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Haunted by the Glitch Technological Malfunction - Critiquing the Media of Innovation

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Haunted by the Glitch Technological Malfunction - Critiquing the Media of Innovation Haunted by the Glitch Technological Malfunction - Critiquing the Media of Innovation Figure 1: Gilling, Joe. Chipped Discs. Copyright © 2021 Joe Gilling Music. Joseph Gilling Digital Music and Sound Arts. University of Brighton, UK. AG317 – Final Research Essay Supervised by Holger Zschenderlein 13th January 2021 1 Table of Contents Abstract .............................................................................................................................. 3 Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 4 The Art of Noises (Case study 1: Oval - 94 Diskont) ................................................... 6 Hauntological Music (Case study 2: Burial - Untrue) .................................................. 9 Post-Digital Aesthetics – Responding to Kim Cascone ............................................. 13 Postmodernism and Plunderphonics ........................................................................... 15 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 18 Bibliography ..................................................................................................................... 20 2 Abstract The glitch: an unexpected moment in a system resulting in the appearance of a malfunction. Commonly found within software, video games, digital images, film, and audio. In a world of digital perfectionism and sleek sonic design, why do we now seek to re-associate the sounds of computational error into contemporary music? The “aesthetics of failure”, and subsequent glitch music sub-genre, emerged in the 1990s, deliberately using and exploiting technological systems as sound materials for composition. Whilst exploring the technological innovations and artistic movements compounding the rise of this new musical phenomenon, we will also investigate the genres link to French philosopher Jacques Derrida’s concept of hauntology. This will give us an insight into the human anxieties associated with a wavering faith in technological progress and modernity when it came to the turn of the millennium. Whilst the last century was spent perfecting the sound recording, the availability of the glitch has revolutionised modern music. We now seem to be entering a “post-digital” era, concerned primarily with the rapidly changing relationships we have with technologies, as well as our increasing dependence on them. The internet has provided the ultimate archival space to reminisce and re-contextualise all sound materials, even those once seen as defective. 3 Introduction Glitch music may appear to be a recent phenomenon since it was only coined in the late 1990s. However, as we explore the genre, it is apparent its paths echo pre-owned compositional techniques and early noise culture tendencies, from the sound works of twentieth century musique concrète, to Luigi Russolo’s Intonarumori (Noise-Maker) performances, to the abundance of miscellaneous electronica subgenres found today. In Virtual Sound (2003), Janne Vanhanen exclaims: If there were an emblematic sound of today’s digital music, it would be the sound of a skipping CD.1 After first being encountered as an “error” during the playback process, it has now been repurposed as the raw material for musical composition. The “aesthetics of failure”, as mentioned by Kim Cascone in the Computer Music Journal (2000), epitomise the state of contemporary music production today.2 Computers, against popular belief, never really make mistakes. Programmers and users make mistakes. The glitch is less of an error and more of an unexpected output which makes us aware of the medium, its structure, and its politics. We simply place the onus of malfunction onto the machine. The glitch can be defined simply as an unexpected moment in a system that calls attention to that system, which is otherwise hidden. Today we begin to question why artists would be driven to use the latest technologies only to negate their capacities to produce a “perfect” end product. The apparent “errors” of machines mark the dawn of an age where technologies lead us to question what it really means to be human. As art continually grows to reflect our lives, we begin to hear the crisis and disparity of society through the music of our time. Jacques Attali (1985) believed that, “Our music foretells our future. Let us lend it an ear.”3 As the computer became the “primary power-tool” for creating and performing electronic music, the glitch became the by-product: technological imperfection and irregularity, which could not be controlled until now.4 The hauntological music movement also arose around the turn of the millennium, however the term hauntology stems from Jacques Derrida’s Spectres of Marx (1993).5 Hauntology resonates with a digital generation, reinvesting in the traces of lost futures inhabiting the present. Glitch and hauntology intertwine and augment the aesthetics of technological malfunction and degradation in 1 Vanhanen, Janne. Virtual Sound: Examining Glitch and Production. Contemporary Music Review. 