Re: [microsound] being 'political' in non-verbal music

[Bill Ashline <ashline@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 6/22/05, jeff gburek <tsazmaniac@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> All sounds occur in a context. More specifically, all
> sounds occur in the primordial context of "hearing".
> So sounds are, like linguistic signs, always tending
> toward contextualization(s) and therefore tending
> toward meaning(s). None of this occurs in isolation. I
> recall from live Derrida "set" hearing him say (in
> English, and I quote from memory) "This idea that the
> sign is detachable from the signifier, this is
> insignificance itself". 

But Derrida also talked about the "arbitrariness" of the sign, which
means that no sign attends inherently to any particular meaning but
comes about, rather, through a social practice.  It is a mistake as
well to assume that linguistic signs and sonic ones are of the same
order.  They are nto.

>I think it is a big
> mistake to decide that sound has no meaning. I think
> it is more true to say there is always the potential
> to become meaningful.

But the idea that sound has the "potential" to become meaningful
assumes already that it isn't  meaningful outside of its potential,
which is exactly my point.

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