IDM Mailing Archive

quoted 2 lines From: "Matt Jarsky" <JARSKY@cibcdc.com>

> From: "Matt Jarsky" <JARSKY@cibcdc.com> > Subject: Re[2]: (idm) Real Autechre

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quoted 4 lines The question is, when copies can accurately portray the original

> The question is, when copies can accurately portray the original > work, what is the role of the original? > > Discuss

This discussion is pretty much what modern and post-modern philosophy deal with on a daily basis. <rant>Or at least, that used to be the case before it became an excuse for distributing research money to babbling grad students too lazy and useless to get a real job.</rant> Walter Benjamin is a good place to start, whose modernist diatribe against the phonograph is especially relevant to this list, even if the historical background dates the material. To paraphrase briefly, the nature of reproduction destroys (he uses "annihilate" -- a fairly violent word) the essence of an artwork which makes it an original. The idea of "original," as applied to Art before the industrial revolution, doesn't have meaning in the age of the sampler. If Ae takes sound chunks from a source (itself a copy) and feeds them into a sampler for tweeking, what's original? I'd argue that when new information is placed into a song via samples, you'd have an artwork; creative in every sense, but hardly what you could call an "original." Either the word needs to be reconceptualized to reflect changes in our society or a different word needs to be invented for application to "copying." People need to get it in their head that there is no "original." A "first copy," perhaps, but this is different. What would be a more interesting discussion, I think, would be to examine the property acquiring mentality found on this list that would make someone think that buying Tri Repetae on Warp is a "better value", subjectively speaking, than buying the double cd on Wax Trax/Warp. The original poster (no pun intended) was less concerned with owning the "original" (read, Warp edn.), I think, than being able to gloat that he had it before the unlucky individuals out in the sticks of North Dakota, USA were able to make the same purchase. But I have a low tolerance for "sad trainspotters," anyway, so I might be a little biased. On that note, I bought the imports of RDJ, simply because I wanted the music and I had the money for it. If I had known about the double pack domestic RDJ, and if I was a new Aphex Twin fan, then I would recommend buying the domestic. (The artwork wasn't that great, even though the ZX Spectrum pix did bring back fond memories.) But I'd rather wait until I get Chiastic Slide (on Warp, nyah nyah) later this week and review for the list. Alex Reynolds polygon@jhu.edu