Circuit Bending & Post-Modernism

[goldenbaby]

For some reason, it seems natural for me to relate the circuit-bending scene to post-modern art.  Do you guys consider there to be a correlation between the two?  How are you guys using your CBOs yourself?

[deathbender]

When i'm bending some toy or keyboard i'm not considering it to be art but some kind of design. When i think about where to put the new controls so that it looks clean and stylish but still functional... I'm not pretending i'm an artist but a hobbyist/tinkerer if these words are the right ones to describe what i'm doing... Others may see this completely different concerning their work... That's just what i'm thinking about myself...

[goldenbaby]

I was thinking moreso about the usage of mostly non-melodic CBOs within a performance.  Not so much the constructive of it.  Although, I would suggest that the intentional sabotage of circuits to create new sounds that please the ears in weird ways is a productive more of this generation than when Ghazala discovered this way ahead of it's time in the 60s or 70s.

[Circuitbenders]

A shoe in a bucket is art if you say it is and you can convince enough pretentious idiots to go along with you. 

I've heard a vast amount of atrocious self indulgent circuitbending based noise from people who mistake making shitloads of noise for 'intelligence', or art if you want to call it that. If it sounds utterly pointless and painful to listen too then in all liklihood its just utterly pointless and painfull to listen too, its probably not that i'm just not intelligent enough to understand it.

Personally I just like to make machines make stupid noises, possibly because i've never grown up, but mainly because its a laugh and a better way to spend my time than sitting in some office somewhere. If someone wants to call that art then thats entirely up to them, i'm not about to argue.   

[computer at sea]

[takes a breath, plunges in]

One of the really appealing things about circuit bent stuff is that it can be pretty much whatever you want it to.  It can exist strictly on an isn't-this-noise-cool level, it can be an engaging technical puzzle (I'm thinking of Graham working out all that lovely stuff on his SK-5's), you can put some godawful glitter paint on it and call it art, or you can laboriously make the world's most gorgeous re-casing and say it's just design.

Aside from playing shows,  I use circuit bent stuff as components for larger art pieces.  I've done a few installations with audio from a glitching Yamaha or Casio that forms the background layer for whatever else is happening.  So in that context they can be considered art.  I don't think that they're inherently art on their own, or at least they aren't for me.

The term 'post modern' is a fake idea.  Some number of years back I took a class about post modernism and read all of the heavy articles on the topic from the 70's on.  It is a colonizing parasite of an idea that, at its worst, is used in a proprietary fashion to claim a piece of culture or art or whatever as post modern and, at its best, serves to needlessly complicate a simpler idea.

[whoah.]  I kind of came on heavy there, huh?

I guess if you wanted to, you could take one of the many definitions of the term and make circuit bending mesh up with it pretty well, though.

[Circuitbenders]

surely post-modernism is just an excuse for someone to do something totally shit, and when you mention to them the fact that its shit they can give you a smug knowing smirk and say 'thats exactly the point' . At which point any reasonable human being would be forced to beat them to death.

correct me if i'm wrong.............

[Gordonjcp]

That would be post-post-modernism.

[deathbender]

How about pre-futurism?

[nochtanseenspecht]

A shoe in a bucket is art if you say it is and you can convince enough pretentious idiots to go along with you. 

I've heard a vast amount of atrocious self indulgent circuitbending based noise from people who mistake making shitloads of noise for 'intelligence', or art if you want to call it that. If it sounds utterly pointless and painful to listen too then in all liklihood its just utterly pointless and painfull to listen too, its probably not that i'm just not intelligent enough to understand it.

Personally I just like to make machines make stupid noises, possibly because i've never grown up, but mainly because its a laugh and a better way to spend my time than sitting in some office somewhere. If someone wants to call that art then thats entirely up to them, i'm not about to argue.   

lol nice said

for me i have a heap of nice artistic looking bended objects all collecting dust,
i just like to explore them, when i digged them out, they're no more interesting to me. yeah sometimes i sample them..

if i make music i rather take a "real" instrument that sound sweet in my ears
but i guess i'm spoiled by analogue synths

on general i found CBOs ugly but funny soundwise
many modern art i found crap too, so it is just a matter of taste

but i saw many CBO's that are "art" in my opinion
like the furby sequencer for example..
also here on the site i saw brilliant machines
so keep them coming

[Gleix]

I've heard a vast amount of atrocious self indulgent circuitbending based noise from people who mistake making shitloads of noise for 'intelligence', or art if you want to call it that. If it sounds utterly pointless and painful to listen too then in all liklihood its just utterly pointless and painfull to listen too, its probably not that i'm just not intelligent enough to understand it.

