An Emergent Order

[thirdform]

Having listened to Autechre's latest offering, the so-called "draft 7.30", I must fervently object to their naive attempts at creating
Emotions Through Melody. I have been following their work ever since Incunabula was released (which I consider their weakest release, by the way, but I digress), and although this tendency towards banality has been kept
'under control', so to speak, during their previous releases, it seems to
have turned into full-fledged kitsch on Draft 7.30.

Their shimmering bytes are right up there with the best of
electroacousticians/ acousmatics (Francois Bayle, Randall Smith, Jonty
Harrison, Dennis Smalley et al), but I really wish they'd stop using what
sounds like a random chord+melody generator to sprinkle their work with
Feeling; their chords have been repeated for such a long time now I would
think they would get rid of them soon. Their melodics can be done so easily
with something like Cubase's Chord generator (I thought this one was for the
easy listening crowd, but I must have been wrong), and it's so pretentiously
emotional that even I am attempted to paraphrase Stockhausen's contempt for
"vanilla melodies". Listen to Reniform Puls for an excellent example -- it sounds
like a very outdated Gareth Newman, and there aren't even any interesting
sounds or rhythmic extravaganzas to cancel out the terrible insipidity of
plug-n-play presetry. Their worst track ever?

Autechre's use of strings and other similar sounds work perfectly when they
are understated, subdued, oppressed, almost not there...when they are just
laying around to remind you of an aftermath of something that never existed, not tied to the mundane ambience of a club or dancefloor. And as we all know, dancefloors are mere sexual marketplaces dedicated to the blithesome consumption of the clients of prostitutes.

The kind of rote and carnal emotionalism that is crowding the digitalia on draft 7.30 is
making me depressed, because, judging by the standards set by Gantz Graf and Confield, and the peel sessions, (although they are guilty of the same banality on quite a few tracks on these releases, too) I thought they were on
their way to another dimension, where the blippery-bloppery of short-cut,
arpeggiated melodisms were long forgotten.

I wish Autechre would abscond, 'take it all out' and go for complete abstraction.
There are some truly exemplary moments on draft 7.30, but they are too short and too
few; they are intersections or break(downs) where Autechre finally forget
about representation (i.e. "feelings") and go for wild rides on whatever
piece of software they have at their disposal. I always thought acousmatic
Academia could learn a thing or two from Autechre, and, while they still can,
I now definitely think Autechre has a thing or two to learn from acousmatics
regarding the non-representational aspect of music.

Whatever happened to monotony? Have they become afraid of it?

Disappointed.

-sadmanparmesan

 

[thirdform]

I dunno. I've kind of been over "songs" for the last few decades.
I'd rather hear trad music from other cultures.
As far as electonic music goes, we haven't really even started exploring alternate tuning systems, and needless to point out that you can still make "pretty" "songs" with alternate tunings. The only thing that immediately comes to mind in that regard is Beauty in the Beast from Wendy Carlos, and that's from 1986.

Sote is doing some good stuff with makams but yeah it hasn't really been explored.

 

[0bleak]

ah, yes, formerly known as Zia - I was racking my brain trying to remember their name! thanks!

 

[thirdform]

Gimme some shit people will still remember in 20 years they can sing along to in a drunk unison at 3am in a stinking dive bar with a Terminator landscape outside the tobacco stained windows.

Sounds like my idea of hell, I must be honest. Even when I was a binge drinker I detested such environments and ended up alone with my bottle and free jazz recordings. Noone wants to listen to John Coltrane at a bar at 3 AM.

And actually, how are swift and sheran much different? simple disposable tunes for drunks to hum along to at 3 AM. You're making Fleetwood Mac out to be Albert Ayler or something. It's really not that deep.

If you want to make an argument that a lot of experimental music today has to be pitched to egghead academia, then yes absolutely I would agree. I think AE avoid that, but it's a totally good criticism, the avant-garde has regressed back into the academia, weird ideas are not mainstream anymore.

but the mac? come on! That's craner levels of laziness.

 

[thirdform]

and last thing; the single biggest problem with postmodernists - which really has crushed their line of thinking - was kind of the same or at least similar: they denied (or didn't recognzie) their own codes and self-referentiality; that's exactly the sense in which Luhmann is radically different thinker. you cannot level that accusation that his anti-foundationalism is it's own kind of foundation or something like that, because the self-criticism is already in-buil in his theory, since it fundamentally is a theory about how systems observe observations observing while being trapped in their own opretaional closure (which the avoids infinite regress). just a different beast.

