i was talking with my friend huffa (who i have invited to join EPN) very very late last night. in our alcohol fueled rant, conversion turned to glitch, microhouse, and associated genres, and we came to the agreement that akufen, with his track "deck the house" (a raucous, joyous celebration of *those cool sounds you get while twiddling the radio knob* - but assembled with such care as to walk that delicate line between shockingly alienating and irrepressibly infectious, a bold departure from the languid minimal digital-dub stuff his contemporaneous peers were experimenting with), simultaneously created and destroyed the microhouse movement. after such a gesture, no further iteration is necessary (or in some cases even possible), although in cases like this, due to the functional and consumer-based aspects of electronic dance music, one finds a market glutted with clones of wildly varying quality.
anyway, this made me recall a claim i've heard several times about seminal "goth" rock band bauhaus, and how with "bela legosi's dead" they gave birth too and killed said genre. at first it sounds like a silly, meaningless assertion, but upon closer examination, the band solidified so many deathrock/"goth" tropes, while making it impossible to PUSH them any further - the deep, maudlin, bowie-on-barbiturates vocal stylings; flirtation with synthesizers and dub production techniques; cheeky references to 50's/60's pop culture; cultivating that air of grandiose desperation; pushing the dark, foreboding atmosphere to the point of self-caricature. really, after bauhaus, any advancement of said sound or aesthetic constitutes some kind of substantial formal deviation.
these gestures - purely generative yet masking such destruction, sublime and mortifying - really fascinate and terrify me.
does anyone have any musings on this notion? any artists or pieces of art (of any sort) that meet or fail to meet said requirements? i'm really intrigued by this right now, so any ideas people have are super encouraged...this thread is to discuss the birth and death of movements - and particularly that nebulous space where two such instances coincide.
11 comments:
So we are talking about form here, by which I mean sets of rules about a creative process.
I think this really relates to what RMObrian was saying about how traditional forms (the example he gave was Tuvan throat singing) don't really get old, whereas in contemporary art (and music?) we are always seeking to explode the form. Why can we simultaneously have two approaches to form?
Some forms, like Haiku, have pretty elaborate rules. My supposition was always that they were developed over time, each generation improving it, adding one more set of constraints, until it became highly formalized, and messing with the rules was no longer acceptable. But I guess there must be other traditional or folk forms that just sprung into existence fully-formed.
Now, the thing is, when you are inventing a new form, you don't sit down and say, "OK, I'm going to invent the novel now." You just have a story in your head, and set it down in an idiosyncratic way. This is a process of standing on shoulders to an extent, but it is also the product of the natural selection of ideas in your mind following the rules of evolution (see memetics) and good luck (i.e. your pen doesn't run out of ink before you get it down). Perhaps you notice that you are operating under a pretty interesting set of rules that seem to work together somehow and elaborate these consciously, but you've only invented a new form if a bunch of other people look at what you've done, analyse it to reverse-engineer the rules, and then follow the rules themselves. So what I'm saying is that the invention of a new form is more pattern recognition than conscious planning. After all, humans, although undeniably prolific, do a shitty job making up good sets of rules, but are excellent at noticing patterns (in fact, a little too good). Humans also like to obey rules, and are pretty good at doing so if they want to, which is why in the past many people stuck to traditional forms.
I for one enjoy making up rules and following them in my own art, although I sometimes feel like the rules (at least the good ones) make themselves up as a means to achieving a certain end. I get uncomfortable telling other people to obey the rules of a game I invented (TCD has experience here?), but the restrictions of form are an enabler to creativity most of the time. I don't want to be paralyzed by choice.
Yeah, reverse-engineering is right. Because you see this song as the first time the rules of this particular genre of music came together. But the rules are the cart, not the horse. The song is hugely complicated with a thousand factors. Or, rather, like any object observed by your brain, infinitely complicated. Like a tree. But the rules are the drawing of the tree - finite, idealized, approximated. So when you attempt to create another infinte tree song from the drawing of the tree, it is necessarily finite. Copy of a copy again.
Then there is the possibility of mutation, and a new form. But in evolution the rate of mutation can't be too high or the process breaks down. That is where we are at today in contemporary art - there is no chance for new forms to blossom because the rate of change is too high. There are no distinct species. There are certainly a lot of rules, but they are not reverse-engineered/formalized as clearly. I suppose when we connect our minds to computers and up our calculation rates so time slows down again like it used to be when we were young that the rules will become more apparent.
If you look at it from a memetic perspective, of course all this must be natural just because the speed of information exchange is so high in the modern world.
I wonder how the other 100 billion (high estimate) sentient species in this galaxy have handled the mechanical meme-explosion period of their histories. If any of you are reading this blog, please feel free to comment. And post some music.