2003. p.46. 2 Cascone, Kim. The Aesthetics of Failure: Post-Digital Tendencies in Contemporary Computer Music. Computer Music Journal, Vol. 24, No. 4. 2000. p.13. 3 Goodman, Steve, and Dawsonera. Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear. MIT Press, London, Cambridge, Mass. 2009. p.49. 4 Cox, Christoph, and Daniel Warner. Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music. Bloomsbury Academic, London, 2017. p.551. 5 Balanzategui, Jessica. Haunted Nostalgia and the Aesthetics of Technological Decay: Hauntology and Super 8 in Sinister. Horror Studies 7.2. 2016. p.241. 4 a way that casts a dark pall over optimistic notions of progress and innovation.6 Mark Fisher suggests media culture has now been marked by “[…] anachronism and inertia […]” in which “[…] cultural time has folded back on itself, and the impression of linear development has given way to a strange simultaneity.”7 The fragile condition of the digital domain is often overlooked, given our cultural obsession with algorithmic cloning of ourselves into the virtual, and having constant access to instant information. It is only when the machine comes across an algorithmic error that the illusion is broken. The past has lost its ability to disappear due to digital cultures total access. Similarly, the future no longer has the charge it once did.8 We are empowered by technology yet mesmerised by our analogue pasts. To claim we are in an age of innovation is to now acknowledge that our lives are saturated with failure. 6 Ibid; p.243. 7 Fisher, Mark. Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures. Zero Books, Winchester, UK. 2014. p.24. 8 Reynolds, Simon. Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to its Own Past. Faber, London. 2011. p.425. 5 The Art of Noises Noise is primal: pre-linguistic and pre-subjective. The “noisy” urban landscape, increasingly experienced today, is paradoxically created by ourselves, the ones most affected by it. As we trace the origins of glitch music, our attention is drawn to the outbreak of machine music that characterised the middle years of the 1920s.9 The industry that grew up around recorded music in the twentieth century helped give the age of the machine its distinctive soundscape, just as the railways and factories of the industrial revolution had done a hundred years earlier.10 The existence of “noise” since then has progressed into a recognisable drone, characterising the urban landscape. Regarded as the sound of excess, noise no longer only represents excessive materialism. In the internet age, noise is also the best metaphor for the excessive quantities of information with which we are faced on a daily basis.11 For Luigi Russolo and the Italian Futurists, noise could produce a variety of different timbres, some resembling the sounds of nature or the machines of industry. Russolo spoke about The Art of Noises (1913), when creating his Intonarumori, pleading for us to “[…] break out of this limited circle of sounds and conquer the infinite variety of noise-sounds.”12 As technologies exponentially developed, the ear began to seek out music with greater dissonance, stronger tonalities, and harsher timbres, thus becoming ever closer to the “noise-sound” experience Russolo predicted. Historically, the Futurists were not alone in their celebration of atonal aesthetics. Composers of Baroque music used repetition, imitation, and dissonance to transmit affect.13 Likewise, the use of repetition and imitation in glitch and other electronic dance music genres today effectively repurposes unwanted noises into music. To Russolo, this new radical listening experience emerged from embracing the sounds of technology and industry. He concludes that these noises were desirable rather than disturbing.14 Futurist music was filled with constant juxtapositions and the unbiddable negation of all harmony. Noise, arriving from the confusion and irregularities of life, began to reveal itself to audiences with innumerable surprises.15 We now have the ability to control and organise these once overlooked sounds. Little more than a century ago, music could be described with relative ease. Ever since the rise of avant-garde experimental music and the democratisation of music production technologies, distinguishing between music, noise, and even silence, has become increasingly challenging. Eighty 9 Russolo, Luigi. The Art of Noises. Vol. No. 6. Pendragon Press,
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