RE: [-empyre-] contra noiseless art



dear all

After posting my last comments and refering to composer Paulo C. Chagas, sharing with him the initial proposition for our November debate, Paulo sent me a letter of response that he wishes to share with the list, and i think it offers some good ideas to look carefully again at Hamed's reference to a negative theology. Perhaps we also need to look back at Sergio's notion of a negative utopia and understand his proposal as polemical and ironic.


Paulo Chagas writes: 

>>
I think it is a huge mistake to assume that the digital technology aims to  
reduce the noise of the world. I don't see any sign of such a utopia. 


In digital music, for example, music became an essential  
component of any sound synthesis process. There is even an aesthetics  
called "noise", which is very popular in Japan and Europe. Did Sérgio  
never hear hip-hop music? This is pure noise both as sound and  
cultural phenomena.

In opposition of Basbaum, I believe that the whole digital thinking  
intensifies the role of noise and randomness in your life and  
society. Kittler says that when he analyses the meaning of Shanon's  
theory of information. Flusser, although he doesn't talk about noise,  
emphasizes the chaotic nature of network communication. Sérgio is  
developing a linear interpretation of digital technology. There is no  
noiseless world at all, but a chaotic world where individual and  
relationships are been submitted to a process of re-construction  
which is essentially a re-introduction of noise in our lives. Digital  
technology makes clear how noise is part of your system. Putting it  
in terms of Deleuze&Guattari, digital technology has a powerful  
capacity of deterriolializing our "milieus" and generating all kinds  
of noise.

Benjamin was a marxist and Sérgio is making the mistake of projecting  
marxist thinking to his analysis of the impact of technology in  
current society. I highly recommend him to review the fundamentals of  
his thesis. Everything is noise today, go to the movies and you see  
and hear noise, see the people with i-pods on the streets connected  
to the world through noise. Come to California and you understand the  
noisy nature of technology. Walk on the streets of downtown São Paulo  
and see the people selling and consuming piracy technology. If piracy  
is not a noise I don't know what it should be. Our current  
environment is all noise and digital technology is embodiment of  
noise; it articulates noise in the social system.

I believe that Sérgio's view of noise and digital technology is  
marked by the idea of reproducibility of the medium, in the sense  
that digital media reproduces sound and images without noise. But he  
has to see that digital reproduction creates its own noise, which is  
from a different kind that the  noise generated by analogical  
processes such those described by Benjamin. Digital technology  
generates noise that have impact such as social, economic, cultural,  
genre, etc. For example, the essence of the "hackers" culture is to  
introduce noise in the system of digital communication. Terrorism is  
another kind of noise, as also piracy and many other things that  
haunts and threats our existence. Even the nuclear energy, which is  
essentially a liberation of noise, benefits from digital technoloy.  
This is what matter in our world, because this is how we use technology.


P C C



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