Yes! I've heard too many people claim intelligence because they can "appreciate" noise.  I find many forms of it, when executed correctly, absolutely wonderful, but in no way does that provide me with any reasons to proclaim heightened intelligence.  It just means I enjoy something that many don't. 

I have to say, I love almost everything I hear that's put in the "IDM" genre, but that's just an extremely pretentious title for something. "Intelligent dance music." Just because Aphex Twin put out tracks with an immense amount of depth and complexity doesn't make the music any more intelligent than any other music...

[Circuitbenders]

on the other hand i do find myself listening more and more to so called music that is more or less unlistenable. Mainly because in the last few years 99% of all electronic music seems to have become utterly generic and absurdly tedious despite the popularity of circuit bending.

My unlistenable album of choice for today is GUB, by Pigface. An album that sounds not unlike a drunk shouting in your ear on a building site and is probably atrocious, but i'm strangely fascinated by it as they were plainly not doing it to be intelligent or artistic. In fact i suspect they were doing it through sheer mental instability 

[LoneStar81]

Funny that you guys mention Aphex Twin. He once said in some interview he disliked the term IDM, mainly because it somehow implies all other kinds of music would be stupid. Nothing to add

Personally I'm with deathbender here, I'm hard pressed to call my bending activities a form of art.
First comes functionality, and then the appearance in an industry design kind of way. I like shiny surfaces and polished/brushed metal. I like exact angles and clean layouts. It may sound funny but let's just call it technoaesthetic.

I always think about the practicality for the musician when I design the user interface for my bends. The "usefulness" in musical context is important for me.
Personally I don't like the strong esoteric touch that some people (including Reed Ghazala) interpret into their machines, like out-of-this-world, alien devices etc. They probably ate too many mushrooms

Example:

[ZedAxis]

in the last few years 99% of all electronic music seems to have become utterly generic and absurdly tedious despite the popularity of circuit bending.

Is this coz it is too easy to make music without any thought or struggle? OR  due to a general lack of individuality to express so everything is mundane & pointless sounding?
I ranted on about ART/commerce previously ( i've lost it - the rant I mean). Is creativity dead but no-one can admit this. Post-modernism is a convenient excuse -  regurgitate & feast on corpses.............Mmmm.

[ZedAxis]

hey, I was thinking that post-modernism is about all the good ideas already been found & the end of modernity/progress - so like everything is rehashed & mixed up, plundered from the past & stuck out there as something for the present?? So do you relate it to bending as a cannabalising type activity of using old stuff in a new way??
I can kind of see it a bit like this with the actual building of stuff - but not so much with performance or music making. Although some kitch childrens toys being used by adults to make deranged noise - is this post-modernism?
I saw it more as a surrealist chance activity.

Apologies for all this theorising - all you practical types are getting on doing some great stuff while I'm faffy about paint jobs & the colour off my knobs. It's really self-indulgent & slow going. I'm still hung-up on speak n spells.

[Circuitbenders]

in the last few years 99% of all electronic music seems to have become utterly generic and absurdly tedious despite the popularity of circuit bending.

Is this coz it is too easy to make music without any thought or struggle? OR  due to a general lack of individuality to express so everything is mundane & pointless sounding?

This is because these days any old idiot can get a copy of Reason or Abelton or whatever and churn out a load of predictable and unsatisfying tunes in a matter of days, and then immediately become their own record label and sell them on the net. While in theory this is a good thing, in practise it seems to mean that because of the sheer volume of mediocre music out there, thats all most people writing this stuff actually get to hear. They get influenced by what they hear and so the whole cycle begins again, round and round getting all the the imagination and individuality stripped from it a little more each time.

How many people writing this electro breaks stuff that seems to be the hip sound these days have actually heard the sound of a real 4 oscillator analogue mono-synth melting their face off? Very few i'd say, and even if they had they probably wouldn't like it as it doesn't sound like the cheap generic computer sound that car adverts tell them is cool these days.

Post Modernism is a label to get people to accept recycled generic crap as being worthwhile.

The 80's were shit the first time and i'd really just prefer they stopped happening now 

Thats my rant for today.