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Re: [microsound] artificats?



What is the piano concerto, really? Is it the performance, or the score?

It can't be the score, because that would imply that a piano concerto
is only a conceptual art piece and the physical/material realization
doesn't matter (though if it were the score, then there's no reason it
can't be reproduced, since the score itself is probably already a
printed reproduction that could just as well be represented by digital
means).

But certainly, the piano concerto must be more than any single real
performance. No performance can exhaust the possibilities inherent in
a score - and that's assuming that the score is meant to be performed
verbatim. If, actually, it's a John Cage concerto, than every
performance might radically differ, making it extremely obvious that
no given performance can be identified as being more than one
possibility out of many.

It would be better, perhaps, to imagine the concerto as being the
score + all possible realizations of the work. Therefore, I argue that
a digital reproduction of a piano concerto performance, IS the piano
concerto, in the same way any given real performance is - ie. it is
just one possible realization of the work in a potentially infinite
series... And I don't actually place any special importance on the
non-materiality and reproducibility of the concerto in its digital
form.

It must add that these types of questions tend to lead in the
direction of rather pointless semantic games. Anyway, everyone knows
that hyperreality is superior to plain old "reality" ... ;-)

~David

On 12/5/06, Damian Stewart <damian@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Frank Barknecht wrote:

> Today a bunch of bits can be both the concerto and the compact disk
> quite easily.

Mm, bits are tricky like this; they lack physicality (even though they
are themselves based on /arrangements/ of physicality - electrons,
magnetic fields) yet they often describe physical things (movement of
air particles, patterns of photons, solid objects).

I think though that for a bunch of bits to 'be' a piano concerto, some
kind of translation has to take place. So it's more a case of a bunch of
bits being translatable to a concerto or a compact disk, rather than
actually being the concerto or the compact disk itself...

Interesting.

--
Damian Stewart
+64 27 305 4107

f r e y
live music with machines
http://www.frey.co.nz
http://www.myspace.com/freyed

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