Seems like fanboyism, if I'm being honest. You could say the same for dialectic because it precisely has the criticism of the limit of the understanding of things in and of themselves, and is even more radical in that it sees the system itself as being post-hoc abstract notional rationalisation that comes at the latest.
Even an anti-marxist like Hans-Georg Gadamer was able to pinpoint this in his truth and method in relation to Kant and Hegel.

ok, but that's exactly the point - it's a self-referential claim made within marxisms own theoretical framework. So marxism, like any other system, already runs on it's own binary code exploitation/emancipation, bourgeois/proletariat, oppressor /oppressed or something like that (it also ties in with the very importnat idea of his that to observe is to make a distinction) and that's how, from within the confines of it's own operational closure, it observes it's environment (again "environment" being the sum total of all the other systems, not some sort of raw, ground zero reality).
so there is no sense is which marxisms, or any other system, can claim to be an objective meta-system that understands all the other systems outside it's own code.
what should also be obvious is that there is no hirearchy of systems, each system just works to maintain it's own integrity blindly running it's own self-referential code. i suppose it's also important to mention the detail that the purpose of this binary distinction as the base operation of every and any system, is to reduce the compelixty and messiness and noise of their enviorment, otherwise there wouldn't be any kind of functioning state of things at all.
also, in no sense systems are seperate bubbles floating in vacuum, they are structurally coupled, they irritate each othe and they resonate with each other. the biggest disasters usually come when this structural coupling breaks down.

again though, you haven't defined objective metasystem, because you cannot define it per se.

Because systems are systems-for-us, which you have already conceded, without which there would be no functional state of things. So you can't say Luhmann avoids this.

This is what I was trying to say to @version . it's not that the distinction he is making is cowardice, it's that humans must function by frameworks which are dynamic and mutable. there is no non-framework functioning.

 

[germaphobian]

Seems like fanboyism, if I'm being honest. You could say the same for dialectic because it precisely has the criticism of the limit of the understanding of things in and of themselves, and is even more radical in that it sees the system itself as being post-hoc abstract notional rationalisation that comes at the latest.
Even an anti-marxist like Hans-Georg Gadamer was able to pinpoint this in his truth and method in relation to Kant and Hegel.



again though, you haven't defined objective metasystem, because you cannot define it per se.

Because systems are systems-for-us, which you have already conceded, without which there would be no functional state of things. So you can't say Luhmann avoids this.

This is what I was trying to say to @version . it's not that the distinction he is making is cowardice, it's that humans must function by frameworks which are dynamic and mutable. there is no non-framework functioning.

comparison to dialectics misses the main point (porbably my bad) that systems aren’t “post-hoc rationalizations” but empirical, self-reproducing entities. dialectics resolves contradictions through synthesis while luhmann’s systems cannot resolve them at all —they’re trapped in operational closure, observing recursively without transcendence. this isn’t abstraction but sociological reality (like, law can’t escape its own legal/illegal code, only irritate other systems, same with markets with payment/non -payment, same with media, politics, marxism ans so on and so forth)

 

[thirdform]

Seems like fanboyism, if I'm being honest. You could say the same for dialectic because it precisely has the criticism of the limit of the understanding of things in and of themselves, and is even more radical in that it sees the system itself as being post-hoc abstract notional rationalisation that comes at the latest.
Even an anti-marxist like Hans-Georg Gadamer was able to pinpoint this in his truth and method in relation to Kant and Hegel.

Relevant passage from Truth and Method

To do so we must acknowledge that absolute reflection is powerfully compelling and admit that Hegel’s critics never really succeeded in breaking its magic spell. We can detach the problem of a historical hermeneutics from the hybrid consequences of speculative idealism only if we refuse to be satisfied with the irrationalistic reduction of it, but preserve the truth of Hegel’s thought. We are concerned with understanding historically effected consciousness in such a way that the immediacy and superiority of the work does not dissolve into a mere reflective reality in the consciousness of the effect—i.e., we are concerned to conceive a reality that limits and exceeds the omnipotence of reflection. This was precisely the point against which the critique of Hegel was directed and where the principle of reflective philosophy actually proved itself superior to all its critics.

This can be exemplified by Hegel’s polemic against Kant’s “thing-in-itself,”97 Kant’s critical delimitation of reason had limited the application of the categories to the objects of possible experience and declared that the thing-in-itself behind appearances was unknowable. Hegel’s dialectical argument objected that by making this distinction, and separating the appearance from the thing-in-itself, reason was proving this distinction to be its own. In doing so it by no means comes up against its own limits; rather, reason has itself set this limit, and that means it has already gone beyond that limit. What makes a limit a limit always also includes knowledge of what is on both sides of it. It is the dialectic of the limit to exist only by being superseded. Thus the quality of being-in-itself that distinguishes the thing-in-itself from its appearance is in-itself only for us. What appears in logical generality in the dialectic of the limit becomes specified in consciousness by the experience that the being-in-itself distinguished from consciousness is the other of itself, and is known in its truth when it is known as self—i.e., when it knows itself in full and absolute self-consciousness.

