In considering the ways today's art is an art of appropriation, let's notice a basic change that's occurred in writing, composing, and design. Editing used to involve re-writing, re-typing, re-drawing -- physically copying some previously used material into each new version. Computer-enabled editing techniques now mean that the virtual copying and pasting of material from one version of a project to another is routine whether we're working with … [Read more...]
Police witness
In U.S. criminal trials, juries are instructed that testimony given by police officers is no more or less reliable than testimony given by other witnesses. It has to be scrutinized. After Foucault, it seems absurd that in classical music we might still be so obsessed with "what the Composer wanted." Idris Khan: every ... stave of Frederick Chopin's Nocturnes for the piano We have texts. Texts that can be read variously, can be entered … [Read more...]
We’re all composers now
I went to The Stone on Avenue C to hear a rather renowned new-music-scene musician. He's a friend of a friend of mine. Somehow we'd never met before. I'd never heard him before. In this show, he played his music. A lot of material from the laptop. Recorded sounds that were processed and manipulated. Some pieces made use of a MIDI controller/trumpet. Some interesting sounds. One piece was based, it seemed to me, on a famous recording by Vladimir … [Read more...]