Sell everything: Chat from 3/30/09

This week's chat... hit the jump (if I set up a jump right)

[15:57] Sabrina Loudwater: next week my avatar definitely won't have a protruding belly!
[15:58] Kathereene Kahanamoku: bhodi, I forgot how to sit again
[15:58] Howl Yifu: yes, got to keep the avatar up to the real - you should have a baby to accompany your avatar next week

We So SyFy

With the completely huge and wide-ranging topics covered in Sound Unbound there can easily be a lack of organization to a discussion about the text--which is likely the way that the writers would have expected it (or, instead, as a string of separate conversations, which is likely what this will be, that will combine to make this other thing, which is both our class and some other text/file/thing/?//).

Before I get into questions, I want to draw your attention to an assertion from the book's editor that will set up my next two questions: Miller writers, "We live in an era where quotation and sampling operate on such a deep level that the archaelogy of what can be called 'knowledge' floats in a murky realm between the real and the unreal" (11).

So thinking of that quote, what do we think of Doctorow's argument in favor of keeping technology going--the anti-Metallica approach--that "crippling" this technological change "to save someone's outmoded busienss model is a crime against humanity"? Other references to this issue from other writers (even Lethem's kind plea not to pirate his texts for awhile, but to remix away) all seem to feel similarly.
So yeah, what do we think? The question has come up in class before, about intellectual property, and copyright, but with this book's bold assertion that copyright laws are misused and damaging to future art.

If we continue on a similar thread, to move to Lethem's essay on plagiarism (which he pretends to plagiarize, but then attributes sources--kinda cute, but really takes the plagiarism out of the picture. Why not have said, "Ya know what? I stole half of this essay. Eat it."?), is there a necessity to quote and borrow, and a "delight" as he suggests (43)?
I definitely think there is, and yet often when I'm writing, I'll think of an idea, and then suddenly panic when I realize it's terribly similar to something I'd see before--or worse, something I see after that turns out to have been done before. If this is just crytomnesia, and something natural, and something I support fully, why do I dread my influences still? Do the other artists here do the same thing--painstakingly try not to repeat, even if the greatest artists in history borrow and steal themselves?

Jumping forward a bit, Ken Jordan and Paul Miller cover some issues about audio composition software. We have an assignment in this class that could easily involve some of this. They liken parts of the process to building out of Legos with sound. In my experience recording with Garage Band, this is a pretty accurate assessment. Similar to the arguments made about Cage (and Cage's responses), this makes music production awfully easy. I think of one of my favorite electronic musicians, Four Tet, and it sounds really "GarageBandish"--which seems like a bad thing.
So I have two videos to sort of get us thinking about this issue:
First is a video of a song from a guy who claims to not be able to play either the piano or the drums, but was edited to appear that he can. The video, in this case, just adds a bit of intrigue, the sound is recorded simulatenously, so in effect, this editing would work just as well without it. This is clearly awesome (sorry to be leading), but something's still unsettling about it.

Amateur - Lasse Gjertsen - watch more funny videos

And this next video is of a Tenori-On. This is an instrument that really emphasizes the maker as the listener too, as Jordan and Miller suggest that music is moving towards. As you watch this, you can probably see that playing this could easily lead to letting yourself be the listener and producer at the same time. Aside from the fact that I want to buy one of these immediately (and am pretty sure I'm going to), does this take away from skill in programming? In a demo video of the instrument, Four Tet notes that you can sound pretty good on it without any practice.


What do we make of Goldsmith's "uncreativity"?
This essay is, as far as I can see, a lie. It's clearly creative. You mention that idea to just about any artist and I imagine most would say "Hm... weird" and BAM, it's creative and interesting. The act might be painful, and the result might not be something I'd be particularly interested in reading--but it's creative. It's fresh, it's the opposite of what he claims he wanted. Sorry Goldsmith.

Finally, and this isn't a question (though I do want to talk about Oliveros's improvisatory school), but reading about Kurzweil's cybernetic ideas was really exciting. I've got a 76 weighted key giant purple Kurzweil keyboard in my room, and it's been a treasure for years, and I never knew the company's founder had such bizarre and cool things to say.

But if we're out of time, and want to talk more about computers making sounds, this video can spark some conversation related to Oliveros as well.

Bicycle Built for Two Thousand from Aaron on Vimeo.

Okay, that's all, let's get talking and sound making.