Eff - This is really interesting. It reminds me of discussions literature nerds have, wondering whether any new work could compare to Homer or Shakespeare. But the point is actually totally moot, because we've already defined each as the ultimate in his field. The argument is still-born. Because, at this point, those are the works from which we've "reverse-engineered" the rules. Maybe you weren't saying this exactly, but it's at least another implication of the tree metaphor. And when we get to that we point we realize that if the literary world did decide that there were poets and dramatists better than Homer and Shakespeare, all it would signify is a shift in our cultural values, or in the way we recognize patterns and the values we assign to them.
cool, i like what both of you have to say about historicization, or the reverse-engineering process, as eff has dubbed it.
i'm not sure how i feel about the notion that new forms are generated through pattern recognition as opposed to 'conscious planning'. there are other factors at play, in many cases - the novel, for instance, was written and sold in serial form
eff's comments regarding restriction of form and being paralyzed by choice are pertinant to the discussion in the silver birth blade thread.
the rate of cultural mutation is very high these days, which is why i think it is doubly important to be aware of the past, to know the rules, and to understand how to place and trace things historically. perhaps the 'search for something new', the impulse to continually explode forms, is irrelevant, or even detrimental - and what we really need to do is solidify forms culled from the immediate (highly fertile) past...the last 30-50 years...and i guess that means making a lot of value calls in regards to which forms are and aren't relevant...
now, in our attempt to historicize, to reverse engineer, there are those mutations, those formal deviations which open doors (phuture's 'acid tracks', for instance, gave birth to hundreds of subgenres of minimal electronic dance music,), and those that close them (after duchamp's readymades, it is basically impossible to push that concept further without making retrogressive moves, without resorting back to more traditional models of authorship/ownership).
usually these gestures, shocking as they are, seem to come out of nowhere (closer examination usually reveals the seeds of inspiration - the pattern recognition processes the artists were undergoing). it is this that i'm specifically curious. are formal deviations only as exciting as the room they leave for development or even improvement?
how do you guys feel about the death of forms and movements? how and when does this occur?
I know that last comment was a little off-topic. I don't feel so smart about it now, but it's on my mind. I like to think about the Cabaret Voltaire (the place, not the band) where Dada was born - the book from the Dada show at MoMA was amazing. But I need some time to think...
One thing is that I'd like to hear some of this music you've been basing this discussion on. I mean, I know Bauhaus, but for many of us the genres you are speaking about are pretty obscure (microhouse? glitchphonics? blow pop?), and it might be interesting if we could give this conversation a more concrete grounding starting with these specific songs.
"what we really need to do is solidify forms culled from the immediate (highly fertile) past..."
This is a fascinating idea. A massive reverse-engineering project. Of course you'd need to enforce it, so you'd need a kind of art-police force. Oh wait, they already have those - curators. Forget it.
No seriously, that's an interesting idea.
Just joking curator-dudes. Don't blacklist me. Or pull out my fingernails.
here is akufen's 'deck the house' (from 01 or 02)
http://www.box.net/shared/vzb9fmpjot
this is the first real instance of such cut-up, micro-spliced samples being utilized for propulsive, kinetic means. this is, undeniably. a DANCE song. it is commendable for it's simplicity - although marc leclair uses pretty sophisticated equipment, i'm sure, this piece could really be achieved using only a cheap sampler.
the problem, i suppose is the word, with it, is that there is nowhere to go after this. the very existence of the piece, in some ways, precludes the utilization of the possibilties it opens up. it occupies a puzzling sort of aesthetically tautological space.
(there is also much to be said regarding this piece and the silver blade thread on appropriation/sampling)
I'm a little wary of the "where does this go from here" arguement. Didn't people say this about the Ramones? Didn't people say it about ragtime? It kind of assumes that any genre that has anywhere to go has clear paths to where it could go. While I'm not advocating that there's a whole world of cutting up little samples and putting them to rhythms, the point is that I don't think that's the point. If putting the chorus of Billie Jean over a System of a Down song was really rad in '01, then Akufen took it to another step by cutting up samples even smaller. I would hesitate to say that there isn't more to be done here that we haven't thought of already - it would just require a broadening of definitions. Ultimately, creating genres is limiting - and while convenient for the listener - is not really helpful for the artist. I don't think anyone wants their art to be able to be summed up in a word.
This reminds me of the rather common discussion people have about Cage's 4'33" - which is more or less: "Well, you can't just make pieces that are all silence. It's been done". Well yeah, and you can't rewrite Beethoven's Fifth note for note. But you can look at silence from a somewhat different angle, just as you are inescapably living in a post Beethoven's Fifth world. And (as you imply) a post "Deck the House" world, too.
Beethoven's Fifth was originally criticized for the cutting down of the main motif to 4 notes. While I can't say that anyone asked where he could go from there, it certainly seems silly to us that he was criticized at all.
