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<blockquote type="cite" class=""><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">thanks for this post, kim.</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">i have been thinking about this question since the initial post was made. i</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">wasn't interested by the clip because it seemed to me more or less</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">traditional program music, the sort of thing that would have a score</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">including sequences for foley guys who would provide appropriate</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">clippety-cloppity sounds when the horses on which the fox hunters are riding</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">zip across the pastoral environment just before the basses and tympani start</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">a froth to announce a coming thunderstorm.</div></blockquote><div>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</div><div>[think elaborate worlds faire exhibits circa 1965 or so]</div><div>I can remember seeing similar things on TV e.g. Smothers Brothers show</div><div>the Vietnam war nurtured this style via 'protesters' or 'peaceniks' finding a way to express their views by appropriating techniques used in propaganda </div><div>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?) </div><div>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</div><div> </div><br><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> the problem with that, beyond</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">it's tedium, is that it presents a flatly representational surface at a</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">point where such surfaces are themselves politically (and cognitively) a</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Problem.</div></blockquote><div>this is the role of propaganda: to simplify/reduce complex subjects then categorize them into easily digestible labels</div><div>and while the Gaza YouTube video was considered out of context for the microsound list</div><div>it might have been the cartoon-like surface that led people to dismiss it out of hand</div><div>also, there is a cultural naivete when being presented with 60's style politics - one that induces a feeling of 'embarrassment' for some</div><div>although Obama seems to have resurrected a Web2.0 simulacra of this using the peace symbol and an abstracted 60's style poster art </div><div> </div><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: -1; ">i think it's particularly difficult to make direct political statements</span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">through frameworks that see in representation, and the conceptual apparatus</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">that enables it, an ideological problem. </div></blockquote><div>this is why there is so little political statement in experimental music</div><div>there have been some interesting attempts of political expression by </div><div>Fredric Rzewski, Ultra-Red, Cardew, Art & Language, AMM, Gang of Four, Test Dept etc. </div><div>but none have really taken hold of the publics imagination in any way that deconstructs 'false consciousness' </div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>see:</div><div><a href="http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/55565/gang_of_four_and_pop_music_as_marxist.html">http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/55565/gang_of_four_and_pop_music_as_marxist.html</a></div><br><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> i thinks this generates problems</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">not only for bourgeois forms of representation (the conceptual apparatus</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">that you see made semi-material through television coverage of the world,</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">the tight focus on particular sequences of events, the erasure of context,</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">it's replacement with the voice-over which tells you what the sequence</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">you're watching "really means" in terms which are synched in their</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">arbitrariness to the arbitrariness of decontextualized</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">factoid-reality...whence the operative power of the discourse of "terror")</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">and its marxian inversion. i think the idea of "what's really happening" is</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">a problem, one that opens onto ontological-register work---and newer forms</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">of sonic organization can be framed as performing such work in that the</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">enact alternative approaches to information and it's organization--but this</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">material (i suppose---i can't think of a better term at the moment, even as</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">i know this is not a good choice) doesn't operate itself as argument or</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">demonstration. it requires the development of new analytic frames,built</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">along what amounts to an alternate ontology, that can operate alongside new</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">approaches to sound organization in a relation through which one type of</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">activity extends and informs the other.</div></blockquote>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<div><div><br><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">and it seems to me that there is considerable distance to be traversed</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">before such projects link to more conventional forms of politics, of action,</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">if they do.</div></blockquote><div>agreed -- many of them have never even left the gate so to speak much less arrived at any definitive link</div><br><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">it might be that the furthest "we" can go is to enact and conceptualize</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">alternate ways of thinking and seeing</div></blockquote><div>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</div><div>its the age old paradox of political commentary </div><br><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">----these may end up being</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">self-referential---they may not issue into a way of thinking politics that</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">we know about--or it might. either way, it seems to me there's an</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">interesting set of adventures to be had, new modes of failure to be</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">explored.</div></blockquote>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</div><div>then 'electro-acoustic' music has an academia link and represents an intellectual class that is currently not in vogue in the US</div><div>witness the rampant anti-intellectualism encountered here from time to time</div><div>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)</div><div> <br><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">i have trouble talking about gaza sometimes.</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">it seems to me a massive confirmation of the ways fanon described the</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">dynamics of colonialism as a process that corrodes occupier and occupied,</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">that issues into a kind of psychotic space structured by types of</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">pseudo-rationality. </div></blockquote><div>and it is exactly this psychotic space might be the place from where real political content can flow</div><div>one excellent example was <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-weight: bold; ">Thomas Ashcraft: 'The Sounds of Dogs Eating The Faces Off Of Corpses In Iraq'</span></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica"><b><a href="http://www.heliotown.com/Soundfields_From_Iraq_2007.html">http://www.heliotown.com/Soundfields_From_Iraq_2007.html</a></b></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica"><b><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></b></font></div><div>it is this psychotic space (think: 'Apocalypse Now') that is bolted on to the side of post-modernism's fractured narrative</div><div>and one that could very well use microsound, glitch to help shape content</div><div>the accident or concept of failure intersects with the concepts of disorientation, disembodiment brought about thru informational overload</div><div>which also adds to the inability to 'know' reality via simulacra and mediation </div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div> </div><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">perhaps one could count the 400 fewer children who are</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">alive in gaza after these past 3 weeks and arrange them as steps in a proof</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">that leads in this direction.</div></blockquote><div>Gaza is a place of disorientation and psychosis - the children still alive are permanently scarred by this </div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><br><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">this seems to me to take you beyond folksongs that tell you earnestly that</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">situation in the world x really sucks.</div></blockquote>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 </div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>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</div><div>but that it found its way into the context of microsound is very interesting and raises many issues that are very worthy of discussion</div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div></div></body></html>