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In the realm of classical institutions many of us constantly notice a conflict. Much of our music cannot survive in traditional showcases. The social contract we make as composers is invalid. We have lots of patches. We involve live performers we put blinking lights on our machines, we compromise our vision. But still, many of the things we do with our machines simply do not have appropriate contexts among the classical musical-social institutions. We can try to shoehorn them in, but that is missing the point. Given the extraordinary richness and complexity which computer synthesis, assistance, and intelligence enables us to create, it becomes challenging to rethink the contextual consequences of modes of musical discourse and explanation which do not lie comfortably with the implications of the classical model. Just as the context in which you write affects what you write, so the context in which you listen will affect what and how you hear. To my mind, consequently, the real computer music revolution lies in the ways it forces us to rebuild the world in which we live, and the social structure of that world is its underpinning.
Let me now redesign the performer-composer-listener network to more accurately reflect the social consequences of using machines. I want simply to add two nodes to the network, and contend that to take these seriously is to fundamentally reassess the situation and broaden the realm in which this music lives.
First I'll add a node called 'sound-giver.' Being a sound-giver may mean simply giving a cassette to a friend, or it may mean publishing a compact disc. The sound-giver may or may not have made the sounds on the tape, it really doesn't matter. It may even mean being the sonic source for someone else's musical explorations. Before the advent of recording the only way one could be a sound-giver was to be a performer. Today, however, most of us would have to admit that giving and receiving sounds in one way or another is the most active part of our musical social life. Hardly a week goes by when I don't give and get several tapes. And an increasing number of us would also have to admit that receiving sonic material which we subsequently use in one way or another is also a new activity. When I was visiting the California Institute of the Arts, one of my students there gave me a tape of the most wonderful moving white noise bands. It turned out to be U.S. Interstate 5 late at night. He had simply parked part of his musical view of the world on this tape and wanted to share it. It certainly changed my world-view--a highway would never sound the same!. Some sound- givers mainly want to share musical experiences; others want to give you their latest and greatest efforts. These are two ends of a spectrum, and the neutral character of the technological medium of transmission is the unifying element. At first blush this may seem like a weak concept, but if you accept it in the network the consequences are very interesting. In adding this node I am making what I consider to be a radical assessment of the social effects of technology. The attributes of skill and genius are no longer the sole prerequisites for inclusion in the network as a sound generating node, as we are used to thinking in the case of composer and performer. What is more, the sound-giver is specifically activating a musical-social exchange in the most direct and simple way. (Consider the potential of radio in this sense.) In a way it is as if our collective genius in constructing these technological tools takes a seat alongside individual accomplishments.
By defining this node I am also making a fundamental statement about the perception of recorded sound. A recording is no longer primarily a documentation of composer- performer interaction, but rather a self- contained and self-confirming entity. There is now no illusion. What you hear is what you get.
Finally, in terms of social vitality, a sound-giver is an abstraction which has several more levels of meaning and implication than a listener. He is more than a listener--while he listens, he shares. He thus absorbs some of the roles of performer, composer, and listener. In some ways, composers, performers, and listeners are subclasses of sound-givers. In other ways sound-givers are subclasses of composers and performers. In short, being able to promulgate and share sound in this way absorbs some of the musical rewards of being a performer. The second node I want to add is called "instrument-builder." There are many forms of this. One form simply builds and designs sound- generating hardware and software. On one hand there is nothing particularly new about this. It has been going on for hundreds of years. On the other hand, the ability to imbue constructions with almost arbitrary points of view is quite new. An instrument builder is no longer necessarily dependent on the evolutionary state of the musical climate to determine the next step. Instrument design and construction now become a form of musical composition. The vision of the instrument-builder can be idiosyncratic, and even compositional. Playing someone else's instruments becomes a form of playing someone else's composition. Harry Partch probably didn't intend to have other people play his instruments, and there was probably little distinction in his mind between building an instrument and composing the music for it. Though not technologically-based, his work clearly presages similar recent machine-based efforts by a wide variety of people.
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