Also, shouldn't it be noted that this four to the floor dance beat is very derivative? It seems like people have been asking how much more milage we can get out of this sound for quite a while.
i think you're absolutely right to question the 'where does this go from here' argument. i mean, i'm not entirely sure that it is a problem myself. however, at times it does seem to me that the best pieces of art (and often the ones i return to most often) are those that leave open the possibility for development, expansion, exploration, as opposed to those that rashly shut doors.
cage is a perfect example - while 4'33 is certainly a very minimal piece, it possesses all the subtlety of a child-in-tantrum (no matter how fucking zen cage is :P).
but yeah, maybe that's ok. as you said, 'you can look at silence from a different angle'. i think this perspective shift is a very important thing. the same holds true for something like duchamp. the act of laying bare the base materiality of forms is critical for certain kinds of development.
i'm not sure how i feel about your anti-genreification stance. i think it's important and necessary to categorize things, and figure out how things are interconnected - the goal isn'tn to like, 'box things in' or demean/diminish them. more to help build systems of understanding...
oh - and i'm necessarily not meaning to be critical of akufen (or anything, really). i mean, i think obviously lots of famous, important, and great art doesn't necessarily lead on to further former developments (and plenty of perfect art is positively derivative in most regards)...this is all just thought in progress...
as far as the 4-to-the-floor beat - obviously, not every structural element needs to (or really CAN be) form-shattering for a piece to embody a new formal development. indeed, it's 'deck the house's very RELIANCE on the 4/4 kick that makes it NEW (as opposed to the IDM or experimental artists who were exploring similar techniques in less "tired" rhythmic structures for quite a while).
(of course, as dj and fan of techno, house, and disco, i don't think a 4tothefloor kick is a derivative or boring structure - certainly no more so than like, playing chords or singing words. pure rhythmic functionality is not something that dies easy.)
oh, and sorry i've been posting so much dudes. i've been stuck in front of the computer doing work for the last few days, and drinking way too much tea. it usually makes me a bit kooky. just tell me to shut up if i'm being a dick.
This is from a Walker Percy novel I've started reading. 50 pages in and it's been a nasty death trip set at a golf course. Maybe I just had this post on my mind as I read, but i think it speaks to this...
After teeing up the third ball and as he measured the driver and felt his weight shift from one foot to the other, he has wondering absentmindedly: What if I slice out-of-bounds again, what then? Is a game so designed that there is always a chance that one can so badly transgress its limits and bounds, fall victim to its hazards, that disgrace is always possible, and that it is the public avoidance of disgrace that gives one a pleasant sense of license and justification?
TIMMY SLYM, that quote from the Walker Percy novel is pretty amazing.
I was reading an interview with Keith Richards, and he attacked the question of authenticity and originality directly by saying something to the effect of, "people need to stop worrying about copying other people and coming up with original ideas, because there are none". Now, what he was really saying was, all things have always existed and the artist just picks them out of the ether and puts them together in different ways. It seems a little bit like eternal recurrence (Nietzsche). It's easy to say "everything's been done, why bother". But if you perform something (sorry, this is now going back to other post a little bit), it automatically stands on its own, because it is inimitable.
The easiest way to look at how new forms are created would be to look to language right? The basic idea is that the language center in our brains is not any different for one race of people who speak one language than it is for another (biologically).. Language has all of these really simple rules, but when you combine them you get new forms or twins that have their own language (and that's pretty rad).
Now, people should make whatever the fuck they want to make. Frank Gehry's buildings get all of this attention, but the only thing special about them is usually the ROOF. I mean, a lot of saw the one at Bard get built -- it's just a fucking concrete box.. But to the world it's new, because it took one linguistic element (concrete modern construction) and combined it with another (airospace titanium fabrication technology). I mean, it could have been Submarines crossed with log cabins and people would still be like WOW.
I'm not convinced that something like minimalism is purely reductive -- it's probably once again a combination of two existing things. It's so easy for us to take the word MINIMALISM for instance and actually BELIEVE it. The word as Eff would say is a compression of the movement it's describing. You can reverse-engineer the movement, but you can't do so using the word as a your starting point.
So yea, I think that movements are just Blah thrown at Blah and if they work well together it's a new thing. Peanut Butter? GREAT. Chocolate? Great! Peanut Butter and Chocolate? Reeses. Woww!! Pictures + Sound + Mechanical movement = Movies. Data Storage + High Speed Fiber optics + HTML + TCP/IP + OS = internet.
I always feel like the most amazing art is SO simple that you're left scratching your head saying WHY THE FUCK DIDN'T I THINK OF THAT??
i like what you say greg....about how you have to be able to look at something and wonder why you didnt think of it...i mean...i think the best art is stuff that seems within your reach...also there is something to be said about art where you have no idea where it came from and how it was made....but that shit is so rare...its nicer to have something that you could have made...or you should have made...but didnt think of it...or worse...you did think of it but you are so fucking lazy that you didnt do it...its always annoying when you think of something (in yr head)...then decide it would be lame...then see it when someone else does it and it looks awesome...and then this is you:
"crap," said ______
as for genrification (genrezizing?) i think it helps artists as well...i think when several artists get grouped together then kind of develop together...in a good way....i mean you have no way of predicting what critics or curators are going to say/do...it can piss someone off to be lumped into a category, although if the category develops into something bigger then its easier to explain yr art...maybe to produce it as well...
i think one of the problems is that there is so much genre-sorting going on, because comsumers rely on it to discover what they like...like links on the world wide web...but what used to be jazz, rock and roll, god music, folk music....is now emo, screamo, grind, thrash, black metal, death metal, blah blah blah....its like a bit bonkers...so i think TCD is right...like you can create and kill a genre with one song, but it has to be a small genre...maybe its harder to think in pittsburgh, with an H
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