[-empyre-] greets / welcomes: digital detritus, granulated [mix.1]

["tobias c. van Veen" <tobias@rhizome.org>]

hi Empyrites,


First -- thanks to all involved for making this possible. Empyre continues
to delight & my lurking self has been soaking in conversations for the past
few months when possible.. including getting myself into trouble but also
getting the chance to meet and talk with a few of you off-list and on.
Here's the narrative riff then ..



.ARCHIVE.HISTORY.

I feel a little nervous here as many others before me are far more
experienced in the histories & practices of .microsound. I am not a
recognised .microsound artist, although some may know of my comments to the
.microsound list and general involvement, perhaps "behind the scenes," in
organising & curating events, conferences and gatherings related to the
general fields of experimental audio (which for me also entails an
engagement with a radical politics).

In 2001 I organised a conference, "Refrains: Music Politics Aesthetics" that
hosted .microsound.org founder (one of the founders, I should say) Kim
Cascone as a speaker and performer, along with Steven Shaviro, Brady
Cranfield, Janne vanHanen, Steve DiPasquale, Charles Mudede, Michael
Jarrett, and (although he couldn't make it-- this was right after 9-11)
Trace Reddell. I mention this as several of the papers here went on to hit
Ctheory, where a writer & sonic artist friend of mine, Jeremy Turner,
interviewed Kim Cascone & Janne.. here's the links:

http://www.ctheory.net/text_file.asp?pick=322
"The Microsound Scene: An Interview with Kim Cascone"
-Jeremy Turner

http://www.ctheory.net/text_file.asp?pick=312
"Loving the Ghost in the Machine: Aesthetics of Interruption"
-Janne Vanhanen 

http://www.ctheory.net/text_file.asp?pick=323
"Neuro-Transmit Me These Empty Sounds: An Interview with Janne vanHanen"
-Jeremy Turner

& the archives of the conference can be found here:
http://www.shrumtribe.com/refrains/

& to sum it up, several other papers from the same conference formed the
core of the now infamous (at least within the micro.sound.scene) Parachute
issue devoted to microsound & launched @ Mutek 2002, number 107,
_electro_sons / electro_sounds:
http://www.parachute.ca/107/edito_sommaire.htm

& for those unaware of Mutek .. the Montréal festival of experimental
electronic music .. http://www.mutek.ca


SO .. to make a long story short, I've been interested in & involved with
.microsound for a few years, actively since 2000, which was perhaps when the
scene came together when Taylor Deupree founded 12k records & when I began
to shift my focus from (irony of ironies, & perhaps this is also where I
cross with Trace's perspective) occult performance-art & pagan ritual events
engaging Detroit Techno as a sonic myth to ways to engage differing sonic
experiences (I was getting heavy into LaMonte Young, among other things).

... Rewind: practically all through the '90s I was heavily involved in the
loose North American Teknival scene of anarcho-sonic collectives that spent
their time occupying land, reclaiming parks & warehouses and so forth in the
throes of organised (& to avoid confusion, I should say: anti-capitalist,
anti-commercial, non-cheezy) rave culture, which for me meant Afro-Futurism,
post-structural anarchism, and the poetics of sound... remixed with a good
dose of Bey's Temporary Autonomous Zone, Kristeva's chora, a very occult
reading of Derrida on deconstruction via AO Spare & the perhaps now cliché
travels through Deleuze & Guattari-- but all played out on the decks of the
techno-turntablist, massive soundsystems, jacked power, new moon darkness &
red robe ritual.. and etc... Thus by the time I hit .microsound, it seemed a
little academe, sterile, & lacking in the energy which I had associated with
radical electronic music insofar as what I was involved in was tied to the
currents of what was, at the time, the peak of electronic / DJ oriented
sub.cultures. [I now think this time is over -- I've posted a bit on the
shift from sub.cultures to micro.cultures here:
http://amsterdam.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0307/msg00035.html ].


So, needless to say I come to participating in .microsound both sonically &
at the critical & theoretical level through a history that digs back into
rave culture, Detroit techno, experimental audio & radio, net.art &
video.art & less a historical investigation of Western Art music of
classical or avant-garde training in these areas, although I should note I
am a student and academe of philosophy and the grey area known as cultural
studies/critical theory/deconstruction & so forth & I do (at least now) know
these histories (but also others far more engaging). But for me it's always
been "life" (the academes say "practice"), and the best way to think of this
has not been praxis but something closer to occult lived-experience .. hell,
durée, whatever. Thus I was also quickly drawn to the Net and BBS culture
when it arose in the early '90s which was inseparable with rave organisation
& cultural contact as well as the forming networks of global sub.cultures.

Side-mix: the Net for me has always been a radical means of dissemination as
well as presenting a diffuse textscape to re.work histories and archives, to
redefine events, and to pose events before their emergence in mythical and
magickal ways. In other words: tactical.media, hacktivism, infused with the
actual event-based Temporary Autonomous Zones of networked rave cultures and
other alternative living relays, bled through a working knowledge of
Surrealism, Situationism, and post-anarchism gained by remixing Hakim Bey
"for the moment" --

.. recombsine this cybermythscape with a dash of Afro-Futurism inherited by
being schooled in the traditions of Detroit Techno as a techno-turntablist
(mainly Underground Resistance, Jeff Mills et al) & remix to formulate the
Net as the playground of the <ST> projekt from '94-2002:
http://www.shrumtribe.com [what scant archives still exist].

