For my thesis, I’ve been researching notions of the illusion of reality, including spatial realities… and how they are achieved technically. In the visual arts, Velasquez’s Las Meninas harbours voluminous discourse on this topic. I havn’t gone too far into the analyses of this painting — nor do I really want to — but cripes almighty its full of people gazing at others gazing back at them. Let me try to elaborate. Note: the King (Philip IV) and Queen of Spain are the eyes of the painting and they can be seen in the mirror in the background.

1. The painter is looking at the subject of his painting: the King & Queen. — who are looking back at him. So the Painter is actually painting himself through the eyes of the King and Queen
2. The mirror in the back is apparently not reflecting the king and queen’s image, but rather their image as the painter has painted it (as per a paper I couldn’t be bothered referencing). In other words, the King and Queen are seeing themselves in the eyes of the painter.
3. One suggested central subject, the daughter at the centre of the image is looking either at her parents, or the painting. If she is looking at the painting, then she is looking at a portrayal of her parents looking at her.

The same could be said for the gentleman in the back door way. As I said, I dont know exactly how this painting is critically interpreted, but it documents at least 4 instances of people looking at themselves through the eyes of others. I’m not suggesting that this is what the painting is about. It might be one of those paintings that has an inherent complexity that caters for whatever perception the viewer might happen to be inclined towards. One could say that my interpretation of this painting is more a reflection on me, than on the intent of the painter.

Either way, I’m starting to understand why this painting is considered important. Its thoroughly engaging. How does he do that?

That’s it … that’s the crux of the twelve tone technique. What it amounts to is: Here’s an outrageous limitation, now see what you can come up with. Unlike other compositional methodologies which provide guidelines for ‘what works’, the serial technique doesn’t help, it challenges. The composer is challenged to find something that works, given a set of imposed limitations. In other words, it is a constraint system, and its success clearly supports the notion that restriction can lead to creative liberation.

What is interesting is that technology is also a form of constraint system. In the essay entitled “The Question Concerning Technology”, the 20th Century philosopher Martin Heidegger characterises technology not as ‘equipment’, not as a means to an end, but rather as something that holds biases. Engagement with it, such as using it to create music, exercises those biases; that is, it reveals certain things in certain ways and it hides certain things in certain ways. Dreyfus, noted Heidegger scholar, paraphrases Heidegger’s warning about the danger of technology as  ”a restriction in our way of thinking” (1997, p. 99).

A restriction in our way of thinking. It is a phrase that just as well describes serial composition. Serial composition restricts how the composer thinks about music. Through that restriction there is a form of creative liberation. Of course, Heidegger’s writing on technology did not consider technology’s restrictive tendencies when engaged by opportunistic creative exploration.

Yet, through the use of technology (that not designed to create music), musicians have found creative liberation. The turntable is a fine example. To the uninitiated, the suggestion that the humble turntable can be used as a musical instrument of great creative potential must seem ludicrous.

I’m arguing that if the turntable had been designed as a musical instrument, I’d guess that it would have included all sorts of knobs and sliders and other controls to ‘frame’ a much broader set of musical possibilities. Yet it is precisely the narrowness of possibilities, the lack of controls, that have led to a creative exploration now iconic in contemporary musical styles. The turntable is a technological equivalent of serial technique.

The difference between the turntable and serial composition is that the turntable was not a designed constraint. It is an accidental constraint. It is a constraint imposed by using a technology for doing things it was not intended to do. The serial technique is a consciously designed limitation. For me, this highlights two points.

1. Arnold Schoenberg was a very smart man,
2. Perhaps music technology (software or otherwise) should focus not on empowering musicians but rather on restricting them. Interestingly, this is a notion that is contradictory to the ‘equipmental’ conception of technology. Adhering to Heidegger’s conception that technology is a form of bias … the design of technology to creative ends should aim to design that bias, and that includes designing the restriction — instead of allowing the restriction to be ‘the stuff that wouldn’t fit in’. It is this restriction that will both drive creativity, but also ‘colour’ the aesthetic. I suspect design ‘biases’, in technology, is a difficult thing to get right.