 

[thirdform]

Relevant passage from Truth and Method

Incidentally, this is why both @blissblogger and @luka had to concede that the zone of ffruitless intensification only discloses what can continued to be intensified (I.E: the distinction it itself makes) and that thus this zone itself indicates what is on the other side of the limit. Because if a zone of fruitless intensification actually existed as an inherent limit, intensification would no longer intensify.

 

[germaphobian]

again though, you haven't defined objective metasystem, because you cannot define it per se.

Because systems are systems-for-us, which you have already conceded, without which there would be no functional state of things. So you can't say Luhmann avoids this.

This is what I was trying to say to @version . it's not that the distinction he is making is cowardice, it's that humans must function by frameworks which are dynamic and mutable. there is no non-framework functioning.

systems are not systems-for-us - they are systems-for-themselves. they are self-reproducing, self-referential entities that follow simple binary codes, that's the only way they communicate within themselves and with their outside environments. for example, if you're in a court the only way you can communicate is through the binary legal/illegal, you cannot, for example, use binary of market (payment/non-payment). and when you got to the shop you cannot pay for milk with religion's binary of immanence/transcendence and so on.
as for meta-systems, there are none and there can't be - thats exactly the point

 

[thirdform]

comparison to dialectics misses the main point (porbably my bad) that systems aren’t “post-hoc rationalizations” but empirical, self-reproducing entities. dialectics resolves contradictions through synthesis while luhmann’s systems cannot resolve them at all —they’re trapped in operational closure, observing recursively without transcendence. this isn’t abstraction but sociological reality (like, law can’t escape its own legal/illegal code, only irritate other systems, same with markets with payment/non -payment, same with media, politics, marxism ans so on and so forth)

Isn't this just the same as the (over)formalisation of systems you get in anarchism?

I would argue that the code of law in feudal times and the code of law in capitalistic times is different, it's undergirded by different determining factors, and legal/illegal indicates something qualitatively different.

Same with market, I wouldn't say that the market of 19th century peasant village has the same code as the market of 21st century England.

What if the question is not to escape the code, but that it negates aspects of its previous code as it develops? in that case, the synthesis as negation of negation is still
operative.

 

[thirdform]

systems are not systems-for-us - they are systems-for-themselves.
they are self-reproducing, self-referential entities that follow simple binary codes, that's the only way they communicate within themselves and with their outside environments. for example, if you're in a court the only way you can communicate is through the binary legal/illegal, you cannot, for example, use binary of market (payment/non-payment).

again, you have just reduced everything to static categories and then you plaster the idea of the courts onto this. So you can't use payment/non-payment, but many legal cases are exactly to do with financial compensation or restriction.

Hence it is meaningless to say that systems are systems for themselves, as if they can said to be consciousness, and not a property of the development of the superstructure through language, which then reflects into cultures, customes, laws, traditions etc. Which then undergo their own changes, the issue is then precisely that 1 is not self-identical to 0 (as it would negate itself) but more rather that the 0 is the limit inherent in the 1.

Think about the ship moving away from the shore. There is motion. yet the passanger appears to be unmoving on the dock. Thus motion here becomes the distance at which things are viewed. Otherwise you would have the knot of trying to explain how a ship moves away from the shore with the passenger sitting or standing on the dock being able to make it stand still.

 

[thirdform]

you end up with the question of what begets a self-reproducing entity, and you can only answer with creatio ex nihilo.

So actually then there is a recursion to God, there has to be.

 

[germaphobian]

you end up with the question of what begets a self-reproducing entity, and you can only answer with creatio ex nihilo.

So actually then there is a recursion to God, there has to be.

systems don’t arise from nothing - they differentiate from other systems. law splits from religion when legal/illegal distinctions secularize ( shifting from “sin” to “crime” and so on). politics splits from kinship when power becomes bureaucratized insted of inherited. it’s simple social evolution, which is driven by systemic need to manage increasing complexity.
he actually addresses this how the big change was going from stratified society (rank/status) to functionally differentiated society (roughly 16th - 18th century). you can also think about it as going from vertical to horizontal model.