Reflection in Asphalt

Before I even begin with questions, I want to discuss this idea that Silverman discusses in her Acoustic Mirror, bringing together a connection between film and reflection in a metaphoric sense. She cites Kracauer as suggestion that a movie goer goes to the cinema because he or she yearns for his or her own life (8). I interpreted this as a desire not to compensate for something, but instead to recognize and understand. When we look in a mirror, we attempt to see ourselves, and what we see may not always be entirely accurate, but it's close. Film can do the same thing--as does any art--and represent who we are as people in a way perhaps the viewer has not considered.

I love film. I spend much of time watching movies, thinking about movies, and attempting to make movies. That said, this book's use of psychoanalysis and theory assumed an enormous base of knowledge (explanations from the first chapter about fetishism, castration, lack, gaze, etc. were all explained far too quickly and with a sort of attitude that said "of course, duh, you know this is fact, why am I boring you?")--and as a result I really struggled to understand.

Our goal for these blogs is to take two questions and answer one of them, but I know that my answering of one will be very basic and probably wrong. So in its place, I'll answer a sort of easy one and ask two additional questions.

First, the one I think I can answer--what is the point of studying the female voice in film (as The Acoustic Mirror sets out to do)?
Previous work in film theory has focused on the way that the medium accentuates male gaze. Silverman argues that a similar "gaze" (is there a word for audio-gazing? do i even understand the concept of gaze enough for this metaphor to work for me?) is at work in Hollywood's use of the female voice--film holds the female to the female body. For example, there are few female voiceovers since allowing the female voice to be seen and not heard would put her beyond the reach of male gaze (164).

This leads me to another question--really, why aren't there female voiceovers? Silverman's suggestion mentioned above fits her thesis, but it doesn't seem to really answer the question at all (which is part of my problem with this kind of theory, but that's just my problem). Is it because more men get screenplays produced and few men write about women, or is there something else going on? I thought of my love of Discovery and BBC's Planet Earth, narrated in the US by Sigourney Weaver, but was narrated by David Attenborough for the British broadcast and the DVDs. Although I never heard Attenborough's, friends of mine said it was much better than Weaver's--and I remember constantly feeling strange that she was narrating. Was it a bad narration or is something else at work? I don't know why I have to struggle so hard to think of a film with a constant female voiceover, but I can think of dozens of films with male voiceovers.

Finally, Silverman suggests that viewers accept sound of a film as something "real," and that this stems from the "metaphysical tradition" that sound is immediate (43). She cites Lacan when she says that speech actually leads to absense, and that what you end up with is an "impression of reality" (44). Why is there a need to associate sound in film as something real? Is it only obvious because of the time we've had with the media in the present that clearly sound is NOT real, that the actors are mic'd, that sound effects are added in post (or sometimes even diagetic dialogue is voice-overed, re-recorded)? Do we actually trust sounds the way Silverman suggests (think about being scared at night, you hear creaks and rumbles, and trust sound even less, forcing yourself to turn on the light to know that everything is fine).

I'm including only a picture of asphalt here, to represent how clearly I could see this text:

The Idiot Splicer

Question 1: How does "rhythm science" (which may be more about rhythm than science) apply to literature?
In the short time I've been serious about trying to become a fiction writer, there's been no shortage of discussion about influence. Like many new writers, there's a sort of inescapable desire to channel the voices of the writers that compelled us to write in the first place. Recently I received an e-mail from the Engl 418 professor (whose students many of us MFAs are mentoring) telling us that we might need to sit down with our students and have a difficult discussion about making sure that we are not merely channeling one of those dominant influential voices, but making something your own.

And I agree that it can be a dangerous thing, relying solely on regurgitating other voices you've encountered, but Miller argues that in many indirect ways, that's exactly what you're doing no matter how "original" your writing is. There's something wonderful about Paul Miller's approach to this issue in Rhythm Science. According to Miller, as one collages, and remixes, his/her "taste and preferences become mapped onto the specific structure of the rhythm" (40). If this wasn't already easily translated into the writing world, Miller later made that direct connection, describing writing as "infectious," with the same epidemiology metaphors he used for dj-ing.

Perhaps even more intriguing is the description Miller has for music as an unfixed, malleable entity. Rather than thinking of something like a song as a unit, he takes it apart and considers each track like a Lego set, able to be taken apart and rearranged. How much each part of those parts is a part of someone is much less relevant than what one does with those parts. In writing, the Lego analogy is even more tangible. We write within a set amount of blocks (whether you break it into sentence structure, words, sounds, or even lettes), and although of course we can make up new ones, for the most part we work within that set. So when one writer creates something with those pieces, another writer can take that apart and build something different--and it is within the similarities as much as it is the differences that we can see who the writer is and what they are bringing. I remember when I was a bit younger, and making a mix-tape (not splicing songs, but merely gathering a bunch of cds and making a casette of a mix of tracks) was much more laborous than it is now. Making these for friends was very deliberate, and although it doesn't say as much about me as my writing, I think the concept really does apply. What you choose to be influenced by, and what you choose to reflect of that influece, is what makes your writing both yours and a part of the rest of the "record collection" we can all sort through. It's a wonderful idea.