Dreyfus, HL 1997, 'Heidegger on gaining a free relation to technology', Technology and values.

space will become as important as pitch in the traditional music (Stockhausen cited in Worrall 1998)

Despite increasing technical means the role of space in music still requires exploration … at least in academic / classical / electroacoustic / art-music circles. One could easily argue that Stockhausen’s prediction has not materialised. Some, such as Emmerson (2007, p. 143), are unconvinced that having the ability to produce almost-real 3D soundfields is an ideal musical aim at all. Of course, Stockhausen hasn’t clearly stated whether his notion of ‘space’ in music involved the realistic simulation of 3D sound, or whether it was just the use of independent spatial attributes like reverberation or location. One thing that is clear is that much of Stockhausen’s explorations of space involved cartesian location … the manipulation of the direction of origin of sounds.

I would like to argue that Stockhausen’s prediction has come true. Space has become as important as pitch. Although it may not be in the form he had envisaged it.

Let me explain. Location is just one aspect of spatial audio. In the stereo field, location is known as ‘panning’. Other aspects of spatial sound include reverberation, delay (which is echo), volume changes can simulate distance, low pass filters can simulate both distance and obstructing objects, stereo width simulates the physical size of the sounding objects etc.

All these aspects are very much present in contemporary music produced in Digital Audio Workstations like Protools. Typically, they are used to help perceptually separate individual sounds to achieve a clear and well balanced overall music (this is called auditory-stream-segregation in the scientific literature). Those who do this well command my respect. Producers do this. Whilst they may not consciously realise it, producers are, to me, spatial audio practitioners.

Some not only do it well — that is: the sounds are clear and balanced — but they even use spatial attributes to sophisticated compositional effect. Aphex Twin (Richard D James) is an example here. Sure, Aphex Twin is dance music, it is not concert music like Stockhausen’s work. It requires a different listening mode.

Have a listen to the track called Fredugolon : http://www.videosurf.com/video/the-tuss-fredugolon-6-1243875323 (note: The Tuss is an Aphex Twin pseudonym).

Now have an other listen to the section from 4:20 to 4:60. Here, Aphex Twin builds tension and releases it, over a series of clear steps, by using spatial devices. Here is a summary of the steps … these steps can effectively be considered a spatial audio score;

1. All reverb is stripped, to create a dead, centred sound.
2. He throws the sound into a small room (I get a back of the head sensation). This creates a kind of acoustic tension, enclosing the listener into a confined space with claustrophobic characteristics.
3. Spatial tension is released by applying a very deep and long reverb that throws the sound way out in front (of the listener). Here the reverb acts as release. One could say that the reverb is also the ‘release’ of sound in space.
4. The beat comes back — return to subject — but it sits exactly between the listener, and the far-in-front reverb.

Within this small series of steps, a compositional gesture has been created with very little reliance on pitch, harmony, rhythm and timbre. Spatial audio is the predominant attribute. This may not have been Stockhausen’s conception of space, but in this piece, and in much of Aphex Twin’s work spatial attributes are as important as pitch. The two key points, here, are that a) contemporary dance music is delivering Stockhausen’s prediction, and b) working in mere stereo does not at all preclude the composer from exploring spatial audio.

Worrall, D 1998, 'Space in sound: sound of space', Organised Sound, vol. 3, no. 02, pp. 93-99.
Emmerson, S 2007, Living electronic music, Ashgate Pub Co.

A technology is only as good as the experience users have using it.

If someone were to argue that ambisonics is potentially good technology, then I would agree. But there are so many ways that ambisonic playback can be compromised that it is more than likely going to result in a poor spatial audio experience. It is the experience that the user actually gets that counts… not what the technology is theoretically capable of. And that is where ambisonics fails dismally. It is a fragile technology that insists on a slew of preconditions.

Here is a list of just some of the things that can go wrong:

1. The user cant easily find/install a software decoder
2. When the user does eventually install a decoder, there is no guarantee that it is a proper one (includes shelf filters etc.)
3. Connecting one’s computer to a multichannel sound system can be problematic
4. The user’s speakers may not be matched
5. The user may not be sitting in the centre of the speaker array
6. The acoustic of the playback room may interfere with the ambisonic image

Compare all that to the experience of a high def flat screen TV. Buy it, take it out of the box, turn it on. There it is. For ambisonics to become good technology, it must achieve a high level of consistency of quality experiences … not just have the mere capacity to deliver good spatial audio.

