„Your music is worthless.
It achieves nothing.
It serves no cultural purpose other than to fill up Spotify and YouTube web servers.
Your art is not transcendent.
All artists of this age are nothing but video game addicted losers.“[1]
The initial quote by David Russo (a.k.a. Luci, HKE, and about 50 other monikers) as liner notes for his album “YOUR MUSIC IS WORTHLESS” is interesting to me, not so much in the relatively pale post-nihilist stance it takes, its edgy wording, and especially not for the music of this particular release – most of those tracks work more like ironic memes or moods –, while other releases of him portray my interest better and can be found in other releases (of other artists and labels). Also that the stance is one of (Post-)Pop[2], although what classically would be associated with ‘avant-pop’, inside electronic music is appealing, but not my major concern.
Striking to me is especially the last sentence:
In the 21st century a reorganization of the cultural catalog or archive can be observed. Genre’s became micro-genres became tags[3] or, how I interpret the quote, video games as todays dominant form of art reabsorb the arts (in a broad sense, therefore including drinks, fashion, poses and/or performances, fine arts, film industry, etc.) in general. Under the logic of branding & derivative capitalization sound and sonic-fiction become label fiction.[4]
The Philospher Yuk Hui in his essay “Archives of the Future – Remarks on the Concept of Tertiary Protention”[5] elaborates Bernard Stiegler’s concept of tertiary retention & protention – meaning: technologically enhanced memory & anticipation) by addressing that contemporary technology introduces, what he calls ‘computational hermeneutic’ and/or ‘recursivity’ on the basis of large data archives or in short machine learning algorithms power of making huge archives accessible for humans by preselection and how these filter human reality(-perception).
Yet again, the whole text until now is only the precursor of the idea that what we’re experiencing now tends to result in a restructuring along the lines of “model” and “simulation”:
„If the declining value of meaningful content in the postwar world was summarized by Marshall McLuhan’s famous words that “the Medium is the Message,” today we are confronted with a changing world in which, according to the Philosophers of Technology Benjamin Bratton and the computer engineer Blaise Agüera y Arcas, “The Model is the Message.”“[6]
The “model” & “simulation” are not exactly the same, but similar. A simulation is necessarily based on models, while a model can be constructed without necessarily building a simulation of it.
Under this assumption the initial quote by David Russo “All artists of this age are nothing but video game addicted losers.“[7] rereads not so much as a superficial insult, but as the observation that contemporary arts have a tendency towards “model” & “simulation”. These include and eventually subsume narrations, sonic- & label-fictions, affect & performance.
There are lots of musical examples available mostly surrounding different (net-)labels, to name a few of them (in a more or less arbitrary fashion, also including different kinds of models and/or simulations at play); i.e. pc-music[8], Eco Futurism Corp[9], and its sublabel Bio Future Laboratory[10], NON worldwide, DREAM CATALOGUE[11], and many others mentioned in Simon Reynolds text “The Rise of Conceptronica”[12]. Journalists coined the term ‘hyper-pop’ to describe most of pc-music’s roster as a somehow internet culture-driven and hyperactive distillate of 20s pop culture. While Eco Futurism Corp and Bio Future Laboratory could be described as computer game-style deconstructed club music with an ecological or environmentalist theme. Again NON worldwide is the simulation of underground resistance’s black radicalism & culture war under the dominance of racialized-identity politics, by turning its imperative ‘to disappear’ & ‘being anonymous’ upside down by becoming ‘visible’ & ‘representing’. Or DREAM CATALOGUE which is a recombination of existing tropes (in graphics & sound) to construct a simulation of a somewhat Dream-/Cyberpunk future, calling itself a brand. Although these descriptions fall short to lots of details in these and other releases, but the overall perspective makes the argument clear and could be extended to other cultural simulations and/or models.
To give an a little bit more specific example: There’s a certain kind of sound and aesthetics, which is modeled after the (psychological-)experience of the interaction between ‘gender dysphoria & euphoria’; to give some more or less famous examples: 100gecs, the contemporarily re-discovery of breakcore, SOPHIE (as closely related to pc-music), Ecco 2k (part of the ‘Drain Gang’), Black Dresses, or especially notable Rat Jesu’s album “Emo Girl Ex Machina” – which states in the liner notes “Yes this album is about being trans” –, and many other artists. What those in parts very different releases have in common & binds them together is an aesthetic that is combining extreme emotions, is kind of manic, and utilizes a sonic surface combining kitsch-pop and harsh-noise with different carrier-genres, usually blending lo- & hi-fi aesthetics.
