The latest exhibition at the V&A looks interesting.

“Digital Design Sensation showcases the latest developments in digital and interactive design, from small, screen-based, graphics to large-scale interactive installations.”

An interesting comment I saw explained that such works do not have longevity like the great works of art of the past- the technology involved becomes obsolete. But the commentator compared this to the difference between film and theatre…….

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The interesting thing about making so called stochastic or randomly generated music is it’s very difficult! Of course John Cage was the man and I know he must have really considered his art. 

The difficulty is in the making of the initial choices that will produce meaningful results. Of course today the computer is the tool of choice for this task and, after much research, I use a program called ACToolbox. Having tried the ‘plug and play’ variety I quickly felt that much more control was needed, which is kind of ironic!

But none of it is really random because the initial choices so affect the outcome. Of Imaginary Landscape no4 Cage said:

“It is thus possible to make a musical composition the continuity of which is free of individual taste and memory (psychology) and also of the literature and ‘traditions’ of the art. The sounds enter the time-space centered within themselves, unimpeded by the service to any abstraction, their 360 degrees of cricumference free for an infinite play of interpenetration. Value judgments are not in the nature of this work as regards either composition, performance, or listening. The idea of relation being absent, anything may happen. A ‘mistake’ is beside the point, for once anything happens it authentically is”

But one look at the score and you soon see all was not random:

In the composition for 12 radios, 24 performers, and director, two performers each operate radios whose kilocycle, amplitude, and timbre changes are notated. 

Now John might have generated the score using ‘The Book of Changes’ but as always the question is of the limits of control. Or should I say the subtlety of control.

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On hearing ‘Venus in Furs’ by The Velvet Underground again recently I realised  how important they were in formulating my desire for noise. I remember the first time I put on the Sister Ray album- I’ve never quite been the same since. And yet such tenderness with songs like ‘Pale Blue Eyes’ on ’1969 The Velvet Underground Live’.

I saw Lou Reed at the Hammersmith Odeon in 1979. It was his Berlin era. I skipped school and got the coach from Manchester to London.

I remember he had a perspex guitar which seemed so futuristic…..

Oh and I remember Metal Machine Music, two sides of grinding modulated white noise. Was it a prank so Reed could get out of his record contract as rumour had it, or was it art?

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My first post! 

I would like to get things moving by sharing my ideas about the time element in sound.

I have found time (!) and again that sound material seems to create its own time structures that lie outside of musical time, of ‘bars and beats’ and outside  ’seconds’.

Sound seems to reveal time, to play with time. The goal of time in sound is timelessness.

Do I pass through time or does time happen to me?

When I’m absorbed in a task,  time passes quickly, when I’m bored time can ‘drag’. Subjective time as opposed to external measured time. But not its poorer cousin.

I’m currently experimenting with a self created unit called a ‘sound-block’. A sound-block is quite simply an arbitrary unit of time either derived from the length of the sound itself or created anew, such as ‘the length of a breath’ or Pi or e etc.

Time is the same now as it always was at every moment.

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