I’ve sat in concert halls that are particularly reverberant. Seeing an array of speakers my first thoughts often concern how the reverberation of a hall will interfere with the spatial image. Recently I was surprised when the spatial imaging was far better than I had anticipated … I later learned that spatial location had been implemented in VBAP (Vector Based Amplitude Panning), an alternative spatialisation technology. Here’s an example of how a technology with far less potential can actually be more robust and therefore ultimately deliver a better experience. I would say it is a better technology.

I think the future of ambisonics is in fixed installations in concert halls; where the installation can be tightly controlled, and doing head-tracked HRTF decodes on portable media devices. Both would allow ensuring a consistent quality experience. Making ambisonics become good-technology in the home is possible, but I think it would require all sorts of funky automated things such as speakers that know where they are relative to each other; built-in mics that can measure and compensate for room acoustics; and mechanical robot devices to push listeners into the sweet spot when they’ve inadvertently decided not to sit in the middle of the room!

But this isn’t my key point. This new way of seeing can then stand independently of that technology. So technology opens a door that it didn’t create. It just opened it.

Consider Chunky Move’s Glow (2010). A dancer’s form is analysed by a computer, interpreted as ‘outline’ then re-projected into that dancer. Add a bit of digital delay to the imagery and what you get is a kind of human spirograph. The inherent geometry within the dancer’s organic movements is extracted and displayed. The computer’s vision acts as a kind of partner dancer, perfectly in-sink yet utterly different. Its a relationship that gives the dancer’s movements a transient permanence that reveals both a pattern of movement but also the frailty of human physical inconsistency.

Now consider the work of artist Tony Orrico. Penwald Drawings (2011) take a leaf out of Chunky Move’s appropriation of technology, but delivers it analogically. The drawings take a similar form. BUT the movements of the dancer are significantly different. Without the aid of a computed digital delay and re-projection the dancer must himself physically perform much repetition. Here, the human form is cast into the iterative repetitions natural of computed logic. When considered in the same breath as Glow, this is an example of the human form mimicking technology’s eye appropriated to reveal human form. To produce this work, the dancer must cast themselves into a formalisation characteristic of machines.

My hypothesis is that this work of art would not have materialised without technology… even though there is no technology involved.

So whilst technology is *not* involved in Tony Orrico’s work, it remains central. I think we will see more of this. Technology’s way of seeing will infiltrate the non-technological arts to create a kind of post-digital practice; where what the digital medium has exposed remains but without the digits. One characteristic of this, I suspect, will be the human simulation of the iterative and repetitive tendencies of technology.

Tony Orrico’s work also reveals something very different … through repetition, the frailty of human physical inconsistency is no longer the subject of the work, instead providing the work a textural depth that reveals a kind of knowing commitment that geometries will appear.

[Addendum: would I be right to suggest that photography had a similar effect on painting? Photography introduced a new way of looking which then infiltrated how painters worked? If so then it might be better to ask specifically; how does contemporary technology differ from older technologies? Maybe, in essence, it doesn't differ from older technologies. At which point one might say that art is about finding new ways of looking, and technology serves as just one means for discovering new ways of looking.... in other words ... there is no special relationship between art and technology]

The question being, ok but what can you do with it. What is the work of art, what insight can be drawn, what new way of looking at the world can be exposed. As Heidegger might say, what truth is being un-concealed?

As it stands, I dont think it is much more than “look what you can do these days with just a camera and some well crafted code”.

BUT … yesterday I came across a project that had taken this code, and with just a little bit of extra work, had managed to un-conceal a little truth. This was done in a way that very much echos Jaron Lanier’s take on virtual reality. I quoted Jaron in that blog post I just linked… but I’ll quote him again here:

The most important thing about virtual reality isn’t the idea that you’re seeing this dramatic 3D thing. It’s that you, yourself change. That you experience yourself in a different way than you ever have before

Look at that video, above, again …  Kyle McDonald is pulling faces trying to, in passing, imitate the kinds of expressions that one might expect from the different faces he uses. So for Paris Hilton he puckers up, for Brad Pit he swoons, etc. Jaron Lanier’s point is not that Kyle McDonald can look like Brad Pit, but rather, that Kyle McDonald behaves differently when Brad Pit’s face is mapped on top of his own. That’s what Jaron Lanier is saying is the power of virtual reality … it changes the way you experience yourself.

