Technology and ontology in electronic music Mego 1994-present Peter Worth PhD Thesis The University of York Music Research Centre September 2011 Abstract The Vienna based record label Mego is known for establishing an uncompromising, radically experimental electronic music in the 1990s. This thesis considers the work of various different artists on the label, examining in particular their approaches to technology. The artists discussed appear to share an approach that I describe as pragmatic or experimental, which I contrast with idealist or rational approaches. In the latter, music appears to be understood within the framework of a simplistic model o f communication, where technology is seen as a medium that should be transparent, allowing the music to pass unaffected. In the pragmatic approach however, I claim that technology is not seen not as a medium for the communication of ideas, but rather as a source of ideas. Implications follow for the ontology of the music. In the simplistic model of communication, physical sound can be considered merely a representation of something more abstract: musical form conceived by the composer. But if music is materially constructed and based on experimentation with the technology at hand, then the sound should not be considered a representation; there is no preconceived idea for it to be a representation of. This concept, which 1 refer to as 'literalism', is explored in a number o f musical examples, and 1 link it to a definition o f noise. C ontents Acknowledgements and Declaration 4 1. Introduction 5 2. Digital technology and the high tech aesthetic: Seven Tons For Free and +/- 34 3. Blackest Ever Black'. The institutional and brute facts of UPIC 59 4. apPatch and Get Down 83 5. Evol and algorithmic composition 107 6. Farmers Manual and literal noise 133 7. Oneohtrix Point Never and Bill Orcutt: Disinterment of technology and technique 152 8. Conclusion 164 Notes 176 Bibliography 177 List of Figures Figure 1: Headphonics 0/0 detail 38 Figure 2: /detail 55 Figure 3: Haswell and Hecker UPIC screens 73 Figure 4: Haswell and Flecker UPIC screens 74 Figure 5: apPatch initialization screenshot 85 Figure 6: apPatch screenshot 88 Figure 7: We don't need no music spectral detail 96 Figure 8: ROssler attractor visualisation 96 Figure 9: Get Out track 3 spectral analysis 100 Figure 10: Principio track 1 waveform detail 123 Figure 11: Spectral analysis o f Principio tracks 1-18 123 Figure 12: Punani Potagia spectral detail 126 Figure 13: Pus Pus Pus extract 130 Figure 14: 371 Adv3 waveform detail 139 Figure 15: Explorers JVe track 60 spectral detail 142 Figure 16: Communication model and reformulation 149 Acknowledgments Thanks first of all to Tony Myatt, for establishing the project that made this work possible, and for his support and encouragement over the years; to Mark Fell, Thom Blake and Theo Burt for countless discussions, the conclusions of which make up the majority of this thesis; to the artists involved in the New Aesthetics in Computer Music residency series, in particular Russel Haswell, Peter Rehberg and Roc Jiménez de Cisneros, who have always been generous with their time and forthcoming in sharing the details of their practice; to Katy Milner for the immense effort in proof reading; and to my parents for their constant unconditional support. Declaration This thesis is my own work and has not been submitted or published anywhere else. It is an outcome o f the New Aesthetics in Computer Music research project, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. 6 Introduction This thesis will focus on the Vienna-based label Mego, and associated artists. Mego, in the latter half of the 1990s, provided a focal point for a new kind of experimental electronic music influenced in various ways by techno, as well as by academic electronic music music, but ultimately resulting in a form of music alien to both traditions. The music of Mego remains largely undocumented in academia, and the gap left by a lack of attention towards it is significant. Cursory attempts have been made to fill this gap, often focussing primarily on the notion of'glitch', and discussing the incorporation o f technological failure into aesthetics. However 1 will argue that this is insufficient, and that this music has consequences more radical and fundamental in aesthetics. The aim of the thesis is therefore twofold: to document the history o f Mego, and to discuss the ways in which we can describe, analyze or otherwise understand this music. It is interesting to note that this roughly corresponds to Guido Adler's original stated aims o f musicology; the historical and the systemic subdivisions (Mugglestone & Adler 1981). Adler’s method, briefly, consisted o f the identification and documentation o f historical categories of music (the first subdivision), followed by the analysis of each category and its underlying trends (the second subdivision). The identification o f a category is simplified in this case, as we are using a record label as the focal point, and operating on the assumption that there is something shared between all of the music on the label. The validity of this assumption can then be assessed based on the results of the second subdivision: the investigation o f these supposed shared attributes. Adler viewed the history of music as a series of epochs or categories, each o f which requires its own methods of analysis. There is no suggestion of a universal framework for the understanding of music, or a universal aesthetic. He stated that the 'student of tonal art and tonal science is presented with a complex system of musical maxims which have been extracted from particular tonal products ... for a time tonal production is muzzled and curbed by these rules and measures, until it again paves for itself a pathway; and once more the demands on the science alter' (Mugglestone & Adler 1981, italics mine). The theory developed by a musicologist is in response to 'particular tonal products", based on analyses 1 'Tonal' does not have to be taken to exclude 'atonality' or noise—atonality is a misnomer, even according to Schoenberg: 'The word “atonal” could only signify something entirely inconsistent with the nature of tone ... to call any relation of tones atonal is just as farfetched as it would be to designate a relation of colors aspectral or acomplementary. There is no such antithesis.’ (Schoenberg 1983), similarly, noise can be considered tonal in its broadest sense, or technically as a summation of inharmonic tones. 7 o f particular pieces of music; it is not free of context or universal. Adler also highlights the way in which theory tends to lag behind practice, with theory in turn stifling practice by solidifying and naturalizing one particular form o f music. Each chapter in the thesis focuses on a particular work, and examines it in an attempt to understand what, if anything, draws together the potential category represented by Mego. Initial research carried out by interviewing and observing relevant artists (New Aesthetics in Computer Music 2011) suggested that this might be found not in stylistic or formal aspects, or even an overarching 'aesthetic', but potentially in a general approach to the process o f musical production. I am primarily interested in exploring the role of technology in this process. The thesis therefore becomes something like a contemporary organological study in parts. 1 conclude that the music in question is in fact notable for an emphasis of the technological, material aspect o f its production. This leads to a discussion o f the philosophical implications of such an approach; if the music is determined materially rather being a reflection o f a predetermined idea, this tells us something about the aesthetic — the fundamental ontological-aesthetic question: 'what is the music (or art or literature etc.)?' By this I do not mean defining the word music; delimiting what does and does not qualify as music. It is more to do with discussing what type o f thing we are dealing with when listening to music (or looking at an artwork, or reading etc.). For instance, when we think of a book, the thing of importance is not taken to be the physical object itself. If we destroy the object, the 'book' still exists— if there are many copies then the content still exists. For philosophers of aesthetics such as Nelson Goodman this leads to the idea that a book has 'notional' form: Goodman drew an important distinction between what he called notional and non-notional works o f art. In a novel, for example, he argued that any sequence o f letters that corresponds with the original text is a genuine instance o f the work. One might say that the essence o f the novel is not the book object at all. It is in the ‘notional object’ that we access through the book. He drew a distinction between execution, e.g. the writing o f a novel and its implementation as a book. (Edmonds 2007) One can say the same of music. When written as a score, the music is not the paper that the score is written on, it is notional; even a recording o f music can be reproduced in various ways and on various formats. The music is not generally taken to be the material medium 8 itself, the music is only notional. Goodman takes this position, advocating, like many analytic philosophers, the concept of a 'work'. If the existence of such an abstraction is taken as given, the task for the philosopher is to define the nature of a work. A musical work, for example, cannot be the actual sound produced, since the same work can be played numerous times, perhaps even on different instruments while still being considered the same work.