General Introduction

-->converging critical theory upon technology<--

"I have nothing to say / and I am saying it / and that is poetry / as I needed it" --John Cage

My research project was born out of a conceptual curiosity with the term performance, especially its relation to generative systems in music. Having first come across the term in Judith Butler's work Gender Trouble, I grew to understand the critique of identity, historicity and sociality that it offered. Performance was a deconstructive concept, meant to de-stabilize the notion of a natural, biological gender. The result was an identity "tenuously constituted in time, instituted to an exterior space through a stylized repetition of acts."(1)

The word was revisited later, this time in the context of hypertext and various literary theories of text. George Landow, armed with Roland Barthes' definition of textuality, postulated networks of nodal fragments, linked together without hierarchy, center, margin or linearity. This view of text creates an active reader who performs a particular, randomly accessed rendition, traversing the galaxy of signifiers. Performance, as Landow had it, was possible through electronic hypertext, embodying the post-structuralist conception of an open text. Through generalization, his theory collapses cognition, materiality, practice, theory and history--indeed an entire continuum of discourse. While we may chortle now, the "convergence of contemporary critical theory and technology" is still a guiding principle, with its own continuum.

Clearly, "performance" and "text" are meant differently in different contexts. Nevertheless, I made the [possibly short-sighted] decision to research and analyze the notion of performance as understood in the realm of Experimental Music. Under examination would be the way that the music [composer|performer] considers her work temporally. From my limited perspective, composers--especially those of the 60s experimental movement--were concerned with the idea of the textual referent in the classical score. At stake was its ability to represent and define what is musically possible. As an analogy to theories of text and meaning, the classical score dictates the linear, representational, scaled systematic conception of music. This influences the way it can be written and experimented with. Twelve tone music is perhaps as pervasive a language throughout the world as any, defining how communication and exchange of musical ideas is possible.

My aim is to survey some of the reactions against the idea of a notational referent, describing some of the moves that were made by composers and performers in the heyday of experimental music. Knowing only John Cage's 4'33", I was interested in how others reacted to the method known as serialism. It is hoped that some of the issues raised by the artists will question.rethink our conception of text temporally. Experimental musicians were aware of their temporally constructed relationship to a musical signifier, dealing artistically with the notational referent in many surprising and abstract ways. In conclusion I will cite artists such as Bob Cobbing, one who performatively brings together a number of the poles I've mapped out <performance, representation, notation>.

The second portion of this project deals with digital sound. What are some of the changes that come with computational processing? Here I will highlight principles inherited from the musical work of the 60s. However, [to quote Rita Raley in her thesis on performance of digital textuality][to emulate the sentiments of my interview subject Stephen Travis Pope], digital sound performance must emerge on its own terms. I will offer a sampling of interesting artists, and describe some currently pervasive thematics.