DJ’s (ab)use of vinyl is a derangement in every sense of the word. Scratching deterritorializes the noise on the grooves, bends the spiral grooves into lines of flight; scratching rips its source material from the record, transforms the ideal into matter to be molded, cuts into syntax to isolate words and phrases, achieving an Artaud-style decoding of language systems (both human and musical). A scratch takes up a block of recorded time and folds it up in baroque flourishes like a cloth. Scratching makes audible the flow of time and matter, the flow and the machines that cut it, and creates a vinyl psychedelia = scratchadelia, a machinic refrain, a becoming-vinyl of music.
A digital counterpart to the scratch is the often-mentioned glitch. A precariously vague term, which however captures some of the slipperiness of digital media. If analog phonography has led to some sort of metallurgy of sound, made sound malleable and mutable, digital sound processing approaches sound as molecules. The term microsound is very appropriate for the digital music of today. Or, if we take heed of Kim Cascone, we should be talking about post-digital music, since the medium of digital technology has become so transparent it doesn't reflect in the expression of music anymore. Instead specific sound processing tools, such as Max, AudioMulch or SoundForge produce an auratic sound, as well as providing amazing detail and accuracy in manipulating sound.
With glitches, however, electronic music producers embrace the uncertainty John Cage was talking about. Cracked and malfunctioning soft- and hardware, overloaded operating systems, wrong file types opened as sound documents produce unpredictable sounds, sometimes a ghostly unpresence of sounds outside hearing range or gaps in recorded time. Glitches, clicks and cuts are the sound of sound machines molecularizing, atomizing and ionizing sound, making audible the process of sound itself. If we must make a distinction between the scratch and the glitch, it is this: scratching is the folding of recorded time, metallurgy of sound, taking a flow of matter and producing variations of it. Common to music and metallurgy, according to Deleuze and Guattari, is the tendency to "bring into its own, beyond separate forms, a continuous development of form, and beyond variable matter, a continuous variation of matter," in short to bring out the "life proper to matter."
Mathematical cosmologist Brian Swimme loves science, but he doesn't love the path it has taken over the last two centuries, as it has become ever more abstract and more allied with consumer culture. "Scientists have discovered these amazing truths," he says, "and they have done so, for the most part, within a material- istic mind-set." Rather than continuing along its current path, he says, science needs to go in the opposite direction: toward direct observation of nature and a more spiritual understanding of the world. The problem is that "we're so impressed with our human minds for coming up with mathematics and so unimpressed by the marvels of a fern or an ant."
Though his primary field of research is the evolution of the universe, Swimme's central concern is the role of human beings within the natural world. He believes that, if scientists and the rest of us could appreciate the magnificence of ordinary existence, we could escape the consumer mentality and learn to delight in our everyday lives. His intuition tells him that understanding the scientific story of the universe could help us achieve that deeper appreciation.
"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
--John Kenneth Galbraith
Saturday, November 24, 2001
Yay! The Team Techno album is finally finished! It's off to the presses, thanks to tbtmo/Darla records. Big thanks to Nintari man for doing such a great job with the mastering. I am very proud of this album, and I had a great time making it. I'll let you all know when it becomes available to the public.
(In case you don't know, Team Techno is an electronic music "band", featuring the combined forces of Cerebral, Nintari, and myself.)
At a media industry conference this week in Barcelona, Spain, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's (CBC's) news chief said he was startled by the contrast between US and European small-screen coverage of the 40-day-old war.
"It's like watching two different wars," said Tony Burman, executive director of Canada's national public broadcaster.
"The BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) has focused very much on the humanitarian issues in the region ... the human dimension", while NBC, ABC and CBS had anchored their reports "almost exclusively" around Pentagon briefings, he explained.
"There seems to be a real reluctance on the part of the US television media to dwell on the human impact," he said.
Burman also noted that the "uncritical, hyper-patriotic" reporting differed remarkably little between the three national networks, who he felt were all toeing the administration line.
"They're in lockstep with the administration ... and there's no distinction between the networks, which is unusual in a competitive environment."
...and do something about it: ACLU Action Alert - Send a fax to your representatives in two clicks.
Wednesday, November 14, 2001
This looks like a great radio show:
Brave New Waves is dedicated to new underground music. This could mean anything from indie rock to dance, experimental electronic and avantgardisms of every shape. We include the widest universe of genres possible every single night.
A computerised DJ that uses feedback from the dancers to generate new music has been developed by artificial intelligence experts at Hewlett-Packard, meaning clubbers may soon only have themselves to blame if they do not like the music they are dancing to.
Tuesday, November 13, 2001
My good friend Nintari Man's album "9-bit" has finally been released. This is really good stuff. Highly recommended. This kid is gonna go far, I tell ya.