Question 2: With all of this emphasis on influence a I've discussed above, how come it's so easy to understand when an artist complains about copyright violation? In other words, how come I can understand Miller's suggestion and it seems perfectly clear, yet on some levels I can understand why an artist would make something and NOT want it chopped up, remixed, werd?

This book makes me feel like the only good approach would be to post one of my favorite remixes...
I dare you not to smile at Girl Talk's ability to mix Nirvana's "Lithium" with Deee-lite and Salt n Pepa simultaneously. Plus the video is lovely work of splicing as well:



Second is just a link, but it's one of my favorite remixes ever because both the remixer and the remixee are both extremely fluent in mixing analog and digital art. Here we have Cornelius's mindboggling track "Fit Song" remixed by the Books. Listen, love. "Eat. White. Paint." It gets progressively stranger and more wonderful as the source material blurs into.... who knows what this other thing is.

Cornelius - Fit Song (The Books Eat White Paint Remix)

Your Least Favorite DJ

My first question is about Shannon's "A Mathematical Theory of Communication." What's so interesting about this paper is the incredibly strange quantifiable terms of communication--an aspect of my life I'd always taken as organic and immeasurable in a simple output. To phrase this as a question--what should we do, practically, with this kind of material?

I used to spend a lot of my time focusing on astronomy and astrophysics--a field in which a signal-to-noise ratio has an extremely practical application (if you don't know how much of the light you received is from the star you're looking at versus how much comes from that pesky neighbor's light-polluting spotlights, or, more likely atmospheric conditions, there's not a whole lot to do with your data). In communication--this "noise" is much less definable (as we've seen in the past readings). It's an entirely human quality--what it is that we want to hear versus the things that are getting in the way of that hearing. I'd even go as far as to argue that not all "noise" in human communication is aural at all (next time you're daydreaming and realize someone's been talking to you, you can see what I mean here).

In terms of Shannon's paper, I had a hard time finding any source of actual information outside of the theory. The examples given on page 7 of randomly generated letters following known patterns (and progressively looking more like English) are very interesting, but there's only loose reference to where those things came from. It seems like there is a distinct and logarithmic relationship between S/N ratios and time, as well as a "capacity" for input (so weird), but beyond that I think it's important not to think of this as anything practical in the human sense. These functions could work for a recording device, but there seems to be a logical disconnect transferring that to a human element. Yet Shannon refuses to ever clarify the sources and receivers (and capacitors) as either human or non-human. As has frequently happened in the past, I've attempted to answer a question, and end up not terribly far from where I started. But isn't that how it goes? (Also, just a note: on page two, Shannon gives an in depth description of the change of base forumula for logs. This is 8th grade math, mixed in quite complex calculus. Does anyone else find this extremely strange? Especially since Shannon assumes SO much of the reader, it's strange that this would need to be explained.)

I think it's strange that more than one of these essays referred to sound/noise/recording as a weapon (from both Burrowes and Listening). While Burrowes' suggestions seem elaborate and very intentional, how does this concept work in relation to, say, the Patriot Act, or my former Governor's case, or taking great songs and putting them on commercials?


Finally, regarding the Most Unwanted Music, I felt an immediate connection to these people. I really wanted to hear the Most Wanted version too! I was quickly reminded of anytime my friends and I are hanging out and my friend Danny takes control of the iPod. Almost invariably, everyone berates his choices (Ween, Zappa, Mike Keneally, Dream Theater, Mr. Bungle, and various bits of metal), and while I tend to love many of those things, it's really true. Especially when the scatterbrained screechy falsetto of the Most Unwanted Music sounded like a slightly lesser version of Ween--I really felt like this was an accurate assessment of music fandom. And now my excuse to post a Ween song or two--something particularly "unwanted":

"So many people in the neighborhood"

"Fucked Jam"

If you're having trouble hearing, attach another ear.

Beginning with the invention of Scott's phonautograph, there seems to a very close connection between the history of sound reproduction and that of writing. Even Edison's gramophone was met with praise that it would make stenography much easier. Why was early sound reproduction associated this way?