Which leads me to my musical example, Yves Tumor, who already released 4 albums and started his carrier with a collective release with 4 other rappers producers (Mykki Blanco, PsychoEgyptian & Violence), with each release changing the genre while maintaining a certain characteristic. With the latest release “Praise A Lord Who Chews But Which Does Not Consume; (Or Simply, Hot Between Worlds)” quite openly simulating a re-shaped model of ‘an artist formerly known as “Prince”’. In this case it might be helpful to not only listen, but also see the official video, of the track “Heaven Surrounds Us Like A Hood”[13].
The argument is that in stark contrast to retromanic music, i.e. Arctic Monkeys, that’s strictly reproducing the sound of a certain era and the conservative nostalgia coming with it, but also hauntological music, i.e. burial’s “untrue”, that’s a reflective weaponization of nostalgic longing, the simulation to be found in Yves Tumor points towards a reflective mode of modeling & simulation.
On a sidenote, and not quite informed at this point, is the observation that most of academic sound production – especially when in close relation to ‘artistic research’ in one way or another – rather picks up the strict model(ling of simulations). Instead of a narration- or fiction-based simulation. Maybe similar as in the distinction between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ sci-fi, ‘hard’ (nature) & ‘soft’ (social) sciences.
[1]Liner notes of Lucid „YOUR MUSIC IS WORTHLESS“
This initial quote could also be summarized as follows: “The culture industry simultaneously sprinkles and enervates the excited and at the same time exhausted nervous system, makes people listen until they themselves want to listen more and more, and they would like to listen much more. Which does not mean that they have a taste or believe in the importance of music – on the contrary, it expresses the desire for a listening gluttony: the music system is devoured and digested in a voracious and excremental way. One gets rid of it through excess (not rejection, but indigestion) – the whole system is transformed into a huge white musical paunch.” (transl. From the german original: „Die Kulturindustrie berieselt und enerviert zugleich das erregte und zugleich erschöpfte Nervensystem, lässt die Leute hören, bis sie selbst immer öfter hören wollen, und sie würden am liebsten noch viel mehr hören. Was nicht bedeutet, dass sie einen Geschmack hätten oder an die Bedeutung der Musik glauben würden – ganz im Gegenteil kommt darin das Verlangen nach einer Hör-Verfressenheit zum Ausdruck: Das Musiksystem wird in gefräßiger und exkrementeller Weise verschlungen und verdaut. Man entledigt sich seiner durch einen Exzess (nicht durch Ablehnung, sondern durch eine Verdauungsstörung) – das ganze System wird in einen riesigen weißen Musik-Wanst umgewandelt.“, in: Achim Szepanski “Ultrablack of Music: Feindliche Übernahme”, 2017, p. 52))
[2]I use post-pop to indicate four things in particular:
1. Post-Pop is Post- Pop. Although a redudant argument.
2. Post-Pop is always Post-Techno. Todays (Post-)Pop merged everything coming before it.
2.1 Post-Pop operates techno-logical.
2.2 Post-Pop = Techno-Music.
3. Post-Pop also is consisting of micro-tastes, micro-popularities, micro-fame, micro-genres or -styles. Post-Pop is diversification – a term borrowed from finance –, it is after the „mainstream of minorities“ (again borrowed from the book of the same name: Tom Holert / Mark Terkessidis (ed.), Mainstream Der Minderheiten, Pop In Der Kontrollgesellschaft“, 1996.).
4. Pop never existed inside one art form, but as reinforcing combination of arts under the dominance of sound.
4.1 Post-Pop is the restructuring of Pop under the dominance of the cybernetics.
[3]Besides popular fashion styles like: Dark Academia, Light Academia, Chaotic Academia, … or Dreampunk, Cyberpunk, Biopunk, Pastel Punk, Salvagepunk, Steampunk, Solarpunk, Voidpunk, …
These are not only styles of fashion, but micro-lifestyles meaning they incorporate a list of books, of how to design your room, of what music to listen to, eventually (political and/or philosophical) world view etc.