The authors of A General Theory of Love use their psychobiological model first to explain how people change in psychotherapy and why they so often have such a difficult time doing so. The authors argue that most people don't change when a therapist explains to them the reasons for their psychological problems because explanations are a form of cortical knowledge, while the problems they're intended to address are encoded in subcortical structures. If we learn to become "ill" via nonconscious and intuitive pathways, we can't unlearn our neuroses through rational interpretations. When psychotherapy does help people change, the authors argue, it works by providing them with new experiences. These new experiences are transmitted and received on a limbic level in the context of the therapy relationship, offering new attachment patterns from which patients can intuit new ways of seeing themselves and the world. The resistance to change in psychotherapy derives from the fact that when people are offered a new model of attachment, it contradicts the familiar models associated with the earliest and most important relationships of their lives. To change means to risk momentarily feeling alone, bereft of familiar modes of connection.
The extent to which these familiar modes of connection are problematic is next explored by Lewis, Lannon, and Amini, who critique various aspects of modern social life as frustrating or damaging to the limbic resonance necessary for healthy development. Like many social conservatives, the authors underscore the ways in which drug addiction and many forms of violent behavior are more likely to be found in people deprived of stable social bonds. Yet Lewis et al. also damn managed health care because it increasingly deprives people of the human relatedness so necessary to optimal health. Their work is radical in that they oppose a work world in which profits are put above people because a profit-driven environment creates people who are limbically damaged, invited to connect with institutions that cannot reciprocate. The paradigmatic example that they cite of this kind of pathological attachment is the long-term and loyal employee who is summarily fired because of corporate downsizing. A corporation is incapable of limbic resonance.
Does anybody understand what the United States is on the verge of doing?
Experienced, respected food aid organizations warn that even before the bombing of Afghanistan began on October 7, some 7,500,000 Afghans were -- through a gut-wrenching combination of poverty, drought, war, dislocation, and repression -- at risk of starving to death this winter. When the bombing began, almost all delivery of food from the outside world stopped. Now, roads and bridges are destroyed, millions more people are dislocated, and the snow is steadily approaching from higher elevations and from the north.
For weeks, aid organizations, along with voices from throughout the region, have been begging the United States to call off its bombing campaign, at least for long enough so that aid agencies can conduct the massive transfer of food into and throughout Afghanistan that is necessary to prevent death on a scale the world has not seen in a long, long time.
Seven and a half million people at risk of dying in a matter of months. That's three times the number of people Pol Pot took years to kill. Thirty-five times the number that died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, combined. If 5,000 died on September 11, we're talking the equivalent number of deaths to ten World Trade Centers, every day, for 150 days. Slow, painful deaths. Entirely avoidable deaths. Deaths whose sole cause is not the United States, but most of which can still be prevented -- except that the United States is refusing to allow them to be prevented.
It repulses me to say this, but I suspect a lot of Americans don't care. They'd rather see the United States "get" Osama bin Laden (though there's no actual evidence that we're any closer to that today than we were two months ago, and probably the task is harder as he becomes more popular and protected).
Armed government agents grabbed Nancy Oden, Green Party USA coordinating committee member, Thursday at Bangor International Airport in Bangor Maine, as she attempted to board an American Airlines flight to Chicago.
"An official told me that my name had been flagged in the computer," a shaken Oden said. "I was targeted because the Green Party USA opposes the bombing of innocent civilians in Afghanistan."
Oden, a long-time organic farmer and peace activist in northern Maine, was ordered away from the plane. Military personnel with automatic weapons surrounded Oden and instructed all airlines to deny her passage on any flight.
"I was told that the airport was closed to me until further notice and that my ticket would not be refunded," Oden said.
Update: This entry at FmH follows up on the story. Please read.
Saturday, November 3, 2001
This textz.com looks pretty neat. It is a Napster/Filepile sort of thing for text. There seems to be an emphasis on underground/counter cultural/post-modern/situationist content, but there is also a bit of Douglas Adams, William Gibson, Kafka, Poe, etc.
"There were no Taliban in the village," said Ahmed, a mechanic who said he is about 20 years old. "There were no tanks or Taliban cars. They just killed innocent people... The plane saw us, and they opened fire. We don't understand why they did that." (...)
"I am alive just because I hid in my room," said the 5-year-old's sister, Shaida, 14, who was sitting beside her brother's bed. "Those who ran into the yard, they all were killed."
Shaida said she saw her mother, who had been holding her brother, get fatally shot in the courtyard. Shaida said she then darted out to rescue her brother, Shabbir, whose head was struck by shrapnel.
"Americans are not good," Shaida said. "They killed my mother. They killed my father. I don't understand why."
I have to agree with Shaida. This makes me so angry. What good is this doing? Why!? Is this really what the American people want? We are just creating more terror and generating more hatred. No good will come of this.
Friday, November 2, 2001
If you haven't noticed already, I've made a few changes and updates recently. I rearranged things a little bit, so the menu on the left is smaller. I added some new (old) photos to the photo section, updated the links page a bit, and added a few older tracks on the music page. Oh, I also updated Billbot so he sends me an email whenever he doesn't understand something, so I can teach him what it means later.
Next week I will be visiting back home in Delaware, so updates may get sparse. I can't wait to see all my peoples!
