Monday, December 15, 2003
One way
And you tell me, my friends, that there is no disputing of taste and tasting? But all of life is a dispute of taste and tasting. Taste - that is at the same time weight and scales and weigher; and woe unto all the living that would live without disputes over weight and scales and weighers!
(Nietzsche, TSZ II, 'On Those Who are Sublime')
It just hit me. Actually, it's always just hitting me, and those of you who know me well know well this fact. The answer that p[k] gave at that lecture last year in Kyushu at KID that I was attending that seemed so right at the time seems so wrong now. Someone asked him why he used MAX, and among other things, he said that now, with his real-time chops, he could do an extended set at the drop of a hat if called upon in such a fashion. I recall him saying 5 hrs. or more, or was it 7 hrs.? Not that it matters. It might as well be 7 days. Yes, I like the ring of that. A kind of 'Aus den sieben Tagen' for DJ and catatonic audience. Didn't someone once say something about giving audience members a refund on a sliding scale the longer they attended a performance of one of Feldman's more glacial works? "So...that'll be 3500 yen at the door, and 3500 yen when you leave at daybreak." Sure, why not?
Well now Marx would have a field day with this, wouldn't he? You know what I mean, and I'll spare you the socioeconomic explanation. Of course, our dear friend p[k] (who is indeed my dear friend) has become more efficient at doing what he does, but is this really something that I should be aiming at? (Naturally, I have multiple targets.) I'm speaking in artistic terms here. We'll have to put Marx back on the shelf for the time being.
It's all much to much on the glorified DJ side of things...and for that reason suspicious. I do tend prefer something like what Tujiko does (or even Nick for that matter). When she goes on, you know that there will be no more than around 1 hr. of material, it's all 'perishable' and her presence/sexuality/pathos, invokes words like 'DIVA' in my mind. And why not? She is not 'backgroundable' like the garden-varity microsound DJ. In fact she carries her own spotlight (or is it black hole?) around with her. Rarefied, but in a good way. A singularity. What's the word? Elite i suppose, in the older sense...before it got resented. What can I say?!? Her 45 min. is worth more than p[k]'s 5 hrs., and it's as complex as that. Is this a kind of fixity a ballast to the lightness of (sound)art in the age of infinite (ad infin.?) reproduction? Perhaps. If so it is a welcome one from my point of view.
Anecdote time...And speaking of Stocky...Just how many months DID it take for Stockhausen to make Studie II with his little razor blade and spools? And even then, with all of his painstaking efforts, he, the unassailable Maestro actually made a mistake! Yes that's right, you heard right! In one of the seminars that I attended in Kurten, the formidable composer/theorist Flo Menezes showed us (with a Csound reconstruction of the work...brr...) that Karlheinz had left out one small bit of spliced tape that he actually called for in his own score. Perhaps it blew off the table and ended up on the floor. Anyway, there is a beautiful hole in Studie II. And thankfully this horrid transgression was 'corrected' in the handy-dandy systematized Studie II file that we get bundled in MAX/Msp. Thank goodness that objective improvement is finally possible in art, without which it has been somehow been hobbling along, going on about oh...eons I guess.
But we have to consider the zigzag factor here. Again, if you know me this is old hat, but please do hear me out. The most obvious chink in the armor of the zigzag aesthetic that will be exploited (at first somewhat successfully I might add) by it's detractors is the simple observation that on one level, it's nothing more than a knee-jerk reaction. From a certian point of view, this is objection is sustainable. Nevertheless there ARE different levels of the phenomenon at play here, and the upper echelon is what I most admire. Here is a quick rundown of a few possible scenarios:
---------
KID 'A': Doesn't know diddlysquat about real-time computer music. "You can make music with a
WHAT? Gee...I thought computers were just for porn and downloading mp3s"
ZIGZAG FACTOR: no zig, no zag, no observable cerebral activity.
PROGNOSIS: Since this character is becoming more and more aberrational, no comment for now. I suppose there are still a few people (either in the Third World or in inner-city America) on earth who genuinely aren't aware of computers. I'll await the actual demise of this group before beginning my eulogy. Here for once time is on my side.
NOTE: The paradoxy of this rubric is worth an extended discussion in itself, since premeditated anachronisms, various naive 'folk' musics and even some fundamentalist experimental musicians are all present.
COMMENTS: Forget your roots.
---------
Kid 'B' - With a remedial knowledge of the subjet, but no advanced applied knowlege, for one reason or another, determines that the genera is, categorically, not suitable for him. So he makes the choice to rock it out in non-real-time (or perhaps speaking in more abs. terms, REALER TIME) occasionally employing collaborators/'skins' and whatnot to taste (just like cooking, right? "Hummm...this track needs just a PINCH of DSP.") Will this music suck? That we cannot say. However, if we observe that Tujiko (she claims not to have advanced technique) and Hypo are examples of this type, and that they most assuredly do NOT suck, there is MUCH to be said for this approach.