This is exactly what the project Apesnake Photobooth has recognised. They have taken the leap from displaying images of the photo overlay, to displaying photos of the individuals *without* the overlay … that’s where the meat is. These photos are then automatically uploaded to a Facebook group. What is revealed is random individuals acting like apes (the face overlay is of an ape).

There are lots of things that could be said about this… lots of things that are revealed. One of them is about inhibitions. By mapping an other face ontop of one’s own face, and seeing only that mapped face … one behaves in ways that one would not normally behave in (that’s bang-on what Jaron Lanier expresses). There’s something about self-perception in there too. There’s something about social norms.

I think this project is worth evolving. Most of the facial expressions people are using involves opening their jaw as wide as possible. I’d love to see something that is more generic, or more open to individual possibilities. I’m wondering if a clown face might have potential … because of the possible happy/sad ambiguity.

Technology, or at least ‘modern’ technology, presents a big threat to humanity. And this threat is that when we see the world through the eyes of technology, then we are restricting our understanding of the world to whatever goals that technology is designed to satisfy. But we don’t take consciousness of it. We don’t realise it… and this is dangerous.

It is a threat that is now taking on huge dimensions because many of us engage in that most basic of human activities: socialisation, in a form which is heavily restricted, or determined, by technology. Of course, I am talking about facebook and whatever other forms of social interaction are heavily modelled by technologies (twitter, etc.).

Heidegger said that one escape from this threat is art. Just like technology, art is also about revealing, it is also a way to understand the world. By applying art to technology, the ways in which technology restricts our thinking are exposed, and then we see it for what it is. When we see how technology restricts our thinking, then its threat dissipates… and we can enter into a ‘free’ relationship with it.

And so I propose that someone adapt Shakespeare’s King Lear for Facebook. Each character in the book would have a Facebook profile. There would be Facebook ‘groups’ designed to reflect the gatherings in the text. And the entire play would be played out on Facebook.

It would not be a gimmick. It would be a way of revealing how social interaction on Facebook is restricted or ‘cast’ into the goals that Facebook aims to satisfy. But perhaps it would only work for those who are very familiar with Shakespeare’s King Lear. One would have to have sufficient knowledge of the intended meaning of the dialogue to be able to compare the restricted Facebook version to the original.

So its maybe not such a good idea. I was telling one of my classes that before Facebook, we used to invite friends to parties by sending text messages, or sending emails. Before emails and mobile phones, we used to invite people by making little flyers, photocopying them many times and giving them to friends whenever we ran into them. Either that or we would just ring them up, or drop by their house. I realise that people still do all of these things, so perhaps it would be more accurate to say that technology has introduced a tiered system of communication. What are the implications of that … I wonder. How can a work of art reveal the implications of that?

The recent reforms and revolutions in the middle east have, by some, been attributed to Facebook… or to social networking. Ofcourse, whilst the executives of social networking sites might claim responsibility for this human good, their true aim will be nothing more than ‘success’ as defined by the endeavour of business. And the tendency of these technologies to cast all communication into networks will have also very negative social impacts. Bullying is one. There must be others. Ah! … in writing this paragraph I have perhaps fallen on one way that Facebook restricts our thinking … it will restrict our thinking by forcing us to casting our communication into networks. When you post something on Facebook, are you wary that there are perhaps lots of people reading it? … and so you might slightly alter what you say? Does that change the nature, even if very discreetly, of the relationship you have with the person you are posting that message to?

