[-empyre-] Re: empyre Digest, Vol 7, Issue 6

[Felix Sattler <felixsattler@web.de>]

hi glenn and all others,


Glenn Bach wrote:

> Unless microsound breaks out of the binary pop vs. art dialectic, it
> risks being a footnote to electroacoustic?

in my opinion it cant become a footnote of something that doesn't even
notice it.

while i am originally based at a fine arts college i also attended an
electroacoustic composition class that is linked to our school.
i experienced that although their has been great awareness of the fine arts
by the composers since john cage emerged in the 50s their seems to be a
general neglect of present developments that come from other disciplines.
mainly the net.sub.cultures have shown a wide-angle and open-minded approach
on sound that is derived from avant-garde electroacoustic music, popular and
club styles as well as an also highly visual approach and a combination of
visual techniques with sonic phenomena (as lots of the former entries to
this discussion have shown).

it is therefore rather sad that there has not been the same awareness on the
other side. 

anyway this isnt meant to sound too pessimistic, there might be a huge
chance for microsound and other actual sub.cultural-styles to become truly
acknowledged art forms of their very own if they dont have to emancipate
from being a footnote. the european serialist avant-garde has also long
shown disregard for the anglo-american composers such as cage (and later
christian wolff among others). eventually their breakthrough was not due to
them having to question the ideas of the darmstadt/paris school from inside
but due to their fresh and overwhelming approach from the outside.

anyway that's just for that, i am eager to see what will be on the
discussion as i find it very promising!

i also like to contribute to the software-pool by stating my favourites:

- max/msp now featuring the jitter video-component was already mentioned
before: http://www.cycling74.com
i reckon that as one of the most flexible solution for both algorithmic
sound and structure generation ; even if it is in some way a programming
language it is quite easy to use because it features an object oriented
environment with a nice gui

- "supercollider" is derived from the c programming language and demands a
bit more sophisticated usage as it lacks the objects and gui. therefore you
get sound-manipulation on molecular level: granular synthesis' favourite.
it is now available as freeware:
http://www.audiosynth.com/

- "soundhack" allows to use any file type (including text, images, video) to
become a source for sound and does a lot more, mainly spectral processing.
it is available for mac (os 9 and X) at
http://www.soundhack.com/

- csound will also perform a lot of weird synthesis stuff:
http://www.csounds.com/
 
if you are looking for solutions on the very edge you should also check out
the websites of french grm and ircam institutes. while grm has focused on
the development of intuitive vst/rtas-plug-ins (you can hear them on a lot
of contemporary compositions) ircam develops tools for spatial sound as well
as max/msp add-ons:
http://www.ina.fr/grm/outils_dev/grmtools/index.en.html
http://www.ircam.fr (also features an english site)

....and http://www.steim.nl will also be worth having a look at!

cheers

felix