30 Mar
2007
30 Mar
'07
8:45 p.m.
On Thu, 2007-03-29 at 00:48 -0300, Marcos Guglielmetti wrote:
Ha, it actually could be if your ears are open. And sorry to say, I'm
not even close to being revolutionary :-)
You should listen to Francisco Kropfl's "Metropolis" (if I remember the
name and other particulars right). It is exactly that, a 40 minute long
city soundscape of, guess what, Buenos Aires. Maybe you have listened to
it already and it did not touch you. In my case it riveted me to my seat
for the duration, most of the time with a smile in my face. My memory of it
is that of a powerful and emotionally evocative trip, tugging at my insides
all the time. Superbly crafted as well. Obviously the emotional impact
to someone not from Buenos Aires would be less... To me that piece was/is
art.
Art like that is not merely a duplication of the noise. It is a directed
reinterpretation. With a purpose and large scale forms. Of course it
_could_ be bad and just a thoughtless recording of reality, but bad art
happens all the time without the help of machines as well.
-- Fernando
[notes from the translator - Fernando Lopez-Lezcano:
there are a few
words missing in the translation and I apologize for typos, also, this
article is a comment on another article written by someone actually
present at the conference, I think, the original url is at the bottom of
this commentary]
Translation follows (accuracy _not_ guaranteed :-)
Let the fun begin :-)
[as has been noted in this thread already these arguments date back
a long time and have appeared whenever something completely different[*]
appears in scene - I'm not saying anything here is "completely new"
but you get the point, still, I'll bite and add something :-]
[*] oh well, or even "slightly different"
On Thu, 2007-03-29 at 00:48 -0300, Marcos Guglielmetti
wrote:
[MUNCH]
Nuevamente la -a mí parecer- exagerada esperanza
en el ruido, el optimismo un
tanto ridículo por la creatividad que tienen las máquinas, lo cual esconde,
creo yo, una bancarrota estético-compositiva en ciertos grupos, en ciertas
escuelas, en ciertas academias, en ciertas ideologías que pretenden que lo
único importante en materia artística es innovar, cuando quizá lo
verdaderamente importante sea 1º expresar lo que uno desea, 2º pasar un buen
momento.
Again - to me - the exagerated hope in the noise, the somewhat
ridiculous optimism in the creativity of machines, who hides, I think, a
stetical and compositive bankrupcy in certain schools, certain
academies, certain ideologies that pretend that the only thing important
in artistic matters is to innovate, when perhaps the really important
stuff would be 1st express what one wants to say, 2nd have a good time.
... ...
You seem to think artists are actually delegating creativity to machines.
How so? Could you give some examples? Perhaps there are composers out
there that rely on the "creativity of machines", but I presume there are
actually not that many. At least in my music I don't rely on something
that I think does not exist :-) I do use (sometimes) algorithms to generate
statistical stuff where merely aggregating notes by hand would not make sense
and stuff like that. Hardly delegating "creativity".
Algorithms and computers (well used) can be triggers of creativity
if you are listening to what you try to do and spot "mistakes" that may
point to stuff you would never have tried on your own.
Other composers that were at LAC2007 may want to comment on this as well.
[just fanning the flames here :-]
Obviously all the email threads we can write boil down to an ultimate
"show me the music", echoing the lkml (Linux Kernel Mailing List) "show
me the code" motto. And as you say, time will tell. Some of the so called
music (ha ha ha) will die, some will be remembered either through genius
or accident, and maybe _not_ what we would choose today to be
remembered :-) We just do our art as well as we can and that should
(but never is) enough.
En una sociedad industrializada en la que la
creatividad fue pasando desde los
hombres y mujeres hacia las máquinas, no está nada mal tener un control
potencialmente total sobre las mismas utilizando Software Libre, pero de
algún modo es un poco hacerle el juego al sistema de producción industrial
alienante dejar en manos de las máquinas casi toda la creatividad artística.
In an industrialized society in which creativity has been transfering
from men and women to machines, it is not a bad idea to have potentially
complete control over them using Free Software, but it is in some way
also to play the game of the alienating industrial production system
that leaves in the hands of machines most of the artistic creativity. Nótese que el
cronista habla de "es un mundo algo inhóspito", sin melodías, ni
más ni menos que el microcentro de Buenos Aires, por ejemplo. ¿Por qué
duplicar ese ruido?
Note that the guy who writes talks about a "a somewhat inhospitable
world", without melodies, no more or less than the downtown area in
Buenos Aires, for example. Why duplicate that noise?
Personalmente pienso que la música llamada
"contemporánea", y en particular
esa que se basa en llamar música al ruido, no hace más que trasladar el ruido
de las ciudades (autos, motos, aviones, etc.) a los instrumentos y
presentarlo si fuera música... sin ir más lejos, una caminata por el centro
de mi ciudad sería un gran concierto para toda esta generación de músicos
revolucionarios...
I personally think that the so called "contemporary" music, and
particularly that which is based in calling noise music, does not do
more than move the noise of cities (cars, motorcycles, planes, etc.) to
instruments and present them as music... a walk through my city's
downtown would be a great concert to this generation of revolutionary
musicians...