentation.  But I'm hesitant to
frame the issue in a simple opposition of written and oral cultures.

I'm not sure that a participatory relation to music is an exclusive of
oral cultures; the final hour of Lucino Visconti's _Il Gattopardo_
locates dance/ritual/movement/social as central to the modern era.  And
I'm not sure that the toplap guys are thinking "participatory" in the
same way that you or I would consider it.

There are some nuts to crack in the Xenakis quote and I wonder what he
must have meant by happenings.  It's not clear to me he would have been
aware of Alan Kaprow's work or whether he might have been thinking of
Fluxus activity or even some other manifestation.  But the quote is
taken from an essay that is involved with universalizing "outside time
structures" so that they might also include the contribution of musics
beyond the european canon.

I couldn't find the Shipp quote about Xenakis, but a quick search of
Spooky's site turned up this:

"I view Xenakis as the first composer to consciously build linkages
between multi-culturalism, architecture, high end Western scientific
culture, and an idealistic sense of trying to create dialog between
different ethnic groups and generations. A phenomenon that one sees all
too rarely in the literary, art, and classical music realms. He was a
big hero to me, and I think that with his passing away in the 21st
century, the world lost a great voice in the struggle to create a more
progressive culture in music."

DJ Spooky, <http://www.djspooky.com/articles/xenakis.html>

Are you sure you weren't thinking about Shipp's comment on Boulez?

Xenakis' point about "imprecision" is admitted by one of the toplap
people, Frederik Olofsson:

"It was a big event and I screwed up totally. I did not rehearse
properly due to my redesign of the framework up until the last minute.
And during the set my brain went into chimpanzee mode as so often when
performing. I could not keep all things in my head controlling video and
music simultaneously so both stagnated for long periods of time while I
tried to think clearly. Add to that that the projector was horrible and
my video effects possibly a little too brutal so the mess was totally
unreadable. Me still shivers when thinking about it. So I figured I
needed to start rehearsing livecoding on a daily basis, as any
instrument, and also fully automate certain things (like the video part)
and that is where I am still at."

<http://toplap.org/?Read_Me_Paper>

I especially like his promise to "fully automate" portions of his
performance, which seems to take us full circle.

Best,

Tad



<vze26m98@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>

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