yet another account of the war for radical computer music.

http://vimeo.com/19593647 [1]

The addressee above links to a short documentary by and about the Danish composer Parl Kristian Bjørn Vester, who is better known by his stage name Goodiepal. The documentary deals with Goodiepals so called War for radical computer music, which is a series of works of performance-art and a conceptual record release. The record release, which I will discuss later in this essay, is the project I find the most interesting, but the video is also worth watching because it portrays Goodiepal, who is quite a character, and presents some of his eccentric and original ideals. The video is also fascinating because, or maybe in spite of, it gives and insight into the visual and audiotive anti-aesthetics[2] pursued by Goodiepal and his affiliates.

In order to discuss the critical / subversive potential of the record release at, I will briefly retell the events which serve as its context. Goodiepal was teaching as a professor at the Royal Danish Academy for Electro-Acoustic Music (DIEM). He taught his bizarre ideas about utopia, time travel, the development of a European robot-mythology, non-linear compositisions and last but not least the concept of Radical computer music (which is not music made with computers and digital instruments, but music made for the pleasure artificial intelligences of the future).

In 2008 Goodiepal was dismissed from DIEM, because the headmaster and schools governing body became aware of the untraditional subjects taught in Goodiepals classes. Goodiepal was apparently stricken with a thirst for vengeance and staged a war against the academy. His first offensive move was to team up with two crooked musicians and steal a very expensive effect-machine from DIEM. The effect-machine was then hacked and modified, and later sold to a Belgian collector, to partly finance the record release mentioned earlier.

The most astonishing about this 45€ vinyl record release was not the 13 hours of experiential music, but the fact that every LP sold had an genuine 500 kroner (70€) bill enclosed: You earned money when buying it! I find this concept amazing because it distorts our conceptions of economic necessity, ignoring the primary principals of capitalism. It has its critical potential in contrast to the dominant political discourse on art (and the humanities), where art is supposed to function and develop under the principals of the market, and to be evaluated by its direct or indirect contribution to the GDP.

An alternative attempt to deal whit these conditions of the arts are currently being made by the Danish Association of Musicians. They have established a research project which is to prove how and to what extent state subsidy of art yields economic growth. In contrast to this, Goodiepal does not accept the premises. He insists that the artist is not the Rational man, that the potential of art is not the generating of profit.

The actual financing of this rather spectacular record release[3], is another strange aspect of the project, and raises a series of questions, which I unfortunately do not have the space to discuses in this essay. But if this has caught your interest, I can reveal that the story is being told in the video linked to above.

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[1] Before watching the video, I will warn you that Goodiepal and SYGNOK uses the swastika-symbol provocatively, but are in fact declared anti-fascists.

[2]Their dismissal of harmony and beauty (both thematic and artistic) closely resembles that of the French picture book printing- and publishing house Le Dernier Cri.

[3] The record was issued in 1000 copies. The total cost of the release was therefore 500.000 dkk (67.000€) plus the production costs of the vinyl and cover.

reading and books.

According to Athur Schopenhauer the phenomena of reading is a process of repeating and reproducing the thoughts of an author; a passive process which barely demands any effort from the reader, except moving the eyes and opening the arena of the mind to the unfolding of sentences’ immanent meanings . In this perspective, the process of reading, and especially reading to an extent, is associated with the danger of stupefying and paralyzing the reader, gradually rendering her unable to think original thoughts on, and of her own. Furthermore Schopenhauer understands the workings of the memory in the same way as Sherlock Holmes[1]: The memory is like a limited storage room: for every unnecessary item one piles in there, the harder do the important things become to find (remember) when needed, and the less room remains for new knowledge. In the light of this understanding of reading, Schopenhauer’s ideal seems clear and reasonable: carefully select what you read[2], read only small amounts of literature, read rarely, spend long hours digesting and reflecting upon what is read, and, first and foremost, think for you self: create, write.

To some extent, I agree with this ideal of studying, but on the basis of alternative understanding of the phenomena of reading. In opposition to Schopenhauer I understand reading as an active and (re)interpreting / hermeneutic process, where the written thoughts of the author might acquire new meanings on the backdrop of a different socio-historical context. In this light, the creation, the independent thoughts, are reflections based on (enabled and limited by) historical, social, cultural, technical and political inheritance, relating to contemporary problems. In contrast to this perspective Schopenhauer presents a view of creation as the result of the solitary working of a genius or an artist: new thoughts conjured into existence from nothing or from the core of the writer’s soul. These thoughts have no preceding connection to anything else, and the language with which they at mediate are seen upon as a transparent and neutral. I find this perspective on innovation, somehow troublesome, since magnificent ideas, even if created in complete isolation, are to be judged upon their relevance to other human beings. When all this is said, I think that a discussion of intellectual limitation associated with too much reading is still worthy of attention. Gilles Deleuze, for instance, claims that his notion of a corpus without organs should be fairly easy to grasp intuitively, if you have not studied at all, but almost impossible otherwise[3]. He might be right; because I, who regard myself as moderately familiar with philosophy, have never had a clue to what it means (apparently, a book is an example of a corpus without organs[4]). Nevertheless, I think, if you are to break with a tradition, you are better off actually knowing it, and therefore capable of reflecting upon why you are abandoning it.

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[1] Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1992:21): A Study in Scarlet in The Complete Sherlock Holmes. New York, Barnes & Noble Books.
[2] Schopenhauer would presumable recommend the authorships of Kant and himself, and advice against reading Hegel.
[3] Gilles Deleuze (2006:16): Forhandlinger 1972-1990. Frederiksberg, Det lille Forlag. Danish translation of Deleuze (1990): Pourparlers.1972-1990. Paris, Les Editions de Minuit.
[4] Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guttari (2005:6): Tusind plateauer – Kapitalisme og skizofreni. København, Det Kongelige danske kunstakademis billedkunstskolers forlag. Danish translation of Deluze & Guttari (1980): Mille Plateaux – Capitalisme et Schizophrénie 2. Paris, Les Editions de Minuit.