[Addendum ... here's someone doing Shakespeare on Facebook to shed light on cyber bullying ... http://mashable.com/2011/04/25/shakespeare-facebook-cyber-bullying/. That's exactly what I'm talking about ... but I'm not convinced that it is a 'poetic' work of art. By that I mean that I am not convinced that it reveals some truth with such resonance that it is beautiful to behold]

I have been studying Pierre Schaeffer, his works and his words for a while now. He is the pioneer of the famous Musique Concrète, a new post-war music that begins with sound recordings and applies structural form (i.e. cuts up / re-orders / glues back together) to achieve a finished sound work. I find his work historically and conceptually interesting, but musically un-listenable, and … frankly … utterly un-inspiring. Give me Aphex Twin any day.

Pierre Schaeffer, and his early text “Traité des objets musicaux” (treatise on musical objects) and reveared in the discourse of Electro-acoustic music. Pierre Schaeffer holds status of more than pioneer. Yet in an interview  (from recommended records quarterly magazine, volume 2, number 1, 1987,) he rejects his own musical oeuvres:

TH: I have the impression that in the ’40s and ’50s you were optimistic about the outcomes of your musical project. Was there a particular moment when you underwent a general change in your relationship to this project?

Pierre Schaeffer: I must say honestly that this is the most important question you have asked me. I fought like a demon throughout all the years of discovery and exploration in Musique Concrete; I fought against electronic music, which was another approach, a systemic approach, when I preferred an experimental approach actually working directly, empirically with sound. But at the same time, as I defended the music I was working on, I was personally horrified at what I was doing. I felt extremely guilty. As my father, the violinist, used to say, indulgently, What are you up to, my little chap? When are you going to make music? And I used to say – I’m doing what I can, but I can’t do that. I was always deeply unhappy at what I was doing. I was happy at overcoming great difficulties – my first difficulties with the turntables when I was working on ‘Symphonie pour un homme seul’:: – my first difficulties with the tape-recorders when I was doing ‘Etude aux objets’ – that was good work, I did what I set out to do – my work on the ‘Solfege’ – it’s not that I disown everything I did – it was a lot of hard work. But each time I was to experience the disappointment of not arriving at music. I couldn’t get to music – what I call music. I think of myself as an explorer struggling to find a way through in the far north, but I wasn’t finding a way through.

TH: So you did discover that there was no way through.

PS: There is no way through. The way through is behind us.

TH: So it’s in that context that we should understand your relatively small output as a composer after those early years?

PS: I was very well received. I had no social problems. These
successes added to my burden of doubt. I’m the opposite of the
persecuted musician. In fact I don’t consider myself a real musician. I’m in the dictionary as a musician. It makes me laugh. A good researcher is what I am.

Thankyou, Pierre, for expressing how I feel about your music, which is that it is unlistenable.

[Addendum. Of coure, this post is somewhat tongue-in-cheek. Just because Pierre Schaeffer rejects his earlier theories does not mean that they are not still very relevant nor insightful. At a minimum, I think that Schaeffer's notion of 'playing' with technology is still, at least in experimental electronic music, the predominant form of musical form (as opposed to composition). That's worth a post in itself: playing (as in searching as you go, during a performance) as opposed to composing). ]

Heidegger begins by observing that the common conception of technology is that it is a simple means to end that is executed as a human activity. Whilst this characterisation, encapsulated in the word equipment, is correct he argues that it does not reveal the essence of what technology is. For this he turns to the notion of causality and examines the four causes long accepted by philosophical thought. By asking the question of what makes these four causes operate together, he seeks to understand what is responsible for bringing things into being (which is what equipment does). Here, he turns to Plato’s Symposium:

Plato tells us what this bringing is in a sentence from the Symposium (205b): he gar toi ek tou me ontos eis to on ionti hotoioun aitia pasa esti poiesis. “Every occasion for whatever passes beyond the nonpresent and goes forward into presencing is poiesis, bringing-forth [Her-vor-bringen].” (Heidegger, 1977)

It is the term ‘bringing-forth’ that leads to the essence of technology. Technology is a way of revealing, in other words, technology is something that operates in the realm of truth. He goes on:

This prospect strikes us as strange. Indeed, it should do so, as persistently as possible and with so much urgency that we will finally take seriously the simple question of what the name “technology” means. The word stems from the Greek. Technikon means that which belongs to techne. … Techne belongs to bringing-forth, to poiesis; it is something poetic. (Heidegger, 1977)

And so technology is poetic. The word Poïesis is typically translated from the Greek as ‘to make’ but its derivation into the commonly used word ‘poetry’ perhaps better infers the meaning that Heidegger believes was intended by the Greeks.

