[microsound] Re: commentary on one-copy label

[Daniel Bennett <pavementsands@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

It's an odd idea, and I'm surprised someone like Keith Rowe with his
background in pop-art would go for it.

The thing about recorded music on vinyl (or cd/digital media, etc.) that
marks it out from painting etc. is that it's very production entails
reproduction. If you were to sell the master 8track tapes or something
similar then the concept would be more consistent - but what you're selling
is already a copy - and the process requires that you make 300 copies. Each
of those copies will be more-or-less perfect. There is no loss.
If you photograph a painting, you fix it under specific lighting, at a
specific perspective, with a particular grain, and you change it's surface
from canvas to PC screen/  etc. If, on the other hand you produce another
vinyl copy from the master you'll have another copy indiscernable from the
"original" one off disc that you sold. That potential is always there and
doesn't go away because you declare it an edition of one.

As for trying to raise music to the level of the other art forms, this
effort looks a bit like a training a labrador to eat hay and live in a
stable - it's still a dog, just a dog that looks a bit funny.
I don't see what is gained by only having one copy - I don't think you
regain some kind of Benjaminian "Aura" because as I say, the *potential* for
perfect reproduction remains untouched. Since reproduction is written
into the definition of recording, this looks like an attempt to raise a
"low" (because economically inclusive?) artform to high art by simply
mimicking the conservative (and economically exclusionary) practices of fine
art.

I don't think you're being intentionally elitist, but I do feel that you
have to think very hard about why you would take a comparatively inclusive
mass-media form and go out of your way to make it inaccessible. You'd have
to get a pretty decent aesthetic payoff to justify the effort and the
effects.