Re: [-empyre-] 'new media' -> future

[Henry Warwick <henry.warwick@sbcglobal.net>]

The Voices in my Head tell me that on 1/10/04 6:37 PM, Anna Munster at
A.Munster@unsw.edu.au wrote:

> Henry your comments about the post-digital in music(via Cascone) are also
> complemented by post-digital painting
> (see the blurb for an exhibition on this at
> http://www.cranbrookart.edu/museum/postdigital.html)


thanks for the link. I've been doing paintings based on computer generated
imagery since 1994, so it's oddly re-assuring to see that site.

 
> the 2 uses I think aren't the same in that Cascone also rightly points to
> the way in which post-digital music uses DSPs to get at something which
> technologies usually like to seamlessly glide over - ie the accidents,
> noise and failure of those very technologies.

Exactly. Which, from what I can gather, made Markus Popp's Glitch software
kind of a strange beast - instead of taking a nail to the surface of a CD
and play it on a CD player that was left out in the rain and then kicked
down the stairs, one just runs audio tracks through this software which
"glitches" it. In this way, the audio signifiers of working outside of the
digital are replicated within the digital - accidents and failures can be
simulated.

I saw Kid 606 and a fellow from Matmos (name escapes me, as usual) who did a
set this summer, and he was literally shaking a rather expensive DJ CD
player around, and banging it on the table. Made for some intense
skippiness. I thought their set was pretty weak, but for other reasons (the
doof doof beat was gratuitous and the sounds were loud bordering on
unlistenable). However, what he did with the CD player was *very*
interesting and high risk.
 
> Whereas the idea of post-digial in painting seems to be more - painting
> after the ubiquity of the computer.

MMmm, I dunno. In my painting I use the computer as a way to run through
sketches really fast. I could sit and do it all with pastels and pencils to
knock out sketches, but if I don't like the colour, it could take a long
time to "fix" it, but in Photoshop, it's a magic wand selection and "Fill
With Foreground colour" away... Saves years of time.
 
> And yet, interestingly, both point to a kind of acceptance of computation
> and a move outside of or towards differentiation within the computational...

I think an acceptance of the computational is a good insight: there's no
particular focus on it: it is there to serve painting, not itself. It's a
big electronic pencil, with some grand capabilities. And the final
responsibility lies with the work; insofar as the computer enables the work,
it is useful.

HW