Sunday, January 2, 2011

Ryoji Ikeda pt.1.

This in from my friend Peter Whincop. He makes electronic music and sounds, video sometimes, paints, and teaches somewhere. He all for sharing art, but never appropriating it. Selling it, yes, but not stealing it. He made me write that, I don’t know what crack he’s on. Clearly strangely obsessed with theft. I know for sure he isn’t the electronic music equivalent of anyone who takes after cookie monster.
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I made this video and music with two underlying intentions: to produce them at the same time, and to use material (that sounds like his) from a single piece by Ryoji Ikeda, and nothing extraneous. I have completed a remake of his +/- CD, not using all the tracks because some of mine are longer versions of his, one is a video, and because there is a different thrust. Here are some thoughts on thrusting, and eventually with other pieces my friend allows me to, other fencing terms as well (see below).

I have so much to say that I’ll break this into three posts, and for the heck of it put a new piece beside each! This first piece (a video) is the one I am actually talking about: PlusMinusDeathSquareSnowMinusPlus. NB. this is a highly “spatialized” piece, so wear good headphones for the full effect. It is done with IRCAM’s Spat set of dynamic MaxMsp abstractions and externals. When I teach it here at MIT the students are blown away by their new skill—hard to learn, but worth it—that can make their pieces sound as well-produced as Radiohead’s or whatever.


[This should be updated]

Obligatory legal notice:

Title: 0905 ±death⧷death⧷snow∓ [video]
Date: May 2009
People: Peter Whincop (composer, producer)
Credits: Ryoji Ikeda (fair use of material that sounds like his)
Album: ±UNcouth ∓+⧷-
Album/Disk/Track: 18 - (00)
Unix Title: MinusDotDotVideo

Rights: all rights are cleared or implicit. © 2009 Peter Whincop. By permission of owners Barbara and Garry Whincop of Napier, New Zealand. Protected under US and NZ intellectual property laws.

Some idiots thought they could “steal” my music/sounds/art/video/photos/writings/life recently, but I won or they are losing, bad, and I’ve become a little paranoid about the whole “it’s mine even if it’s crap” thing. I’m going to kick their asses. Hard. They also did the fractal filtering (I will fight this to death if need be), digital signing, perhaps mixed in tracks or took some out, though a MaxMSP patch is quite hard to toy with (maybe, just maybe, the thief learned to compose from me? Wouldn’t it be funny if I have correspondence from one of the thieves that discusses a piece? Cleverly worded or not. I do speculate wildly; I do not think I have had a single dishonest music friend), yeah, that’s a lot I guess, isn’t it called fencing when you get rid of stolen goods? All except the composing. Even though the sounds and form are very loosely derived from Ryoji Ikeda’s, they are certainly mine, though I always credit him. And the concept. Only blackmailing me will give the criminals temporary reprieve; until I clear this up legally, initiated by myself. Whatever, and phew.

Ikeda’s 10 pieces are grouped as 3+3+3+1, each group with a “theme.” I don’t mean some fascinating melody, rather I mean what I call an ‘anti-feel’ because I can’t think of his music as having feelings or something that can induce them like a probe sticking you in the brain (or, I suspect, one would respond with equal strength but perhaps differently if a spike was shoved up your rectum); I prefer to think that his pieces enter the mind, but politely so, letting you seize control whenever you like.

But it’s not emotional or even able to be said; it’s somewhat cerebral (and I do not necessarily mean intellectual), even verging on the ineffable. I hope you will hear what I mean; search for his music and it should be clear (well, more than search. Buy or download, listen). It is polite and forceful; delicate/sweet and perturbing: a lot of contradictions, or at least we don’t have singular words for them. I sort of need a word that is, in effect, like a piece of cubist sculpture. Or Erik Satie’s music is like this; as if different when viewed from different directions, in different contexts, with different suggestions. Where can I find words like that?

pt.2 to follow (above!)...

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