Technology is poetic in the sense that it is a way of revealing. It is much more than mere means. In other words, technology is not something to be mastered as in equipment or tools, rather it is something that reflects our understanding of the world, just as poetry is.

The problem arises, according to Heidegger, when our understanding of the world sees the world as not much more than as a ‘resource’. He says that modern technology does this because it allows us to do such things as mine the earth for minerals which then act as a ‘standing reserve’ waiting to be used for no specific purpose. Those who then consume that ‘standing reserve’ have no real relationship with its provenance. It is known, ofcourse, that the energy, petrol, steel, electricity or whatever came from the earth … but that is all that is known. And so the earth is then cast as a nothing more than a provider of resources for us to consume. And this is dangerous.

Of course, environmentalists have jumped on absorbed Heidegger’s ideas but, as Dreyfus argues, this danger goes far beyond environmental issues. Dreyfus states:

Heidegger’s concern is the human distress caused by the technological understanding of being, rather that the destruction caused by specific technologies themselves …. The danger … is a restriction in our way of thinking — a leveling of our understanding of being.

69/365 Technology is taking over my life by clydebentley

If Heidegger were alive today, I’d hesitate a guess that he would not just be pointing the finger at the environmental issues we face. I’d guess that he’d be pointing the finger at Facebook, Twitter, Apple, Google, Amazon … and all the companies who provide us with technology solutions which are so “easy to use” that we hardly notice their presence. Yet they cast our way of thinking in very specific ways. And those ways will be, by definition, ultimately designed to serve the business interests of those companies. In other words, our ‘way of thinking’ is cast into patterns which serve the profit of these companies. I’m not being cynical about these companies … their actions just reflect the nature of the order of business. But for our day-to-day thinking to be cast to suit this order, the order of business, is clearly not right.

As Heidegger explains, a symptom of this problem is that humans themselves become cast as mere resources themselves. If one were to look at the internal business models of these large companies, I’d hazard a guess that humans, or ‘customers’, just represent market resources to be collected and gathered up as ‘standing reserve’ … that is … as consumers ready to be sold to when the next new product hits the shelves.

Such thoughts are hinted at by Dave Winer, a technologist who thinks about the gap between how technology serves people’s interests and how technology serves the interests of the companies who create them.

As Dreyfus explains, however, the danger Heidegger alerts us to is not the technology in itself … it is not being aware how technology has cast our thinking. I’d extend Dreyfus’ interpretation even further: its not just technology that casts our thinking (it is culture, religion, language). Perhaps then the importance of Heidegger’s contribution is the recognition that technology is on a level par as religion/culture etc for ‘casting’ the way we think. Given the rapid pace of advancement of personal digital networked technologies, one might project that technology’s ‘casting’ of the way we think is going to get stronger and stronger and stronger.

Technology is a mode of revealing. Technology comes to presence in the realm where revealing and unconcealment take place, where aletheia, truth, happens

… do you mean:

1. That it is the technology by itself that reveals? For example, the lathe reveals some truth about how we can achieve greater manual accuracy if mechanical force required to cut something is taken away from the craftsman … and executed by a machine? or,
2. that the technology reveals something else? For example, the lathe reveals a wooden cup. In other words, it doesn’t reveal anything by itself, rather, it reveals other stuff.

Speaking about ‘modern’ technology, he says:

a tract of land is challenged into the putting out of coal and ore. The earth now reveals itself as a coal mining district, the soil as a mineral deposit.

So modern technology has caused the earth to reveal itself in a particular light. That’s neither of the above two options! … that’s an other angle altogether. Now he is saying that technology causes other things to reveal themselves in a different light. Such frustratingly ambiguous language.

I want to know, in Heidegger’s eyes, if the loudspeaker (as a technology) is a revealing of our understanding of sound … or if loudspeakers are a revealing of other things (eg. the sounds themselves) … or if loudspeakers enable sounds to reveal themselves as something (eg, sonic artefact to be used in a composition). That’s 3 possible interpretations. Which is the right one?