APPLICATION: RECOMPOSITION AND THE DATABASE
A bit of a sprawling post. I begin with a theoretical discussion where I also provide some more context for Focault’s arguments, and then proceed with some examples of forms and practices that I believe could be referred to as ‘recompositional’. If you don’t have time to read much of this, feel free to simply go to some of the links. I’m interested in how all of you find some of these examples communicate with our readings…
Foucault bases a major premise of The Order of Things on a distinction between two different historical assemblages—the Classical and Modern eras—where form, function, and practice merge into a particular order and the practices, tools, and other materials used to enact order. Foucault’s analytic space and the aspirations of his work are impressive: “between the use of what one might call the ordering codes and reflections upon order itself, there is the pure experience of order and of its modes and being” (1970:xxi, emphasis added). Foucault proceeds by tracing and “maintain[ing] passing events in their proper dispersion…differently” (Foucault 1977:146, emphasis added).
How does one do this differently? Part of the answer lies in understanding Foucault’s “curative history”—a way of talking about historical succession which avoids grand narratives while refusing to fall victim to the seductive and/or deceptive effect occasionally produced through social constructivism. In other words, the difficult involves taking a ‘middle road’—being descriptive and diagnostic but providing a sort of prescription through the very act of diagnosis. By showing how resemblance operated in both periods, and by locating an approximate rupture in these two epistemic configurations, Foucault is able to underscore a point in history where we lost our capacity to see difference and to think ‘outside of the box’.
A question lingers in relation to our other readings. Has the database and its related systems brought about uncertainties, over whether or not we’re in a new episteme? This is much debated. Wendy Chun does not seem to think so. Chun expresses the crisis of sameness or identicality runs through a number of conflations: of human memory to computer storage or the “instruction or program…to its result” (2008:161).
The anthropologist Paul Rabinow has a way of describing how such superimpositions work, referring to Gerhard Richter’s photographic painting techniques, where it is neither possible to call these works paintings or photographs. The effect works like montage, where montage is a subtle stirring within the frame, or a performance of juxtaposed forms through their very emplacement. Adorno calls these ‘puzzle-pictures’: “facilitat[ing] the construction of new forms of social life from the glimpses provided of alternative futures when otherwise concealed or forgotten connections with the past [are] revealed by the juxtaposition of images, as in the technique of montage” (Taussig 1984:89). Superimposing (without concealing) the Classical and Modern eras, or Otlet’s ‘electric telescopes’ and the World Wide Web, do not lead to a mere one-to-one copy. We begin to witness distinctions between two or more ‘images’ but also the appearance of unusual relationships, similarities, mysteries, and other reconfigurations.
I’d like to present a series of examples—perhaps interventions—which may challenge the conflation of instruction with function or play with the relationship between a ‘database’ and a ‘database management system’. These are disruptive but I hope ultimately illuminating cases, which become revealing through uncanny mixing and forms of meddling.
The Pirate Poetry Anthology
The Anthology contains the work of 3,164 different poets. The original pdf has disappeared, but resurfaces here. It sparked a small but significant controversy in the poetry world, when some of these poets learned they had been published. When they looked up their poem, they were shocked to find not their poem.
The book was written by a computer or rather, by an algorithm scripted by Stephen Mclaughlin and Jim Carpenter. The program sifted through all 3,164 poems, leaving titles intact, but redistributing the text across 3,785 pages. Responses varied, from lawsuits to laughter to admiration. Browsing forums one finds bewildered poets, before they realized what had happened: ‘that’s my poem!’.
Kenneth Goldsmith: The Uncreative Approach
Kenneth Goldsmith can be difficult to nail down. His work operates through principles of ‘uncreativity’. He writes essays like: “If it doesn’t exist on the internet, it doesn’t exist (2005) or “Being Boring” (2004). Marjorie Perloff describes his work as “provocative equation of poetry with ‘word processing’ or ‘information management’ “(2010:203). Interviewed in The Wire, a British publication dedicated to experimental music and sound art, Goldsmith describes his practices as “the art of acquisition” (2011). Goldsmith fashions himself as a sort of human ‘database management system’ and his projects do end up being very database-like—but why? And how? And what does it even mean to be ‘database-like’? In his New York Trilogy (Perloff 2010) Traffic, Weather, and Sports (2005-2008) Goldsmith transcribes a year’s worth of tri-state area weather and traffic reports from NYC radio station WINS (1010AM) and a complete baseball game between the Yankees and Red Sox. In Day (2003) he transcribes the New York Times completely from front to back, for the year 2000. These books are hundreds of pages long.