ZIGZAG FACTOR: Some zig, lots of zag. The action is pretty good here. Would that their luscious, gaping aesthetic holes never get 'Pluggoed'! Viva la France...
PROGNOSIS: So far, so good.
COMMENTS: Never forget your roots.
---------
Kid 'C': The purist camp. EXEMPLI GRATIA? Well, let's just say it's someone who likes to 'keep it in the box' or whatever that means. Well, so be it. As long as he's aware (I'm sure he is, somewhere deep down inside) that consequently, things sometimes sound like the box in which he likes to keep 'it' in is on the verge of becoming instead a cage, and furthermore, one from which the sounds themselves could stand to be let out from to play on occasion. Don't worry, they'll come back when called.
ZIGZAG FACTOR: All zig, no zag.
PROGNOSIS: none
NOTE: It must be easy to sleep at night, being so...sure...and all.
NOTE TO SELF: If anyone out there is free for coffee sometime, let's chat about the American techno-materialist (mis)interpretation of early 20th century European musical minimalism (e.g. Giacinto Scelsi).
COMMENTS: Get a root transplant.
COMMENTS TO SELF: Prepare to get a root transplant.
---------
Kid 'D': Musical aesthetes with genre blenders set to 'puree'. Yes, we're talking about the likes of Jim O'Rourke. I for one don't hate him. It takes big balls, big brains and a lot of time (working on your patches) to go from from pop to laptop to lappop. Dipping into an old interview that Roddy Schrock gave me a few years ago, I find that I still stand beside what I said with only the slightest of mods. "These days, I'm into kids who have read and understood and mastered [whatever functions as the 'Die Reihe' of their generation] but have choosen to transcend the musical implications anyway, and just be laptop rock stars. A kind of enlightened, new-music, punk aesthetic." (1999.01.07) That kind of bragging that kids do comes to mind here, but in an inverse form. Something like a 'my patch could beat up your patch' kind of thing, but then since you really do know that your shit could go toe-to-toe with whatever, that instead makes you think "OK...Next?"
ZIGZAG FACTOR: mucho ziggo, mucho zaggo!
PROGNOSIS: processing...
NOTE: none
COMMENTS: root, root, root for the home team!
----------
TO BE CONTINUED....
(Nietzsche, TSZ II, 'On Those Who are Sublime')
It just hit me. Actually, it's always just hitting me, and those of you who know me well know well this fact. The answer that p[k] gave at that lecture last year in Kyushu at KID that I was attending that seemed so right at the time seems so wrong now. Someone asked him why he used MAX, and among other things, he said that now, with his real-time chops, he could do an extended set at the drop of a hat if called upon in such a fashion. I recall him saying 5 hrs. or more, or was it 7 hrs.? Not that it matters. It might as well be 7 days. Yes, I like the ring of that. A kind of 'Aus den sieben Tagen' for DJ and catatonic audience. Didn't someone once say something about giving audience members a refund on a sliding scale the longer they attended a performance of one of Feldman's more glacial works? "So...that'll be 3500 yen at the door, and 3500 yen when you leave at daybreak." Sure, why not?
Well now Marx would have a field day with this, wouldn't he? You know what I mean, and I'll spare you the socioeconomic explanation. Of course, our dear friend p[k] (who is indeed my dear friend) has become more efficient at doing what he does, but is this really something that I should be aiming at? (Naturally, I have multiple targets.) I'm speaking in artistic terms here. We'll have to put Marx back on the shelf for the time being.
It's all much to much on the glorified DJ side of things...and for that reason suspicious. I do tend prefer something like what Tujiko does (or even Nick for that matter). When she goes on, you know that there will be no more than around 1 hr. of material, it's all 'perishable' and her presence/sexuality/pathos, invokes words like 'DIVA' in my mind. And why not? She is not 'backgroundable' like the garden-varity microsound DJ. In fact she carries her own spotlight (or is it black hole?) around with her. Rarefied, but in a good way. A singularity. What's the word? Elite i suppose, in the older sense...before it got resented. What can I say?!? Her 45 min. is worth more than p[k]'s 5 hrs., and it's as complex as that. Is this a kind of fixity a ballast to the lightness of (sound)art in the age of infinite (ad infin.?) reproduction? Perhaps. If so it is a welcome one from my point of view.
