> > If placed within the right context, yes. As a matter of fact a lot of
> modern
> > electronica/glitch music relies heavily upon various kinds of noises,
> including
> > white noise. Besides, subtractive synthesis + white noise = a lot of
> cool aural
> > material...
>
> Well, there is a Linux program that will read the entire contents of a
> hard drive as though it were one big audio file. So I guess we have
> no more need for musicians, because that would be a collection of sine
> waves of various frequencies, and that's all it takes.
Oh dear...
There are sounds and then there is music. Commonly music within this context
is a collage of such sounds assembled through human arbitration (direct or
indirect). First you argue how certain sounds are not musical and that is
this is a universal fact (which it isn't), now you argue that those sounds
in and of themselves cannot be music (which again is not universal truth).
Please note that two arguments are not synonymous, but rather separate
issues altogether.
That being said, I'd suggest looking into writings of John Cage which talks
about the notion of "happening" and removal of human arbitration from the
compositional process. To some extent the same goes for the Second Viennese
school. For what it's worth, in that (albeit extreme) context, yes,
sonification of hard drive data could be considered a kind of artistic
expression. On a more moderate level, such sound could be
harvested/recorded, just like one could record a bird song, and then use
such material to shape a work of art. Therefore, the sounds which may or may
not appear to be musical to you (but could appear to be musical to others),
would be placed within a context where they are treated musically just like
notes and/or pitches are treated within a traditional Western music. This
would, by definition, result in a piece of music. Now, whether you like such
an end-product or not is irrelevant from the fact that any sound can be used
for musical expression and that music can be defined simply as a conscious
[human] attention/musical treatment of any sonic material.
Another eye-opening place I would suggest investigating is Ars Electronica
which is arguably the most prestigious annual competition for the
contemporary multimedia arts...
Ico
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Received on Thu Apr 5 20:15:13 2007
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