I’m going to Melbourne for Vital Signs, where on Thursday arvo I’ll be on a panel about sound art/experimental music.
More info on the panel from its chair, Julian Knowles:
ON-AIR (2 hours) Sept 8, 2.00-4.00pm
PANEL (Philip Samartzis, Gail Priest, Shannon O’Neil, Nat Bates, Garth Paine, Matthew Hill) – with an offshore contribution from Daryl Buckley.
TOPIC: The past 5 years has seen a surge in activity in the Australian experimental sound and new/electronic music scenes, primarily through artist run festivals and events. Paradoxically, at the same time, there appears to have been some difficulty establishing adequate support across a range of areas for new and emerging practice. Presenters and artists are finding it more difficult than ever to create sustainable and stable careers and to develop the Australian scene, despite clear interest in the work both locally and internationally. This panel seeks to scan major trends in the field and identify critical issues.
********
As part of the session, there is around 20-35 minutes where the panel and audience can interact on issues and themes which emerge. This is a good opportunity for people to get involved in the discussion and make a positive contribution. The conference has been funded by the Australia Council, partly to inform it on the impact and consequences of the closure of the new media arts board. Please come if you can make it. I am encouraging the organisers to document the session online so further discussion and comment might be generated.
I’ll be returning to Sydney on Saturday evening. If you’d like to meet up while I’m in Melbourne, let me know.
ben… The ‘line level aesthetic’ (a term which i have coined here) is heavily focussed on all sounds being produced and arranged inside the computer, a completely self-contained approach to composition and performance with no microphones, amplified acoustic sources or similar real time contact with the acoustic world. It’s the concept of everything coming out of the box, so to speak (out of the line out). i noticed this phenomenon in the USA sometime in the 90s, where i visited a whole lot of university ’studios’ which consisted of nothing more than computers, software and soundcards (with line in/out). There was nowhere to record anything with microphones and the PA systems were designed for line level ‘[acousmatic’ playback’ with little or no facility to adequately mic and amp acoustic sources. The thinking around electronic music was very much about music made with line outputs from software… and there was little discussion or acknowledgement of ‘real’ acoustic (microphone captured) sources. here seemed to be a complete absence of any influence from the ‘french school’ of electronic music and various forms of microphony.
Much of this work is considered to be quite ‘dry’ and somewhat ‘abstract’ (criticisms which have – interestingly – been levelled at academic electronic music for years, at least before the academic stuff became ‘cool’ in the wake of the digital/post-digital era). This is partly due, i think, to the lack of identifiable acoustic sources and the remoteness of the approach to the familar studio production language of rock music (which draws heavily on manipulated microphone recordings)
i’m not sure this makes a lot of sense… i will have another go at explaining it later…!!!
Just when you thought this lengthy thread had died, I came across this critique of Vital Signs from David Teh on the fibreculturelist today. Thought it might be of interest.
————————-
Reflections on RMIT’s Vital Signs conference, @ACMI, 7-9 September, 2005.
(in no particular order)
[First of all, thanks are due to Lyndal Jones + team at RMIT, and to ACMI/Alessio, for staging the get-together; and also to Somaya and others for posting their thoughts here.]
VS was basically addressing the end of Australian NewMediaArt’s halcyon days under the wing of Ozco. It was definitely a meeting of the usual suspects. The organisers valiantly pitched it as a chance to ‘take-the-pulse’ of the NMA sector, valiant given that the pulse in question – at least, that of new-media sector as we know it – seems to be ebbing away. But this is not to say the art won’t continue to be made – just that the matter of how to support it and get it supported is, for the time being, murky.
I missed several sessions, including the launch shindig, so I shan’t try to be comprehensive. First, some high- and low-lights:
* Uppers
- the general coming-to-terms with the demise of the NMAB. I was surprised, in a good way, to find that most people had come to terms with this fait accompli.
The atmosphere was not exactly positive, but it was forward-looking.
- Also encouraging was the awareness – one that seemed to go beyond the usual suspects – of the archiving problem. How do we ensure that the activities of NM
producers are chronicled in appropriate places and appropriate ways (formats, institutional holdings etc), and that they’ll be accessible to/for/in a public (open) posterity. Simon Pockley gave an interesting pep-talk about how distributed archiving (in the “archival commons�) obviates the need for centralised, institutional collection, compelling given Somaya’s assessment of the latter’s limitations, but unconvincing within the Web’s current social architecture (which is proprietary, and threatens to be ever more so since Google’s IPO.) [I’m thinking here of Neal Stephenson’s Hiro (protagonist of Snow Crash), mining the networks for intel, dirt and idle talk, to be archived by the CIA, which has merged with the Library of Congress and privatised itself…] I agree, however, that the question of How Do We Get Rid of Something is becoming just as interesting as How Do We Save Something…
- Back on earth, meanwhile, Jeff Doring described some of his fascinating and culturally delicate work archiving the lore of the Ngarinyin people, and how his documents have entered the historical record via the courts, but have by-passed the (rest of the) memory sector due to a lack of institutional interest, and the indigenes (understandable) distrust of goverment. [I’d’ve like to’ve seen a 3-day conference dedicated solely to this.] Anyway, the breadth of interest in this topic (archiving) – of critical importance to artists, curators, historians, critics and institutions – perhaps indicates that its time has come: that it’s a problem for the whole of society, and a key interface between the latter and the NM-polity. It also underscores the museums’ inherently discriminatory (we might say ‘curatorial’) function. Of which more in a moment.
