[microsound] 1 bit symphony

[Andrew C. Smith]

Can I dig this back up? I think it's an interesting discussion...

> Why does everything have to be meta? For some time now, it has seemed
> that artists and musicians are more interested in talking about the
> concepts behind their work than actually working.

What do you mean by "working"? Do you mean creating something? Why can't a concept be something? And, to his credit, Perich totally hand-made these things rather than just burning a CD of some chip-tunes, in part (I think) to emphasize the physicality and fragility of the object. 

If you've ever been to a Loud Objects performance (where they take soldering irons to microcontrollers that are actively generating 1-bit sound, and all the work is done on an old-school overhead projector) you get this sense of something physical and unpredictable happening.

> If you were really immersed in your work, there is no need for
> language to explain your thought. The work itself says all that needs
> to be said; if you could put it into ordinary words, what would be the
> point of creating the artwork?

There's no such thing as being immersed in your work (How are you defining "work"? Just the music? Just the words? Why can't both constitute the "work"?). Thought is mediated by language–whether that language is linguistic or musical–and so, as far as I'm concerned, using a second mediator to convey a thought does no great harm. This isn't a crutch; it's interdisciplinary.

The point is that you can't put it into ordinary words, just as you can't put it into only music. If something could be reduced to only music, how would that be any better than reducing it to only words?

Reminds me I need to read this list more often...

Andrew