 

[germaphobian]

that's why he also thinks post-modern is a nonsense term, because there is modern, functionally differentiated society for couple of centuries; there are no real breaks since moving away from stratified society

 

[thirdform]

systems don’t arise from nothing - they differentiate from other systems. law splits from religion when legal/illegal distinctions secularize ( shifting from “sin” to “crime” and so on). politics splits from kinship when power becomes bureaucratized insted of inherited. it’s simple social evolution, which is driven by systemic need to manage increasing complexity.
he actually addresses this how the big change was going from stratified society (rank/status) to functionally differentiated society (roughly 16th - 18th century). you can also think about it as going from vertical to horizontal model.

exactly, so that means that splits and syntheses do occur and systems cannot strictly be said to be self-referential, because true self-referentiality precludes differentiation. It seems to me that self-referentiality is merely the limit we have not yet become conscious of. So the limit of religious law was secularism.

 

[germaphobian]

again, you have just reduced everything to static categories and then you plaster the idea of the courts onto this. So you can't use payment/non-payment, but many legal cases are exactly to do with financial compensation or restriction.

Hence it is meaningless to say that systems are systems for themselves, as if they can said to be consciousness, and not a property of the development of the superstructure through language, which then reflects into cultures, customes, laws, traditions etc. Which then undergo their own changes, the issue is then precisely that 1 is not self-identical to 0 (as it would negate itself) but more rather that the 0 is the limit inherent in the 1.

Think about the ship moving away from the shore. There is motion. yet the passanger appears to be unmoving on the dock. Thus motion here becomes the distance at which things are viewed. Otherwise you would have the knot of trying to explain how a ship moves away from the shore with the passenger sitting or standing on the dock being able to make it stand still.

when you say that systems like law or the economy are “static” because they rely on fixed codes (legal/illegal, payment/ non-payment), you’re missing the point. the systems aren’t rigid , they’re dynamic, self-sustaining processes. it's like software - each runs on its own code, constantly updating to handle new inputs without blending into other programs.
when a court imposes a fine, it isn’t borrowing the economy’s logic (payment/non-payment). it’s just converting financial disputes into legal/illegal rulings. the legal system adapts, but remains with its core code. that isn't exactly stagnation.

 

[thirdform]

when a court imposes a fine, it isn’t borrowing the economy’s logic (payment/non-payment). it’s just converting financial disputes into legal/illegal rulings.

How can one convert a financial dispute into legal rulings if you don't borrow the logic of the market? in a legal ruling questions of profit, recompense and expropriation have to be referred back to the logic of the economy. You want to argue these are separate logics but they are also intertwined, which just seems to me to be a sophism.

You just seem to me to be describing functions, but you don't need sociology for that.

 

[germaphobian]

How can one convert a financial dispute into legal rulings if you don't borrow the logic of the market? in a legal ruling questions of profit and expropriation have to be referred back to the logic of the economy. You want to argue these are separate logics but they are also intertwined, which just seems to me to be a sophism.

the legal system doesn’t borrow market logic - it resolves financial disputes with its own code (legal/illegal). market transactions can only happen within market itself (payment/non-payment). those are paraller systems. if court forces somone to pay a fine it's not following market code of payment/no-payment, profit loss, that can ONLY happen in a market, the court itself is still following legal/illegal.
this is aslo something people sort of start to understand when you bring it down to empirical everyday level. because, again, if you have a system with it's own binary, it's impossible to communicate within it any other way outside of that code. like, what other way could you communicate within a court or a market? what is the conceivable possibility?

 

[thirdform]

the legal system doesn’t borrow market logic - it resolves financial disputes with its own code (legal/illegal). market transactions can only happen within market itself (payment/non-payment). those are paraller systems. if court forces somone to pay a fine it's not following market code of payment/no-payment, profit loss, that can ONLY happen in a market, the court itself is still following legal/illegal.
this is aslo something people sort of start to understand when you bring it down to empirical everyday level. because, again, if you have a system with it's own binary, it's impossible to communicate within it any other way outside of that code. like, what other way could you communicate within a court or a market? what is the conceivable possibility?

sorry, i don't buy this. you want to separate the binary communication of legal/illegal from the structure undergirding the disputes itself, but then also want to claim parallel systems.

I find this separation inconceivably pedantic and metaphysical, but you do you, it reads to me like wanting to have your cake and eat it.

maybe I will read mr luhmann one day to get a better hold on his anti-foundational framework (?) . although sociology is not an area I care much for (I have finite time after all) and @version owes me at least 4 days of MDMA even though I hate drugs these days...

What book of his was your favourite? He has a fairly large oeuvre.

 

[germaphobian]

sorry, i don't buy this. you want to separate the binary communication of legal/illegal from the structure undergirding the disputes itself, but then also want to claim parallel systems.

I find this separation inconceivably pedantic and metaphysical, but you do you, it reads to me like wanting to have your cake and eat it.

so you don't agree that they function based on these binaries?