It’s worth mentioning how my previous examples mirror quite a few ‘serious’ artists’ practices. Take Iannis Xenakis’s stochastic musical composition, where algorithms develop a constrained environment constructed from any number of different ‘rules’, leading to an indeterminate performance which is nevertheless always determined by certain sets of principles. Next to this, catalog Luciano Berio’s Sinfonia, a piece for combined orchestra and chorus where the composition itself consists of recomposed fragments of older composers compositions (Beethoven, Mozart, Mahler, etc.) and includes vocal parts where fragments of the writing of James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Claude Levi-Strauss, and others.
What is the relationship between composing, archival technique, database, and composition?
A Chronicle of Plunderphonics
Before Deconstructing Beck and other acoustic manipulations found on labels like Illegal Art, there was already a history of experimentation with the manipulation of audio recordings and its possibilities. Like so many Futurist documents The Art of Noise (1913) is a manifesto, in which Luigi Russolo discusses the possibility of developing numerous kinds of noise-boxes, instruments capable of reproducing the sounds of industrial machinery, the automobile, or the sound of modern weaponry. The idea was to transplant these sounds into a performance environment.
Pierre Schaeffer is also worth mentioning. A key developer of Musique Concrete, Schaeffer’s composition involves manipulation, cutting, and rearrangement of prerecorded audio materials (magnetic tape) to (re)construct potentially meaningful and illuminating recompositions. And of course, who could forget William Burrough’s cut-up technique, derived from conversations with his interlocutor and fellow poet Brion Gysin.
Sampling, not completely divorced from the ideas and work of Schaeffer and others, became first notable in the 1970s, where DJs would ‘sample’ a fragment of some other recording or isolate a rhythm, then transplanting these pieces back into their own work. John Oswald, a pioneer of plunderphonic compositions, comments on the role of the sampler: “ A sampler, in essence a recording, transforming instrument, is simultaneously a documenting device and a creative device, in effect reducing a distinction manifested by copyright” (1985).
Whereas the Pirated Poetry Anthology’s construction depends upon some form of poetic or literary thievery, plunderphonics fashions itself as audio piracy. The practice is wide-spread and fairly diverse, but takes advantage of the easy acquisition of music files through peer to peer networks or other networked communities of file sharers.
John Oswald’s re-composition of Count Basie’s “Pocket”.
Don’t forget The Beatles:
– Steve Mclauglin – All UK Beatles releases: Steve Mclaughlin managed to compress all UK releases of Beatles LPs into a one-hour experience.
– Every Beatles Song Played at Once: British DJ Ramjac has created his own mix of All of the Beatles Songs (226 to be exact).
Plunderphonics has resonance with and within visual art practices as well. Take Christian Marclay’s 24 hour film The Clock. It is worth mentioning how blatantly bootlegged this sample of the film is; the recorder is clearly seated off-center from the actual screen. So much of this work, as Goldsmith points out, involves individuals acquiring resources through any means necessary, hopefully accumulating vast amounts of visual and/or audio data, in order to increase the possibilities of their reconstructions. Plunderphonics vary in their degrees of complexity, work, and absurdity, and its recomposers by no means share the same aspirations. At times, these examples appear to merely humorous, if not surprising—like this one, where Scott Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag” shapes Eminem’s “Without Me” (Just click on the realplayer link. It’s the first song on this archived WFMU show. There is an unedited version on Youtube).
At times, both video and audio are recombined, as in People Like Us (Vicki Bennett). Bennett was the first artist to be given “unrestricted access” to the entire BBC archives in 2006. Here’s an example:
Occasionally what is being plundered is not simply copyrighted material, but material which was at one time completely private. TAS 1000 is a Canadian band that built much of their initial fame off messages left on an answering machine which one of the members bought the at a thrift store. The messages end up cut and edited into most of the band’s music. Here’s their (in)famous “(I’ve Been) Delayed”.