One of the reasons from Sterne's The Audible Past involves the attempt to give deaf people a way of communicating without needing sign language (which for Bell meant that they were no longer "normal" people and this was bad). What's particularly perplexing about this connection to writing is that one of Sterne's main arguments was that the success of sound reproduction came from the movement away from mimicking the voice box and into mimicking the ear. I naturally think of sound originating in the ear, but that's probably because of otology's current acceptance. It's not hard to see the limitations of the automatons made by Descartes and Bell and others, but this movement to the ear would not (again, at least not from my perspective) immediately lead to writing.

Perhaps the answer actually comes in Sterne's second chapter about Laennic's stethoscope. Laennic pushed to find ways of taking what he had heard and putting it into writing (though his methods were fairly inconsistent and difficult to follow). This inability to write about or talk about sound (Sterne points out that the words we have to describe sound-- pitch, timbre, volume--are vastly limited compared to what we have as tools to discuss visuals) could be why sound recording needed to have a writing-based application. I'm not entirely sure if this is correct, but I think that this need to visually see the writing migh have been just the natural inertia to associate new technologies of communication with old ones (for example, the desire in the 90's to put the letter "e" in front of regular words to show that they had a digital counterpart).

Interestingly, and slightly related, I was particularly interested with the reference to the application of the video/audio editor's need to visualize sound with the traditional squiggley lines. In my stop-motion animation when I use dialogue, I rely heavily on this to match timing with sounds, so that in a way, I'm "reading" the sound, so it's neat to see that this was Scott's original hope, but used for completely different applications.

My second question is about the discussion of the separation of senses. While Sterne cites that one of the crucial steps in the process of the "invention" of sound reproduction was to separate the senses. Taking this idea further, he even explained further separation when discussing the quality of the stethoscope creating a sort of framing device for the sound (so that there was a signal and noise separation). First, how did people perceive senses before this? I can't imagine all sensation not being separated. There was the idea of Viktor and his socially constructed sound interpretation, but this didn't sit well with me (they fired a gun near his head and he didn't react at all? The mere overload of sensory information seems like it would make anything alive react that, regardless of the way that the senses are viewed). In what applications were the senses discussed before their "separation"?

I'm incuding a trailer for the movie The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes, which isn't a particularly good film (even though the brilliant stop-motion animators the Brothers Quay directed it), but it involves a series of automatons designed to reproduce an opera from a dead woman.


Also, I'm including this picture

Grad School Event: 1. Purchase over priced books. 2. Make some lunch. 3. Walk to class. 4. Start a large and dangerous fire indoors.

What was so striking about Orality and Literacy was how so often each concept about the differences between oral cultures (and their methods of thinking and communicating) and chirographic/typographic cultures seemed very obvious. Ong's descriptions of the changes (for example, cultural hesitancy to trust the written word when literacy was still new) felt almost like thought experiments--where the outcomes were as I anticipated. Particularly, the topics about how memorization affected the structures of the story (and affected narrative entirely--from chapters 3 and 6) were particularly interesting for me as a fiction writer. One of my favorite novels is Don Quixote, and while this is a very literate text (with some clear evidence of revision and longer structural issues), its episodic nature is entirely related to the literacy of that time.

My first question comes about from Ong's implication that printed text implies closure--is this true (129)? While his argument is sound (that the when the text is over, it will be the same again the next time, and that any discussion with a printed text will not be able to respond in any sort of immediate way), and I agree with him that relative to oral cultures, this seems like the case, I still do not agree. I read with a pen in hand the whole time, and now I am again using my writing to respond. The closure may still exist on some levels, but the invitation for conversation for academics and anyone who isn't afraid to question print (which, by the way, the explanation for burning books was remarkable--Ong certainly has a way of saying a lot in a small space) the closure seems imperfect.

Of course, it's impossible to be able to go backwards--to unlearn this way of thought structure to be able to say anything about how I would be different without written language--but I think the results here are one of the cases of "different" but in no ways better or worse in terms of closure. Written language does not feel closed to me, or impermanent, and I think if it did, there'd be far fewer discussions about anything, and just a whole lot of memorizing.

Although there is plenty to say about the Ong book, I want to address the Rothenburg work for my second question. After reading over his essay about the challenges and virtues of translating Seneca poetry, and after reading the Declaration of Poetry Rights--seeing his Ritual was very strange. My ignorance of these cultures forces me to wonder about these: how much liberty has Rothenburg taken on these works? They seem very strange, almost intentionally shocking and strange in their straightforward commands to do fairly unorthodox things. He's very devoted to capturing the language and its sound--do these focus on that?

Without any good visual plans, here's a picture of little Walt.