Dematerialisation.

luka said:

That's good to hear. Thank you. I'm not as intelligent now as I was when I was busy with this thread. It's a high tide marker. I have to work my way back gradually. Hopefully you lot can help me.

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This was your 'hauntology'

*So I’m thinking the aesthetics is the key here. Because if “the
hidden beauty will rematerialize,” which is a lovely rallying slogan
that I like quite a lot, what would that beauty look like? When it
came out of hiding, how would we know it was beautiful? We don’t
exactly need a “new aesthetic” to know that, because wrinkled old
Dorian Gray Facebook isn’t all that new any more, but we do need an
aesthetic, because an aesthetic is how you convince other people
that the beauty has arrived. "

https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/506/State-of-the-World-2019-page02.html#post34
Look sharp Bruce Sterling is lurking?

i just remembered that whole period on here when luka and barty were at war with everyone else, how queer

I guess Barty lost his wifi too, huh?

sufi said:

Because if “the hidden beauty will rematerialize,” which is a lovely rallying slogan that I like quite a lot, what would that beauty look like?

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idk ab y'all but this one slapped me in the face

Have we talked about dmt (cool abbreviation huh) in relation to sampling?

Here's an undercooked theory for your asses

In the 80s, say, synths were used by people who were used to playing music using accoustic instruments, or hearing music like that anyway - and sampling was heavily used throughout the 90s, perhaps keeping things connected to a material realm - but steadily the samples dematerialised, as did the 'proper' instruments, and now we have synth music that exists entirely in the synthetic zone, and influenced by the dematerialised dimensions and dynamics of that zone

i think of barty's argument in the ardkore vs structural conservatism thread - and I imagine the sheer excitement of the first people playing in the synthetic/sample realm, which now has presumably mostly died out, cos we know anything can be done with synths/software...

thirdform said:

there has always been a soulnessless element in modern music, stretching right back to Stockhausens

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generative music

sadmanbarty said:

generative music

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oh, i though that was a real thing, but it seems like it's just eno flogging some apps.

but there is minimalist classical music and ambient music that are just systems. steve reich's phasing things are just systems. droid, is music for airports the same- loops of different lengths? john cage i'd imagine.

mapping out the phenomenology of computing over time:

in the 60's computers were just all cleaver maths and algorithms which begets something like steve reich's 'drumming'. it's music that sounds like binary and numbers. it's predominant function is cerebral.

these days computing is visceral (touch screens), predominantly social tools and have graphic interfaces. which is the point in time in which computing can intergrate itself into the language of pop; functioning as social music, body music and music with aesthetic resonance.

Corpsey said:

i think of barty's argument in the ardkore vs structural conservatism thread - and I imagine the sheer excitement of the first people playing in the synthetic/sample realm, which now has presumably mostly died out, cos we know anything can be done with synths/software...

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i veto anything i say being used to dwindle enthusiasm or futurism.

i'm the king of the future.

by the way this is the anti-dematerialisation thread if you hadn't noticed- it's the material plane's last stand:

http://www.dissensus.com/showthread.php?t=14447

note a far greater sense of agency and traditionally masculine tendencies.

road rap vs drill is actually a very valuable control study in a pre- and post- dematerialised music.

computers made it possible to make music without interacting with a single person - the internet makes it possible to create, market, sell music without a single IRL conversation

Miyazaki: "Almost all Japanese animation is produced with hardly any basis taken from observing real people, you know. It's produced by humans who can't stand looking at other humans. And that's why the industry is full of otaku!"

sadmanbarty said:

oh, i though that was a real thing, but it seems like it's just eno flogging some apps..... these days computing is visceral (touch screens), predominantly social tools and have graphic interfaces. which is the point in time in which computing can intergrate itself into the language of pop; functioning as social music, body music and music with aesthetic resonance.

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i did an interview with Steve Malkmus recently about his new 'rock'n'roller gets into electronics' solo album Groove Denied, which he made using Ableton Live, Pro Tools, soft synths etc etc, and he used this analogy for the process of track-construction - that it was similar to the way his kids “used to make these girls on my iPhone - choosing hair colour, dresses, etc. That intuitive swipe and grab thing. Chop and move the waves. Apple computer scroll style of thinking"

so very different from the way he would normally write a song, ie. messing around with chord progressions, feeling his + backing band's way to a groove.

That's tactile, but making the solo album - just him + tech - involved a different kind of tactility, a much reduced, restricted form. Perhaps better describe as digitality, in both the code, zeroes and ones sense, but also because it does still involve your digits, and muscle memory - but is not as physical or as sensual as playing piano or guitar or drums, more about using fingertips to make a series of choices (an infinite recession of them, potentially)

Eno has been banging on for ages about generative music as the next frontier of music, arguing that in 50 years the idea that people used to listen to a piece of music that stayed the same on each repeat listening would seem absolutely ludicrous... but so far there's been no takers, it's not caught on, it's just his own pet obsession.

blissblogger said:

Eno has been banging on for ages about generative music as the next frontier of music, arguing that in 50 years the idea that people used to listen to a piece of music that stayed the same on each repeat listening would seem absolutely ludicrous... but so far there's been no takers, it's not caught on, it's just his own pet obsession.

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What about Autechre? They just put out eight hours of generative stuff.

Let's see if anyone is still listening to it in 50 years

version said:

What about Autechre? They just put out eight hours of generative stuff.

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really? "eight hours of generative stuff" doesn't sound like what Eno means by generative - which is an app or other system that contains a process to generate creates musical events that stay within certain parameters but never repeats and where there are infinite permutations. So that kind of generative music would not have a set duration, you could start the generative system and leave it running for 8 minutes, 8 hours, 8 days, 8 years...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinity_(K-Space_album)
this is pretty great, if obscure
needs to be online