One final thought, turning back to the Deconstructing Beck album I mentioned above. There is an interesting concept embedded within the very practice of cutting up a Beck song into tiny pieces and setting them on a table in front of you: A song can become a collection in reverse (made up of its own sonic components). A song is transformed into a miniature database, an uncanny record of its own existence. By tampering with this ‘database’, one might render a song unfamiliar within its own territory. Yet is this really a database, if it refers to a whole? Can we make a distinction between what is or is not a database based upon whether the contents refer to something, or everything, or nothing in particular?
Other Examples
The Arcades Project
Walter Benjamin’s editing process leads to a reimagined space of the Parisian Arcades, by virtue of his techniques, involving the extraction of materials (quotes, advertisements, official statements and documentation, philosophy, historiography, poetry, art, and many other things). It is worth mentioning that Kenneth Goldsmith is now rewriting The Arcades Project for New York City.
Xerophonics
Anthropologist Stefan Helmreich put together this video which briefly details Xerox and the rise of copier technology, but also provides a good example of xerophonic composition, where ‘music’ is created by ensembles of scanners, printers, and fax machines. On the Xerophonics album, one finds track names such as “Toshiba 2060”, “Xerox 5828”, or “Minolta Ep 6001 Cs Pro (Serial # 21742775)”. Here’s a sonic catalogue of printing, copying, and faxing devices.
386 DX
Continuing in this line, where computers and devices appear suddenly to engage in such ‘human’ performances as playing music, here is “California Dreamin’” from Alexei Shulgin’s album The Best of 386 DX. Shulgin modified a computer running on Intel’s 386 processor, to ‘sing’ (mostly pop) songs.
Voyager
Scholar and jazz musician George Lewis developed Voyager as a computer program which could be run live, alongside improvising performers. The program makes the device ‘listen’, respond, and participate with human improvisers. The moment where we hear human and computer perform together is at times strange, troubling, or delightful. At times it is really difficult to know who is playing piano, since Voyager is programmed to emulate piano sounds. Here are two videos and a link to Lewis’ album Voyager.
(In)Conclusion
These tiny databases are constrained to individuals or at least, to their own unique environments. They do not contend to be replacements for human practices. They show how storage is not a transplant of memory but rather the grounds for possibility. ‘Storing’ sounds, files, words, dates, materials, pdfs, or whatever, opens up the potential for data to not only perform but be performed on and with.
References
Benjamin, Walter, and Rolf Tiedemann. The Arcades Project. Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1999.
Foucault, Michel. “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History.” Language, Counter-memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews. By Michel Foucault. Ed. Donald F. Bouchard. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1977.
Goldsmith, Kenneth. Sports. Los Angeles: Make Now, 2008.
Goldsmith, Kenneth. Traffic. Los Angeles: Make Now, 2007.
Goldsmith, Kenneth. The Weather. Los Angeles: Make Now, 2005.
Goldsmith, Kenneth. “Archiving Is the New Folk Art.” Poetry Foundation. N.p., 19 Apr. 2011.
Goldsmith, Kenneth. “Being Boring.” The First Seance for Experimental Literature. Disney Redcat Theater, Los Angeles. Nov. 2004.
Goldsmith, Kenneth. “Epiphanies.” The Wire May 2011:
Goldsmith, Kenneth. “If It Doesn’t Exist on the Internet, It Doesn’t Exist.” Elective Affinities Conference. University of Pennsylvania. 27 Sept. 2005.
Goldsmith, Kenneth. “Rewriting Walter Benjamin’s “The Arcades Project”” Poetry Foundation. N.p., 30 Apr. 2011.
Oswald, John. “Plunderphonics, or Audio Piracy as a Compositional Prerogative.” Lecture. Wired Society Electro-Acoustic Conference. Toronto. 1985.
Perloff, Marjorie. Unoriginal Genius: Poetry by Other Means in the New Century. Chicago: University of Chicago, 2010.
Rabinow, Paul. Marking Time: On the Anthropology of the Contemporary. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2008.
Richter, Gerhard. Untitled. 1999. Overpainted Photograph.
Russolo, Luigi. The Art of Noise (Futurist Manifesto, 1913). N.p.: Ubu Classics, 1913.
Taussig, Michael. “History as Sorcery.” Representations. 1984.