Anecdote time...And speaking of Stocky...Just how many months DID it take for Stockhausen to make Studie II with his little razor blade and spools? And even then, with all of his painstaking efforts, he, the unassailable Maestro actually made a mistake! Yes that's right, you heard right! In one of the seminars that I attended in Kurten, the formidable composer/theorist Flo Menezes showed us (with a Csound reconstruction of the work...brr...) that Karlheinz had left out one small bit of spliced tape that he actually called for in his own score. Perhaps it blew off the table and ended up on the floor. Anyway, there is a beautiful hole in Studie II. And thankfully this horrid transgression was 'corrected' in the handy-dandy systematized Studie II file that we get bundled in MAX/Msp. Thank goodness that objective improvement is finally possible in art, without which it has been somehow been hobbling along, going on about oh...eons I guess.
But we have to consider the zigzag factor here. Again, if you know me this is old hat, but please do hear me out. The most obvious chink in the armor of the zigzag aesthetic that will be exploited (at first somewhat successfully I might add) by it's detractors is the simple observation that on one level, it's nothing more than a knee-jerk reaction. From a certian point of view, this is objection is sustainable. Nevertheless there ARE different levels of the phenomenon at play here, and the upper echelon is what I most admire. Here is a quick rundown of a few possible scenarios:
---------
KID 'A': Doesn't know diddlysquat about real-time computer music. "You can make music with a
WHAT? Gee...I thought computers were just for porn and downloading mp3s"
ZIGZAG FACTOR: no zig, no zag, no observable cerebral activity.
PROGNOSIS: Since this character is becoming more and more aberrational, no comment for now. I suppose there are still a few people (either in the Third World or in inner-city America) on earth who genuinely aren't aware of computers. I'll await the actual demise of this group before beginning my eulogy. Here for once time is on my side.
NOTE: The paradoxy of this rubric is worth an extended discussion in itself, since premeditated anachronisms, various naive 'folk' musics and even some fundamentalist experimental musicians are all present.
COMMENTS: Forget your roots.
---------
Kid 'B' - With a remedial knowledge of the subjet, but no advanced applied knowlege, for one reason or another, determines that the genera is, categorically, not suitable for him. So he makes the choice to rock it out in non-real-time (or perhaps speaking in more abs. terms, REALER TIME) occasionally employing collaborators/'skins' and whatnot to taste (just like cooking, right? "Hummm...this track needs just a PINCH of DSP.") Will this music suck? That we cannot say. However, if we observe that Tujiko (she claims not to have advanced technique) and Hypo are examples of this type, and that they most assuredly do NOT suck, there is MUCH to be said for this approach.
ZIGZAG FACTOR: Some zig, lots of zag. The action is pretty good here. Would that their luscious, gaping aesthetic holes never get 'Pluggoed'! Viva la France...
PROGNOSIS: So far, so good.
COMMENTS: Never forget your roots.
---------
Kid 'C': The purist camp. EXEMPLI GRATIA? Well, let's just say it's someone who likes to 'keep it in the box' or whatever that means. Well, so be it. As long as he's aware (I'm sure he is, somewhere deep down inside) that consequently, things sometimes sound like the box in which he likes to keep 'it' in is on the verge of becoming instead a cage, and furthermore, one from which the sounds themselves could stand to be let out from to play on occasion. Don't worry, they'll come back when called.
ZIGZAG FACTOR: All zig, no zag.
PROGNOSIS: none
NOTE: It must be easy to sleep at night, being so...sure...and all.
NOTE TO SELF: If anyone out there is free for coffee sometime, let's chat about the American techno-materialist (mis)interpretation of early 20th century European musical minimalism (e.g. Giacinto Scelsi).
COMMENTS: Get a root transplant.
COMMENTS TO SELF: Prepare to get a root transplant.
---------
Kid 'D': Musical aesthetes with genre blenders set to 'puree'. Yes, we're talking about the likes of Jim O'Rourke. I for one don't hate him. It takes big balls, big brains and a lot of time (working on your patches) to go from from pop to laptop to lappop. Dipping into an old interview that Roddy Schrock gave me a few years ago, I find that I still stand beside what I said with only the slightest of mods. "These days, I'm into kids who have read and understood and mastered [whatever functions as the 'Die Reihe' of their generation] but have choosen to transcend the musical implications anyway, and just be laptop rock stars. A kind of enlightened, new-music, punk aesthetic." (1999.01.07) That kind of bragging that kids do comes to mind here, but in an inverse form. Something like a 'my patch could beat up your patch' kind of thing, but then since you really do know that your shit could go toe-to-toe with whatever, that instead makes you think "OK...Next?"
ZIGZAG FACTOR: mucho ziggo, mucho zaggo!
PROGNOSIS: processing...
NOTE: none
COMMENTS: root, root, root for the home team!
----------
TO BE CONTINUED....
