[microsound] diffusion as an art-form

[greg g]

> it was very frustrating to work with someone who thinks computer music 
> is composed with a push of a few buttons and easily changed/modified 
> during a performance...



i think it's necessary that a good portion of the electronic music audience believes on some level that what they're hearing is "played" live to support the basic notions of what constitutes 'performance' that have existed prior to electronic music, when in reality that's hardly the case.  the performer usually tries to uphold this facade, and the shared suspension of disbelief is what most live laptop music seems to be based on, especially of the rhythmic type.  that's not to say that many audience members and performers don't realize they only have a limited role, and that there are other ways of enjoying an event than simply convincing everyone that a performance is in fact occurring, but that given the option, they (audience and performer) either downplay this aspect or ignore it as much as possible and focus on something else, either the sounds themselves, dancing, or watching the performer play a solo on one keyboard on top of what is clearly a pre-programmed backing track.  if the effect seems to be of no significance, consider how a dance show typically on a laptop or dj setup would go off if the performer just put on a cd in a discman and walked off stage.  there needs to be these performance signifiers such as turntables or a laptop and midi controllers to convince the audience, but in reality, the audience can't be empirically certain that that's really where the sound is coming from or exactly how much is pre-programmed and how much is real-time.

 

however, if you watch an electronic music performance with analog synthesizers or microphones, pedals, no preset memory patches, it's more or less all live, so i think this issue only really comes into play when one introduces tapes, cds, samplers, and laptops into the proceedings, a decision that should be taken seriously as a real paradigm shift regarding performance expectations.  on the other end of the spectrum, diffusion seems to be something to be avoided, only actual academic musicians and chin-scratchers really embrace this concept where the sound's accuracy to the composition is so critical that they go so far as to eliminate the performance entirely.  the rest out there seems to be an extention of the 'rock' performance world, and i think there's nothing wrong with that per se, but the problem is that in actuality, most of the 'dance/rock' oriented electronic music is just as preset as the academic stuff but with the pretense that it isn't, it still has the vestigial gestures and trappings of rock to provide a focal point and create the illusion of performance, because there's really no other option.  personally, i don't see that there is much merit in either approach, i have to create all the sounds in real time without presets or prerecorded sounds or i have trouble considering it a real performance, and i find that my favorite performances are ones in which i can be entirely certain as to what degree the sound is performed and preset (if at all).  sure, diffusion is a good idea in theory assuming everyone adjusts performance expectations accordingly, but i have trouble attending an event with all the trappings of a performance just to hear a prerecorded piece.  always a disappointment on some level, the music is never good enough to justify sacrificing the potential for a performance.  i'd rather just listen to it at home, even if it's poeme electronique and all the greats, as the case was with the san francisco tape music festival this past year.  i'd have preferred a real performance even if the actual sound was less organized or had no historical importance.  there simply isn't anything that can compare with a good real-time performance in my book, and these can be hard to come by in the electronic music world because they're seriously underrated in favor of controllable, predictable, "good"-sounding digital music, most of which has no performance justification at all.  better to sacrifice quality and compositional organization in favor of unpredictibility, viscerality, and audience participation.  actually, quality is pretty relative since most of the straight laptop performance stuff winds up sounding bad on top of being boring anyway.

 

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