Re: [-empyre-] aesthetics of failure, microsound literature

[Brendan Howell <mute@netaxs.com>]

On Mittwoch, August 20, 2003, at 01:26  Uhr, Glenn Bach wrote:

> 1.  We've already talked a little bit about technology and art, but 
> perhaps we can go into the idea of failure, of pushing technology past 
> its limits and using the resulting cracks, stutters, and fissures as 
> raw material for new work.  I'm thinking here of Cascone's essay on 
> the aesthetics of failure, among others: 
> http://www.mediamatic.net/cwolk/view/8470.
>
> How is this being used beyond simple technique?  In other words, is 
> work being made that addresses the idea of failure as structure, 
> strategy, etc.?

The best example I can think of is the German electronic musician Pole 
(Stefan Betke).  He takes his name and concept from a broken Waldorf 4 
Pole filter which produced a sort of clicky crackling sound.  The 
resulting music is a kind of mix of dubby basslines, organ licks and 
said clicky glitches looped up as the percussion.  The LP3 (the yellow 
one) is my personal favorite, although I have not heard the latest LP.

http://www.pole-music.com/content.html

There's also Oval who take a lot of their samples from the sounds made 
by playing scratched CDs.  It's a little harder to listen to but still 
pretty interesting.

There are more but that's all I can think of now.

I have to say, I love this capitalist materialist empire in the respect 
that it produces a rich body of junk (material and media) that I can 
have for free or very little and with a bit of effort and occasional 
cleverness, I can build something useful or beautiful.  It gives me the 
feeling that I'm getting away with something.  Of course sometimes it 
gets re-incorporated into the economy (witness vintage clothing) but 
the very wastefulness of it insures that there will always be plenty of 
crap for me to mine.

-Brendan