• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

electronica performers aren’t “doing” much is imbricated these responses were not necessarily an explicit attempt Viewing the Wrong Side of the Screen in with deep-rooted ideals regarding what constitutes to amend critiques of laptop performativity, they might Experimental Electronica Performances musical skill. The use of software such as Max/MSP and nonetheless be viewed as remedies helping audiences to Sonya Hofer Ableton, which allow for increased automation and “engage” with the music, for example by offering a simulation, contributes to a misconception that laptops greater sense of bodily connection to the sound and sound make musical creation and performance “easier,” or even production; providing something to look at; and, in ABSTRACT effectively works in dialogue with and within its varied, that the music has been faked. And while Goodwin general, making a “musical process” clear. This paper, live musico-experiential contexts. acknowledges the legitimacy of programming skills, his however, does not suggest what types of laptop-centric While there is considerable attention in music Montreal-based Tim Hecker is one of those evocative choice of words insinuate the pervasive regard shows are “better” live, or seek to prove whether or not and media studies on works that jump to the screen, from musician-artist creators who is at once a DJ, electronic of computer-wielding laptop artists as technicians, i.e., DJs are really playing Pac-Man. It does not ratify or 4 MTV, to Blu-ray ballets, to the Black Swan, to musician, and sound artist. He emphasizes how much not even as musicians. repudiate the so-called “problems” of laptop videogames, in this paper I will look instead at works that more dynamic, diverse, and challenging this field of The already-numerous critiques of laptop performativity, or prescribe how audiences “should” jump behind the screen, the laptop screen. In most creative activity has become by pointing out the possible performativity, while not my direct focus, offer me a recalibrate and adapt to these performances. Instead, experimental electronica performances, the laptop limitations and entanglements of such labels. As his work spring-board for considering a different critical lens on taking a different critical tack than others’ qualitative computer is the main “live” instrument. In this mode of straddles these not-so-discrete fields, it raises issues of laptop-based experimental electronica performances. critiques of laptop performativity, I focus on how the performativity, not only are our performers situated liveness and mediation, notably the distinction between These critiques, including Ed Montano’s aptly titled laptop screen signals and plays a significant role in 8 behind a screen, a figurative “curtain”—or literally the how music is presented live and how it is present live.2 article “‘How Do You Know He’s Not Playing Pac-Man constructing contextual meaning. With the aim to enrich backside of the screen—becomes what is viewed in the Additionally, his tools play a highly affective role in how While He’s Supposed to Be DJing?’: Technology, these critical discourses that address such issues of live setting, offering a curious perspective on mediatized people conceive of “live” music. Many experimental Formats and the Digital Future of DJ Culture” give me performativity and reception, I examine them within musical contexts. electronica musicians, like Hecker, use the laptop as their license to reiterate the question and to answer that indeed “screenness” as an expressive and experiential paradigm 5 main instrument in both creation and performance. Ideas we don’t know if the DJ is playing Pac-Man. What in analyzing the performances. Copyright: © 2016 First author et al. This is an open-access article dis- about authenticity are embroiled in ideas about interests me is how Montano’s question encapsulates the The laptop is not merely an inert object. As part tributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 3.0 technology, and are in continual flux, as popular music differing ways we value “liveness” and what we demand of a generation of screen natives, for whom the growing Unported, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction and media scholar Andrew Goodwin has observed: from live performance. The very fact that it matters presence of the laptop and mobile devices are key, I in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. whether or not the laptop DJ is playing Pac-Man consider how we are conditioned to them, suggesting a Playing analogue synthesizers is now a mark of indicates how audiences require visual confirmation of kind of fundamentality to them, a screenic 9 The most pervasive critique of experimental authenticity, where it was once a sign of the artistic process. Audiences want to know that technogenesis. I build from theories of screen electronica performances stems from a perceived lack of alienation—to pop iconography, the image of something, and furthermore someone, is creating sound in subjectivity, notably Kate Mondloch who writes about 6 visual