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Re: [microsound] maths science and electronic music
On Apr 12, 2005, at 12:52 PM, morgan quaintance wrote:
This is a very important point, one that i feel i was trying to
insinuate in the beggining. I noticed alot of people were intimating
that their work could not be seperated from the process. Someone
referenced Xenakis, saying that they could not appreciate his music
without visualising the mathematical prcesses behind it.
I would like to suggest that this is because Xenakis makes bad music.
Now you've totally lost me. I don't know shit about the math behind
what Xenakis was doing, and don't really care. I think I said before,
it's the listener's choice whether she choses to analyze a work more
deeply, and Xenakis is a bad example of a composer who puts process
before product. Not to say it isn't done, but judging a composer's
music by subjective opinion is entirely the wrong way to go. I may be
totally into geeking out on that kind of stuff, but don't believe
that's required to let the work stand on its own as a piece of art.
Sometimes people need to find more than just the sound of a work
interesting in order to become enveloped by the art, but that is their
own outlook. Composers may think that the process is more important
than product because THEY are in the process, NOT the product. That is,
they have a hand in the creation of the art, so naturally the process
is important to them; they are searching for something in their
questions and methods, finding a key to the intuition or truth that may
only come about by a realization of an end product. Of course this is
completely different for improvising musicians, or people who interpret
other composers' work... you get the picture. With music it's not so
simple as making black-and-white choices to try and understand it;
oftentimes the composer would have you do nothing but listen.
It always confounds me how idm talk so much about their materials, its
like they are afraid to admit that what they are attempting to do is
make art because then we can judge it as such. I mean when was the
last time you heard Matthew Barney going on about his film stock. Or
for that matter, when was the last time you heard Autechre going on
about the importance of their max patches in the appreciation of their
music.
When is the last time you got into a discussion with Matt Barney or
Sean Booth? How do you know they wouldn't go on about their sources and
tools if you asked them to? The nature of the internet is that
information is shared, and the internet is where left-field artists
communicate and network. I see no problem with 'IDM' artists sharing
their methods and materials, and am not going to judge them regardless.
m
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