Random and Confused or Organized and Intentional?

I like these articles for opening the possibilities of art and sound performance. Though each goes about it in a different way, each author/article seems to be suggesting that art has no boundaries. Realizing that sound can be noise or performance, coming from the same channel, helps to dissolve some prejudices people may have, particularly with regard to avant garde, or even modern art. What I don’t understand, however, is how something so random can still be art? Surely it is a performance, and meaning is not entirely lost, though unexplicably altered, depending on the “channel.” Is the message of anti-records and conceptual records to simply undercut the commercialism and capitalism that goes along with performance? Or are these simply self-expression? Do they have some deeper underlying meaning rather than to just destroy a record? The channel, of course, will change the art significantly. I imagine this YouTube video, “Anti-Record #3 by The Adjective Noun,” would be significantly different if played on a different turntable and would continue to change with repeated playings.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxrI561jqbw

How then, does such a random performance maintain enough of its original state to be art? More importantly, is the randomness itself the art?

As I am very unfamiliar with sonic culture, sound performance, noise, etc… I tried to connect all of this to something I can better understand. Hip-hop and dj performances are not completely different from anti-records. The underground scene and dj battles especially. As this video shows, this is certainly a performance and arguably art, and though the recording itself won’t change much. The performance/art could change dramatically depending on the venue, the turntables, mixer, speakers, amplifiers, other equipment, even the dj’s mood at the time. So even though this seems really planned and thought out, the art itself can be just as random and different as an anti-record.

http://www.djbattle.net/video_view.php?mID=46 (I apologize if you have to download this. I had trouble uploading the file from my computer.)

This video brings me to my second point. Considering last week’s discussion on the history of sound production and recordings, combined with Shannon and Rice from this week, I wonder how much these things have evolved or revolutionized? It seems that what was being done in the 1930s is still being done today. DJs, though not entirely of the same sound performance, destroy records to make a new sound. They “recycle records to create sound montages” like Paul Hidemith and Ernst Toch did in 1930; they experiment “with records, playing them backwards, varying speeds, etc.” like Edgard Varese in 1936; they stick “tape on top of records, paint over them, burn them, cut them up and glue different parts of records back together, etc.” like Milan Knizak in 1963 (some of this is visible on A-Trak’s vinyls.) All of this creates “new compositions” and plays into the idea that “no recording medium, it seems, can escape eventual manipulation by conceptual artists” (Rice). If this is the case now, in 2009, for both underground and commercial hip-hop, what has changed other than the technology? The techniques are the same though the quality may be different. The performers/artists are not radical, not even totally original in their methods. Perhaps this goes along with the theme that art has no boundaries and exposing oneself to the various possibilities will help develop a better understanding of/appreciation for, noise in all its forms.

Use your listening ears!

I wonder what exactly Sterne is attempting to say in The Audible Past. Perhaps I need to keep reading, but I find myself really disagreeing with him thus far. I do not dispute the fact that the way a culture hears helps shape, and is shaped by, the culture, though I don’t think it can be considered definitive. Why does Sterne focus so heavily on listening while there are still technological issues that effect listening today? And what exactly does he mean by “listening?” Sterne repeatedly writes “sound, hearing, and listening” though I’m not sure if these three are one in the same, or three completely different items/issues for him.

Furthermore, why should “we … presume to know exactly what it was like to hear at a particular time or place in the past" (19). All history is interpretation. Reading Victorian novels offers a glimpse into the historical society, but does not tell the reader what exactly it was like during that time and place. I’m not sure why Sterne focuses so heavily on sound as being shaped by history and culture, I think all things are. Written text certainly is shaped by culture and different movements arrive at different times. Visual arts see the impact of a historical moment. I do not see why sound recordings should be any different.

There are no real answers here and I’m hoping to read more of the book and find some answers. Sterne intrigues me more out of disagreement than enlightenment, but I still need to figure out what his real message is. I will keep reading and hopefully have some more answers before class discussion. For now, however, I think sound recordings are outstanding and helpful, though not definitive, in understanding history.

