From Tom Millar Sent Fri, Aug 6th 1999, 04:31
From Tom Millar Sent Fri, Aug 6th 1999, 04:31
> I'm a subscriber to the idea that the basic human mind/situation hasn't > changed all that much over time, that we are limited/enabled by our > context (which does change A LOT), so I would tend to say that things > are much as they ever have been, *IN A RELATIVE SENSE*... BUT... this > speed issue seems to me to be something which is truly different now as > compared to past ages. How do we change this? Do we have to become > ludites and destroy the technology? Would it be enough simply to grasp > responsibility for the world instead of surrendering it to technological > constraints and spec sheets (...if this computer goes this fast, then so > must I)! Do I have too much time on my hands today (YES)? Am I avoiding > other things I should be doing (YES!)? > > Anyway, how does this relate to IDM? Maybe this music facilitates > meditation on these issues, restates them in another form. Maybe... it > certainly brings them up for discussion! I agree that humans remain basically the same as they have been for 200,000 years, except for the minor changes caused by shifts in our average diet, which are sort of irrelevant to this discussion. However the speed issue is pretty interesting. Notice that most music these days, as a whole, is faster and faster than music from years ago. This might seem superficial but it relates strongly to what we are capable of - orchestras from centuries ago were not able to pull of the same technical precision at the high tempos that modern live performers are expected to be able to do; much less the machine-aided musicians discussed on this list. Music has not leveled out at a moderato- instead, a great deal of music now falls in the range of 100-120 and above, while some music now extends into hyperspace tempos which live musicians unaided by MIDI sync would never be able to achieve. So we're pushing the technology to extreme levels- the Sonic Decimator & related DSP stunts, the bass wallop of a Rotterdam track, the ridiculously fast-paced cut-ups of all our fave drill n' bass beat geeks. And the more we push the technology, the more we rely on it- it's a vicious cycle until we realize all of a sudden that Autechre without fucked up sounds is like Kid606 without DSP or Masonna without overdrive... just putting around being kind of silly in the final analysis. I suspect that the tools are slowly going to become less and less important and that craftsmanship will finally make a return to the spotlight. This is why Surgeon & Pacou & Theorem are so much more appealing to me than half the noisy cut-up pop postmodern shit. It's not the tools at all, it's composition and arrangement, conforming to absolutes and creating something original within an extremely limited, almost canonical structure. So I just ranted on and on and on. Yippee. Gotta go write poems for class... fun... Tom