[microsound] gaza drone

[Kim Cascone]

> thanks for this post, kim.
>
> i have been thinking about this question since the initial post was  
> made.  i
> wasn't interested by the clip because it seemed to me more or less
> traditional program music, the sort of thing that would have a score
> including sequences for foley guys who would provide appropriate
> clippety-cloppity sounds when the horses on which the fox hunters  
> are riding
> zip across the pastoral environment just before the basses and  
> tympani start
> a froth to announce a coming thunderstorm.
this format of propaganda takes many forms -- the slideshow with  
folksong seemed to have been born in the 60's - when multimedia slide- 
show presentations were all the rage
[think elaborate worlds faire exhibits circa 1965 or so]
I can remember seeing similar things on TV e.g. Smothers Brothers show
the Vietnam war nurtured this style via 'protesters' or 'peaceniks'  
finding a way to express their views by appropriating techniques used  
in propaganda
in fact there was an essay written about the semiotics of Jane  
Fonda's newspaper photo of her sitting in a tank with some VietCong -  
I don't remember the writer (Barthes, Sontag?)
but I still think Godard was close to achieving an effective mix of  
politics and 'glitch' - i.e. the sudden, jarring collage of visuals  
and disembodied sound


>  the problem with that, beyond
> it's tedium, is that it presents a flatly representational surface  
> at a
> point where such surfaces are themselves politically (and  
> cognitively) a
> Problem.
this is the role of propaganda: to simplify/reduce complex subjects  
then categorize them into easily digestible labels
and while the Gaza YouTube video was considered out of context for  
the microsound list
it might have been the cartoon-like surface that led people to  
dismiss it out of hand
also, there is a cultural naivete when being presented with 60's  
style politics - one that induces a feeling of 'embarrassment' for some
although Obama seems to have resurrected a Web2.0 simulacra of this  
using the peace symbol and an abstracted 60's style poster art

> i think it's particularly difficult to make direct political  
> statements
> through frameworks that see in representation, and the conceptual  
> apparatus
> that enables it, an ideological problem.
this is why there is so little political statement in experimental music
there have been some interesting attempts of political expression by
Fredric Rzewski, Ultra-Red, Cardew, Art & Language, AMM, Gang of  
Four, Test Dept etc.
but none have really taken hold of the publics imagination in any way  
that deconstructs 'false consciousness'

see:
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/55565/ 
gang_of_four_and_pop_music_as_marxist.html

> i thinks this generates problems
> not only for bourgeois forms of representation (the conceptual  
> apparatus
> that you see made semi-material through television coverage of the  
> world,
> the tight focus on particular sequences of events, the erasure of  
> context,
> it's replacement with the voice-over which tells you what the sequence
> you're watching "really means" in terms which are synched in their
> arbitrariness to the arbitrariness of decontextualized
> factoid-reality...whence the operative power of the discourse of  
> "terror")
> and its marxian inversion.  i think the idea of "what's really  
> happening" is
> a problem, one that opens onto ontological-register work---and  
> newer forms
> of sonic organization can be framed as performing such work in that  
> the
> enact alternative approaches to information and it's organization-- 
> but this
> material (i suppose---i can't think of a better term at the moment,  
> even as
> i know this is not a good choice) doesn't operate itself as  
> argument or
> demonstration.  it requires the development of new analytic  
> frames,built
> along what amounts to an alternate ontology, that can operate  
> alongside new
> approaches to sound organization in a relation through which one  
> type of
> activity extends and informs the other.
the best political audio I've heard are the Chomsky lectures -- he  
seems to dig deep enough to get closer to what is 'really' going on

>
> and it seems to me that there is considerable distance to be traversed
> before such projects link to more conventional forms of politics,  
> of action,
> if they do.
agreed -- many of them have never even left the gate so to speak much  
less arrived at any definitive link

> it might be that the furthest "we" can go is to enact and  
> conceptualize
> alternate ways of thinking and seeing
very often though these 'think different' ways of seeing/thinking are  
rendered moot since any attempt to be outside the system (affording  
perspective) requires money/power which then places you back in that  
system
its the age old paradox of political commentary

> ----these may end up being
> self-referential---they may not issue into a way of thinking  
> politics that
> we know about--or it might.  either way, it seems to me there's an
> interesting set of adventures to be had, new modes of failure to be
> explored.
also agreed -- it's difficult to include political content in one's  
sound work given the context 'electronica' has: hedonistic,  
bourgeoisie, leisure, workers weekend catharsis...etc
then 'electro-acoustic' music has an academia link and represents an  
intellectual class that is currently not in vogue in the US
witness the rampant anti-intellectualism encountered here from time  
to time
and this presents yet another conundrum: where to find a platform  
that hasn't been leached of its ability to transmit messages without  
being delivered coated in 'cartoon-sugar' on its way to the receiver  
(sorry for invoking this communications model - especially after  
pointing out that it is woefully inaccurate and simplistic)

>
> i have trouble talking about gaza sometimes.
> it seems to me a massive confirmation of the ways fanon described the
> dynamics of colonialism as a process that corrodes occupier and  
> occupied,
> that issues into a kind of psychotic space structured by types of
> pseudo-rationality.
and it is exactly this psychotic space might be the place from where  
real political content can flow
one excellent example was Thomas Ashcraft: 'The Sounds of Dogs Eating  
The Faces Off Of Corpses In Iraq'
http://www.heliotown.com/Soundfields_From_Iraq_2007.html

it is this psychotic space (think: 'Apocalypse Now') that is bolted  
on to the side of post-modernism's fractured narrative
and one that could very well use microsound, glitch to help shape  
content
the accident or concept of failure intersects with the concepts of  
disorientation, disembodiment brought about thru informational overload
which also adds to the inability to 'know' reality via simulacra and  
mediation


> perhaps one could count the 400 fewer children who are
> alive in gaza after these past 3 weeks and arrange them as steps in  
> a proof
> that leads in this direction.
Gaza is a place of disorientation and psychosis - the children still  
alive are permanently scarred by this


>
> this seems to me to take you beyond folksongs that tell you  
> earnestly that
> situation in the world x really sucks.
yes - I guess what I was saying was that the YouTube video is a  
symptom of a larger machine - one that afford us all a privileged  
lifestyle, manipulated buying habits, predilections towards  
technological arts and objects, and leisure time to consume and  
produce artifacts made with this technology

it is this very machine that churns out this content which provides a  
surplus of psychic insulation and mirrors the technique corporate  
media uses to direct our thoughts and opinions
but that it found its way into the context of microsound is very  
interesting and raises many issues that are very worthy of discussion






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