The Mimic Machine

[version]

"The Industrial Revolution is primarily a virus revolution, dedicated to controlled proliferation of identical objects and persons."
BURROUGHS, THE PLACE OF DEAD ROADS

"At stake is the (non)relation under conditions of commodity production between creative labor (the production of difference), and industrial labor (the production of sameness). Or to put it in other terms, labor as the making of form and the making of content. Could there be an alliance between these kinds of making that commodification has severed from each other?"

Editorial: A Hacker Manifesto, Twenty Years On - Journal #146

McKenzie Wark reflects on the legacy of her groundbreaking book A Hacker Manifesto.

www.e-flux.com

 

[dilbert1]

I was following what you said @mixed_biscuits about quantity vs quality for a bit, thinking maybe it could have something to do with high/low distinction (doesn’t it matter a bit whether we’re talking Art vs entertainment, and isn’t that part of the trouble with the ‘popular modernism’ framing), or in another sense about when genres lose innovative steam and settle into reliable comforts, but the 303 is a pretty classic example of faulty imitation resulting in misuse -> new use

 

[version]

"At stake is the (non)relation under conditions of commodity production between creative labor (the production of difference), and industrial labor (the production of sameness). Or to put it in other terms, labor as the making of form and the making of content. Could there be an alliance between these kinds of making that commodification has severed from each other?"

Editorial: A Hacker Manifesto, Twenty Years On - Journal #146

McKenzie Wark reflects on the legacy of her groundbreaking book A Hacker Manifesto.

www.e-flux.com

"The people make history, but not in the media of their own choosing. They make it via signs and symbols transmitted from the past. The tradition of dead reading lists weighs like a nightmare on the citations of the living. And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such moments of transition they anxiously conjure up the icons of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honored disguise and borrowed language.

Thus, Luther put on the mask of the Apostle Paul; the Revolution of 1789 draped itself alternately in the guise of the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire. Those who took to the barricades in 1968 did so under various Bolshevik-derived banners. If anything has changed in the twenty-first century it is that today’s radicals cut and paste from all previous revolutions at once. Those who start the revolution over in our own times translate it back into old languages, making the present seem the same as the past. And thus we fail at that task for which Marx had such a genius: speaking the beautiful language of our own century."

 

[mixed_biscuits]

Roland's failure led to the success of others. The artists didn't know they wanted those sounds, or that they were even possible, until Roland messed up attempting to simulate a bass guitar. The thing was a commercial flop given a new lease of life by people figuring out how to make use of its failings. It's the textbook example of a fruitful failure. A whole new musical development born from an engineering fuck up.

It's not a fruitful failure because obviously they knew it didn't sound like a bass guitar when they released it; they probably thought it sounded enough like the other synth bass 'bass guitars' to pass muster. Do you have any other examples?

 

[mixed_biscuits]

It wasn't the bad thing about the 303 that was good, it was the good things in that they included the parameters that could be changed on the fly to make those rubbery noises. It wasn't a 'failure' that they did this for the same reason that it isn't a failure that Massive maybe aimed at wobble noises but it lets youalter the parameters to make other ones too.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

Anyway, things like Massive can make 1000x more sounds than the 303 so I don't see any downward trend, and despite the fact that the developers may have only had some target sounds in mind when programming it that doesn't make the other sounds that can be made 'fruitful failures'. Although many genres are stuck in their rut and don't make good use of this new variety, I think non-generic electronic music and singer-songwriter musicians using digital tech are showing more creative variety in the noises that they can now make.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

Roland should have made it an even more famous fruitful failure by calling it a 'choir simulator' or 'sandwich maker' lol.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

In actual fact, I remember a better example: The Yamaha FFS1 had every one of its 300 presets misnamed due to a printing error. I remember choosing 'clavinet' and, on hearing something that sounded very much like a panpipe, I exploded in derision: 'this sounds nothing like a clavinet, but they've really nailed a cool panpipe like sound. I think I'll use it to make a wicked tune...oh glorious serendipity!'

 

[mixed_biscuits]

The 303 was fruitful regardless the supposed failure to mimic a bass guitar satisfactorily rather than because of it...the fruitfulness is not a function of the failurality.

 

[gremino]

The other I day came across someone talking about an old book they'd bought called 'The Grammar of Ornament' (1856) and they mentioned the following...

Interesting to hear this phenomenon has been discussed back in 1800s - so nothing new here. I only recently read Retromania, and I was surprised that punk was partly from 50s rock'n'roll revival. I had always seen punk as something which couldn't care a less about past styles (although return to rock'n'rolls raw energy and rejection of progressive rock's complexity made sense).

Reading this board, DSF and writings from Reynolds and Blackdown back in 00s started a phase where I was obsessed about innovation. However, I got this thought in my head, that new styles must always evolve as organically as possible, created even unconsciously, made from contemporary things. Like, the idea of "one step back two steps forward" (go back to oldschool and from there forward to different direction than where it's today) seems too intentional, too planned, lacking that organicity. But is this method that bad after all? Because, striving for purely organic and even unconscious creativity might be a form of perfectionism!

What comes to nostalgia, it seems like humans are just prone to do it. Now when technology allows to easily consume archives of old things, we now do it way more. Also, maybe the constant innovation from 50/60s to 00s gave us unrealistic expectations of constant development.