* Downers
- A generational thing. Many of the younger delegates were artists, some of whom proved woefully inarticulate, and incapable of discussing their work at all intelligibly. It bothers me that many such people are in the process of being waved through our universities with reputable Hons and Masters degrees – their teachers should be able to come see presentations like these, and fail their arses on the spot. [An exception here was the session on industry partnering, in which it emerged that when it comes to science/technology/equipment partners, informal links are often just as important, and beneficial, as informal ones. Obviously, these artists ARE able to communicate about their projects…]
* On Gate-keepers, Curatorial Daemons, etc.
One thing I raised in my spiel was the question of Where To Next For Curatorship? – i.e. in a post-disciplinary artworld. I suggested that what we were needing was not more distributed curatorship, but more curated distribution, that we should look seriously at the new objects and products made possible by digital art-making, and tailor these to the accessible channels (via media new, old, and in-between). Now’s not the time to worry about curators being ‘gatekeepers’; instead, we need more trust in them and more leadership from them. I don’t think Gatekeepers are actually the problem – if we’re talking about the artworld’s network of curators, programmers, etc – I actually think these people are pretty capable, and their decisions are for the most part reasonably responsible (generalising, obviously). The problem is more that there are so few people who actually have the scope/resources/training to do this job, and do it critically. Australian public/institutional life seems so averse to the idea of giving people the latitude to really get out there and set up their gates. Hence oft-cited brain-drain etc.
Adrian Martin had some interesting things to say on this theme – he identified the GKs as arts shows (producers @ SBS and ABC TV and radio); newspaper arts
editors; and PR departments at cultural institutions. All of which, he argued, are shitscared of some phantasmatic figure of the middle-class Aussie punter – rabidly indignant and virulently hostile to anything overstepping the narrowest ‘mainstream’ band. Martin suggests that this is bullshit, that this Ordinary Punter is just spectral. To be held hostage by these ghosts suggests an uneasiness in the GKs’ own cultural position. [Remember, this is the bureaucratic generation that pours all our money into opera and symphonies, even though they were raised on rock’n’roll.]
There was an interesting disagreement – left unexplored, alas – between Brendan Harkin and Keith Gallasch in the final (plenary) session. It concerned the value of NMArtistic labour and know-how, in the eyes of the bureau-corporate powers that be. KG, reading from his obituary pamphlet for the NMAB (‘Art in a Cold Climate’ – and just when you thought all the bio-techno-mumbo-jumbo metaphors had been exhausted;-) referred to the sector’s disgruntled creatives as ‘bottom-feeders’. This drew an incredulous scoff from BH, who’s convinced that the sector’s skills and people can be made super-attractive to these powers, provided they can find – and be channelled into – the right language for interfacing with the research-enterprise machine. Now I’m pretty sure these guys have different sorts of artists in mind. Nevertheless, this debate would’ve been interesting, to me at least, because on it turns the question of strategy for the new media community – if BH is right, then there’s a compelling argument for a focus on advocacy and the sort of organising that drives towards it. If KG’s eco-dystopia is closer to the mark, then the notion of (new)media-specific representation becomes rather pointless – artists would need to regroup within the pre-existing artform categories, and/or go back to making packageable fetishes for our networked aspirationals.
Sam da Silva was, as usual, nothing if not provocative, throwing in calls here and there for everyone to wake up, smell the Australian arts-industry decaf and get to work on a world sans-Ozco. This rally-cry didn’t get a quorum, and looking around the room, it was easy to see why. That’d be a bit like Santa sleighing every kid to the Pole for one last eggnog, only to announce that he was discontinuing Christmas.
ok that’t it. i’d be happy to read other people’s thoughts, reports, commentary on VS or anything raised here. cheers all,
dt
Dr David Teh
writer | teacher | curator | whatever
Bangkok, Thailand
m: +66 (0)4 673 7178
Julian wrote – ” Fluxas has a lot to answer for ” you have to be kidding dont you. What a joke. Because Fluxas stole from the cannon they have a lot to answer for? Mate, you are misinformed conservative …judging by the rest of your writing an Egocentric bugger as well.
Onya verite – nice post. Always good to see some unsubstantiated straight-ahead invective on a blog!!
You sound like a well-informed radical. I’m keen to be educated. Perhaps you can elaborate? Care to enlighten us on how you have arrived at your generous assessments? By the way, the spellings of those two words are ‘fluxus’ and ‘canon’.
Thanks for the spell check Herr Proff. You dont need my education bud – youve educated us a plenty !
‘aplenty’
[Hammers freshly painted sign into the ground]
DON’T FEED THE TROLL
Oh no, but, but……the troll’s are all around you, Herr Proff. You reap what you sow as the saying goes.
I think the troll was speaking to you Shannon. He obviously took exception to your sign….
This blog has a comments policy. I request that everyone read it before commenting further.