spectacle and gesture by the performer, whose musicians standing immobile behind synths real-time. Of particular interest is how these critiques put screenness in experiential art contexts, saying: main “live” instrument is the laptop computer. signified coldness … Now it is the image of a the screen at the center. The screen consumes performers Performances are sometimes read as lifeless, disengaged, technician hunched over a computer terminal to an apparent detriment. The screen, not even its front, The viewer-screen connection is a site of radical tedious, effortless, and automated. In this mode of that is problematic—but that, like the image of but its back, is an audiences focal point. Screens make the inter-implication: it includes the projection performativity, not only is the artist situated behind a the synth player, can and will change…3 source and nature of sound production (or Pac-Man screen and other material conditions of screen, so too is the audience. In a live setting, audiences playing) opaque, and direct our gaze onto something view the backside of the screen, offering a curious The use of the laptop as a “problematic,” as Goodwin visually mundane. perspective on mediatized musical contexts. notes, has to do with how it is viewed in this relational- Artists have responded, consciously and Mars who has added a drummer on drum kit as part of The laptop is central to the conception and historical context. For example, oftentimes laptop DJs are subconsciously, in varying ways to “remedy” the issues their live set, Squarepusher who at times performs on his experience of experimental electronica, with direct and compared unfavorably to DJs who use turntables, though accompanying laptop performance, from simply moving electric bass, and also Slub who have incorporated screen clearly articulated qualitative consequences.1 For this about more, to adding a visual component like an projections of their live coding as part of performances. the turntable itself was once regarded with skepticism. As 8 reason, and the very fact that I write this paper on a an instrument, turntablists and turntablism eventually accompanying film or immersive lighting, to Others who have written on issues of laptop laptop, my project is to delve deeper into our meaningful came to be validated. Yet, where a DJ is seen hopping incorporating additional live musicians or more performativity, with differing aims include: Montano, relationships with laptops by thinking more holistically back and forth among the dynamic turntables with hands traditionally viewed instruments, to projecting discussed above; Nick Collins, who voices concern that 7 and phenomenologically about screens. I consider and body in motion, the laptop performer, in a false screenshots to the audience, among others. Even when many complexities in programming by a performer may “screenness” within the context of musical performance, analogy, is more often viewed as immobile and cold, be “lost” on audiences and seeks new modes of here examining notable live sets by acclaimed communicating such aspects in, “Generative Music and concentrating on a stationary box while one hand makes 4 experimental electronica artist Tim Hecker. Typical of miniscule mouse clicks. This sense that experimental This bifurcation between technician and musician as a Laptop Performance,” Contemporary Music Review 22, experimental electronica, Hecker’s performances take kind of critique in electronic music has many historical no. 4 (2003): 67–79; Timothy Jaeger, who offers a place in a range of contexts and, in what follows, I look at roots. See, for example, Georgina Born’s observation of pointed critique of laptop performers whom he 2 two very different sets. Closely evaluating each and I have written on this topic in greater depth, considering this in her ethnography of IRCAM. See: Georgina Born, characterizes as not provoking new paradigms for taking cues from their critical reception, I employ the work of Richard Chartier, see: “‘Atomic’ Music: Rationalizing Culture: IRCAM, Boulez and the performance, see “The (Anti-) Laptop Aesthetic,” screenness as a mode that frames our experiencing of the Navigating Experimental Electronica and Sound Art Institutionalization of the Musical Avant-Garde. Contemporary Music Review 22, no. 4 (2003): 53–57; music, impacts our assumptions and expectations about Through Microsound,” Organised Sound 19/03 (Dec Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. and Tad Turner, who cites a lack of comportmental code 5 laptop performativity, and also reveals how the music 2014): 295-303, as a kind of companion piece. Ed Montano, “‘How Do You Know He’s Not Playing due to a diversity in venue, and seeks a mediation of, and 3 Goodwin cited in: Philip Auslander, Liveness: Pac-Man While He’s Supposed to Be DJing?’: adjustment to, the various strengths and weaknesses of Performance in a Mediatized Culture. London and New Technology, Formats and the Digital Future of DJ venue types in “The Resonance of the Cubicle: Laptop 1 I emphasize here the actuality of public performances York: Routledge, 1999, 11.

Load more

  8

Copy Link