Re: [microsound] microsound and environmentalism

[Kassen <kassen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Galen Elfert asks;

> From reading this list I suspect that many of you are informed, both in
> your work and life, by an awareness of your impact on the environment.

Sounds reasonable to me.

> I'm curious to know how you reconcile this with your participation in
> an artform that seems to necessitate a high rate of consumption of
> objects whose rate of obsolesence  makes them virtually disposable, and
> whose materials imply potentially very harmful industrial means of
> production.

That would be a good question if we did, but do we? I´m typing this on a P1
133MHz that works perfectly fine for browsing and emailing, sitting next to
a stack of 70s analogue effects. Granted, the desktop I´m typing on no
longer satisfies me as a audio workstation and I felt the need to get a
seperate laptop for that but I don´t feel the old effects lost any of their
charm since they were build. From my own perspective my gear actually grows
in usefullness over the years as I get to know it. You could, for example,
considder the Nord Modular obsolete now that the G2 is released but as my
technical skills grew, my own N.M. became more and more usefull to me.

Suppose we were into making the currently fashionable kind of dance music
(and thus change tastes once per half year or so). We would indeed have to
buy the latest preset sequencer/workstation/soundbank to stay up to date and
have electro sounds once techno is out of fashion. That would indeed be
wastefull (not mention expensive!) and I strongly suspect that this very
thing is happening right now in other circles. Who else would buy the
products currently seen at music stores?

Not only do I throw away very little music related stuff, in fact friends
give me their "trash" as often there will be some bits in there worth
salvaging or perhaps the whole thing might be reused for some purpose.

I don´t mean to present myself as some environmental saint, I merely keep
the environment in the back of my head. Most of these things have other
external reasons. I like the sound of old effects, I hate shopping for
clothes so buy quality heavy stuff once, then wear it for ages. A leather
back pack is nicer to cary than plastic bags, especially if you walk
everywhere if possible. There too the environment is only a side factor as I
simply like the peace of mind walking brings. In the Netherlands for single
persons trains are still cheaper than cars, you can read on them and between
the major cities they are actually faster due to traffic problems. I´ll take
it :¬).

In short; yes, I´m a modern western person and so one of the worst things
the environment has ever seen but within that context I don´t feel
especially bad or guilty.

Yours,
Kas.



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