IDM Mailing Archive

There is a tendency, when describing different movements of intellectual thought and artistic development, to act like there was a particular point of time where one could stand and see the whole vista of time clearly. This isn't really the case (DUH) but there you have it. Modernism started at the turn of the last century, as a reaction to the Victorian/Romantic movement of the 19th Century, which, in turn was a reaction to the Enlightenment period of the 18th century, which was a reaction, in turn, to the 'baroque' period of the 17th century, which was really the consolidation of the Renaissance, which was the re-establishment of world trade, scientific enquiry and the beginning of the rule of law, after what is usually called 'Middle Ages.' And the Middle Ages went from roughly the fall of Rome up until the 16th Century. The Middle ages, I think, were fairly accurately summarized by Mark Twain in "Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court," and "Monty Python's Holy Grail." But ANYWAY, modernism was pretty much killed by the world wars in the 20th Century. Post-modernism is everything after that, for better or worse, and we're now kind of in the interregnum between post-modern thought and whatever is going to follow that. I think the key to post-post modernism is the rise of digital technology, and that most of what is being said about that right now is about as accurate as Popular Mechanics writing about 'personal helicopters' in the 40's. To bring it back on-topic -- if you look at what we call IDM, the work being done by Rich Devine, Push Button Objects, Autechre, Aphex Twin, the Kracfive crew, et al, you can draw some conclusions about the digital age. 1. Everything is just bits. If you wanted you could build a piece of music by typing in a few million 16 bit integers. 2. The difference between 'authentic' and 'fake' is impossible to determine, and probably completely beside the point. Is there a difference between a sampled string section and a real one? Perhaps, but I just edited and mastered a recording of a string quartet, where I assembled a 15 minute piece out of about 30 separate takes, and then did some not-so-subtle sonic manipulations to produce the master. How is that different from what, say, Amon Tobin or Luke Vibert does? 3. As a corrolary to 2, something can be completely synthetic -- i.e. created from bits and bobs entirely in a computer -- and at the same time be emotionally authentic. 4. There's no separating the medium and the message. So Oval making tracks by defacing CD's and sampling the glitches is as valid as playing a violin. The same thing holds for the continuing popularity of vinyl records -- the fact that you're wiggling a diamond needle in a groove informs the music. 5. Everything is interactive -- strangely enough before Cool Herc and Granmaster Flash, people used to drop the needle in the first groove, and then leave it play until the turntable picked the needle back up at the end of the side. The whole art of turntablism comes down to making something interactive that once was a passive, unidirectional experience. 6. There is no such thing as physical distance in the digital world. I can collaborate with a musician in Germany or Slovenia or New Zealand as easy as with someone who lives round the corner. Easier in fact, because my studio gets crowded if there's more than 2 people in it. 7. Signal and noise are artificial distinctions. You can make the noise the signal -- see Oval again. At any rate I'm going to stop now before doing the full David Toop or Simon Reynolds tapdance. kent williams -- kent@avalon.net