That's probably enough of scratching this record. In any case, I've come to
formulate somewhat of a critique or at least an attempt to think-through
what Kim Cascone put forth in his _Computer Music Journal Article_, "The
Aesthetics of Failure" & his article in _Parachute_, perhaps because my
approach to .microsound in such that it defies either being placed in the
"pop" music or "art" music realms (the dichotomy that Cascone primarily
implies in his desire to see .microsound essentially move towards the
Western Art music tradition). Part of my argument against attempting to
"recuperate" .microsound against pop-music structures is that I often find
the nexus of Afro-Futurist & black diaspora electronic music, from reggae to
Chicago house, disco to Detroit techno, plays a logic (perhaps "Afrologic"?)
that simply dances around & past this basic & dated dichotomy (perhaps
"Eurologic"?). Theoretically, at least, I find myself often in agreement
with Achim Szepanski, the label-head of the _record label_ Mille Plateaux
which has been a forerunner in theorising areferential sound & utilising the
aesthetics of failure areferentially ("clicks and cuts") in a manner after
D&G's chapter on the "Refrain" in the _book_ Mille Plateaux. The record
label has also been massively influential in the micro.scene & one of the
prime labels showcasing attempts at clicks and cuts & other experimental
audio. Moreover, I remain fascinated by the label as its trajectory &
history is similar to my own, moving from hardcore techno in the early '90s
to minimalism & eventually parasitical sonic structures that leech popular
genres and the remixing of techno and house to form a diverse sound.

As for .microsound, the strata of barely-audible & often granular-synthesis
inspired works can be found primarily on Trente Oiseaux, 12K, and L_ne. A
little about the technical history: microsound owes much to not only
minimalism, and laptops and software as well as the entire post-rave
"whaddya we do now after the E has worn off?-syndrome", as well as the
interest of post-rockers in electronic music in general and the fact that
many contemporary electroacoustic students experienced rave culture and thus
the Chill Out room and house and techno, but the theorisation of "granular
synthesis" (GS) in the '70s by Curtis Roads. GS is basically quantum sound,
taking a sound wave and expanding it 3D into a cloud, into slivers of sound
that expand across time as well as in space. Matrix-sound. It's spot on with
what D&G are hoping for at the end of the Refrains chapter in MP. Practical
quantum sound. Throw in some indeterminacy algorithms via today's Max/MSP
software made by Cycliing '74 [http://www.cyclying74.com] and voila, instant
French Theory converted to sonic practice. The irony is that it's also a
perfect recipe for recuperation into high-art traditions... exactly what I
see D&G trying *not* to do. But back to the history wax-- GS saw its first
practical elaboration by Murray Schaefer's student Barry Truax at SFU in
Vancouver, BC in the mid-80s. Truax's computer programming made it happen,
basically, and it's to him we owe the code that we use today, as well as the
entire genesis of acoustic-ecology electroacoustic under Schaefer at SFU
(which includes a strong tradition of field recordings as well, which as I
note alongside Glenn, often accompanies microsound composition these
days-which is good, I should add). Although I went to UBC in Vancouver, this
history has influenced & continues to influence the sound.artists coming out
of the city (as well as strong Fluxus detritus & a radio.art tradition via
CiTR, & field recordings via Hildergaard Westerkamp, MIDI experimentation
from Ken Gregory and Janet Cardiff's soundwalks, but that's another
history).

But I don't think .microsound would have come together into the sonic
movement and theoretical moment it is today were it not for the laptop,
which remains a fascinating tool, machine, transactive box, posthuman
contraption, whatever-- it makes music, records it, spits it back out, and
allows one to distribute it digitally, however one theorises it as object or
symbol. The Net plays a major factor here. The influence of technology
cannot be overrated in the collective experience of the Net & what the Net
IS as compared to what granular (microsounds) ARE. Which is to
say--indeterminate data flows, becomings, algorithmic generation, & did I
mention data-- "Music is information" (Achim Szepanski) -- another remix of
Underground Resistance when they tell us that the music IS the message...

..alright, it's beginning to feel like we're digging into some kind of
neverending story here, but the point is that for me the Net has always been
a collective experience that is a direct link to the sound of its
collectivity, which for me is .microsound.  [Of note, all of "my" own work
is collective -- even if the "collective" is not a group of equal,
autonomous individuals]. The sound-experience today is one tied to a force
of events in the real, and even if surreal & hallucinated, the Net emerges
as the practical and ever-changing site of posing problematics of the
archive, of dreams, & of the "real" itself .. ie, of the very terrain of the
political, and what the political comes to be shaped as, experienced as, and
temporalized as as it crosses and moves from Net to (TAZ) event, often
through sound, through complex and masochistic relations of moving bodies,
through hierarchies of institutions and property, through Law and differing
nations -- there's a new word for this whole shebang now, or at least
getting packaged via Ctheory from Manuel de Landa: morphogenesis .. &
basically in sound, morphogenesis is granular synthesis, and GS is the
"core" of .microsound & .microsound is the sound of the Net, in a way. Not
only "in" the sound, but in the compositional technique (which owes a lot to
not only sampling, but random algorithmic processing, and Cage, for that
matter) and the distribution--although CD labels thrive, the click and cut
attaches itself to other genres as areferential tag-alongs, & moreover, the
primary media on the rise is the digital dissemination known as the Net.

[..bleed & flow from a sonic "subculture" & disseminate globally in
differing worlds -- 'art world,' 'dj world,' 'installation world,' 'academic
world', 'net world' .. ].


WELL, if you've made it thus far, congratulations. This is far too much but
I am unsure exactly how much the audience on -empyre- knows of this minor
history. My own work in writing, sound.art, techno-turntablism, digital
video, net.art, tactical media, performance-events & occult can be found
(somewhat partially) archived here:

http://www.quadrantcrossing.org
http://www.thisistheonlyart.com
http://www.shrumtribe.com
http://www.techno.ca/targetcircuitry
http://www.techno.ca/technowest



from our minds to yours,

tobias c. van Veen