Not Discontinued, New and Improved

I find all of the readings and ideas on orality and literacy, orality vs literacy, etc very intriguing. I'm especially interested, however, in The People's Poetry Language Initiative. There seems to be a push from the Initiative toward avoiding the dominant culture/language, but it also seems as though the weaker languages depend on the dominant culture/language. Through translation, particularly of “original works” that aren't “translatable literally,” the culture and tradition of that language does not necessarily disappear but it evolves (Rothenberg, Total Translation). In fact, it seems undeniable that without the dominant cultures with the “means to document, preserve and disseminate cultural expression” of endangered languages, these languages would already be dead. How then, can the Initiative, and anyone who has an interest in preserving these endangered languages, translate and foster human creativity without changing the original or instituting some necessary form of adaptation? And even though multilinguaslism would certainly help, I don't think anyone could learn all 6500 languages that could potentially be lost.

Also from this essay, or declaration, I wonder about the true nature of endangerment poetry faces. It seems that poetry is less endangered than perhaps the language itself. At the risk of making a completely incorrect claim (as I have not studied/researched this enough to know), it seems as though poetry of a particular language can long outlive the language itself. Sounds contradictory, but I believe many cultures speak a different language in daily communication, but have been able to maintain some originality of the previous language through poem recitations and song. And while I am concerned and disheartened to think that a language could die or be lost, I am also inclined to believe that this is the natural order of things. It is “the Darwinian way of the world,” and though it is unfortunate, I don't think it is entirely bad. With the evolution of a language, we get something greater. I have never believed language to be static and unchanging, even in dominant cultures, language evolves—and I think this is good. I'm glad that we have “hip hop, poetry slam[s], and cowboy poetry [that] harken back to the ancient oral traditions, to the poetry competitions spanning cultures from Ancient Rome to medieval Japan, and to the devastated poetry of indigenous communities from the Americas to Oceania” (Initiative 4). Such performances are new and different, but not bad. I do not disagree that we need to protect endangered languages (i.e. cultures) as much as possible, but I do not think we should do so at the risk of missing something new.

I like the Word

I’m having trouble relating to the readings for this week. Sound poetry just doesn’t make much sense to me. What are we supposed to get out of sound poetry? I first believed it to be complete nonsense (as Higgins very briefly suggested) then I began thinking of it as very intentional. Sound poetry as a way of making various, not necessarily related sounds, into a meaningful work—just as written (perhaps traditional?) poetry is really nothing more than a bunch of words with no singular distinction, worked together to make a meaning. Written poetry asks the reader to think about certain words/meaning in certain and defined terms. Sound poetry asks the listener to think about certain sounds/meaning in certain and defined terms, not necessarily dependant on the individual sound—but the whole compilation. Sound poetry does not depend on rules of language to be effective—but what then, is the point? The listenings for the week did not exactly agree with my assumptions based on the readings. These listenings, even the ones with people speaking in tongues, seem not so much about the single or compiled sounds. This really seems completely intentional and put together in a way to have a very distinct (though maybe undiscernable) message or purpose. These don’t seem to be necessarily free from “semantic function” (McCaffery). The sound poetry, as I heard it, functions as noise moreso than poetry.

Also, Minarelli left me with questions regarding electronic media and the mouth. If the “exploitation of sound has no limits [and] It must be carried beyond the border of pure noise, a signifying noise: linguistic and oral ambiguity has a sense only if it completely uses the instrument of the mouth,” why is electronic media so essential (Minareli)? Why does it link so heavily to musicality, mimcry, dance, movement, image, etc… Why can it not be just sound, in and of itself, with no other interference? And why must sound poetry rid itself of the Word to be so effective? I happen to like the Word. The Word does not make me feel dead, the Word does not seem so destructive and ruinous to life. I’m sorry, Mr. Chopin, I’ve either completely missed your meaning, or I completely disagree. I have yet to see how sound—of any kind—can free us “slaves of rhetoric, prisoners of explanation that explains nothing.” What can sound poetry do that the Word cannot? What have I missed in the readings/listenings that has left me completely unconvinced of the effectiveness of sound poetry in changing the world?