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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