With https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki as an archive of these trends emerging on tumblr, blogs, reddit, instagram, tiktok, …
Usually these aesthetics are nothing much, but hybridizations of pre-existing aesthetics on a superficial level. “Precisely with the musical functions of remixing and recombination, however, a mimesis to the derivative price movements also takes place. Analogously, the music market today is always already in the process of recombination. And the originality that we long for so much is and remains involved in an endless process of recombination or sampling in and on the music market, i.e. the market is the case of an original repetition, it has the character of a track. The originality of the market implies the disappearance of the origin à la >>in the beginning was the market and then came the musical works<<, so that the latter function today as nothing more than derivative simulations that are traded in order to process the recombination.” (transl. From the german original: “Gerade mit den musikalischen Funktionen des Remixens und der Rekombination findet aber auch eine Mimesis an die derivaten Preisbewegungen statt. Analog befindet sich der Musik-Markt heute immer schon im Prozess des Re- der Rekombination. Und der Urpsrung, nach dem wir uns so sehr sehnen, ist und bleibt in einen endlosen Prozess der Rekombination bzw. Des Sampling im und am Musik-Markt eingebunden, i.e. der Markt ist der Fall einer originären Wiederholung, er besitzt den Charakter einer Spur. Die Originalität des Marktes impliziert das Verschwinden des Ursprungs à la >>am Anfang war der Markt und dann kamen die Musik-Werke<<, sodass letztere eben heute als nichts weiter als Derivat-Simulationen fungieren, die gehandelt werden, um das Re- der Rekombination zu prozessieren.”, in: Achim Szepanski “Ultrablack of Music: Feindliche Übernahme”, 2017, p. 33))
Yet while all of this may appear absurd or irrelevant, it is interesting how particular styles are subliminally constituting present culture.
[4]Achim Szepanski “Ultrablack of Music: Feindliche Übernahme”, 2017, p. 71
“While the human nervous system was expanded by the new technologies of communication in the 20th century, in the contemporary epoch of capitalism we are dealing with a new, wired nervous system that is permanently irritated by the spirit of technological innovation as our electronic exo-skeleton. There are three tendencies of software culture to report – invisibility, miniaturisation and interface. As the gifts of the spirit of new technologies are tattooed on the skin of global culture, at the same time the object of these gifts, the human subject, is continually rewritten through silent and largely visible software codes to become an increasingly meaningless part in the networks of technoculture, an interface between the machines of production and advertising, a miniature in terms of its political power in the face of the techniques of surveillance, databases, automation and dissemination.”
(transl. From the german original: “Während das Nervensystem des Menschen durch die neuen Technologien der Kommunikation im 20. Jahrhundert erweitert wurde, haben wir es in der zeitgenössischen Epoche des Kapitalismus mit einem neuen, verkabelten Nervensystem zu tun, das durch den Spirit der technologischen Innovation als unserem elektronischen Exo-Skelett permanent gereizt wird. Es gibt drei Tendenzen der Software Culture zu vermelden – Unsichtbarkeit, Miniaturisierung und Interface. Wenn die Geschenke des Geistes der neuen Technologien auf die Haut der globalen Kultur tätowiert werden, dann wird zugleich das Objekt dieser Geschenke, das menschliche Subjekt, durch stille und weitgehend sichtbare Software Codes immer wieder neu geschrieben, um zu einem zunehmend bedeutungsloseren part in den Netzwerken der Technokultur zu werden, einem Interface zwischen den Maschinen der Produktion und der Werbung, einer Miniatur bezüglich seiner politischen macht im Angesicht der Techniken der Überwachung, der Datenbanken, der Automation und der Dissemination.”, in: Achim Szepanski “Ultrablack of Music: Feindliche Übernahme”, 2017, p. 73))
[5]https://livingindigitalarchives.files.wordpress.com/2018/07/archives_of_the_future_-_remarks_on_the.pdf .
[6]Announcement text of „The New Centre of Research & Praxice“‘s Conference „Incredible Machines 2022: The Model Is The Message“
I’ll add the full quote for giving more context:
„If the declining value of meaningful content in the postwar world was summarized by Marshall McLuhan’s famous words that “the Medium is the Message,” today we are confronted with a changing world in which, according to the Philosophers of Technology Benjamin Bratton and the computer engineer Blaise Agüera y Arcas, “The Model is the Message.” Can a shift from the medium to modeling enable us to circumvent observations and critiques to instead arrive at alternative modes of operation that bring forth consequential interventions in the world?
Models are characterized by their deep foothold in the techno-scientific world and their prevalent role in executing tasks. They emblemize the interplays and tradeoffs between representational fidelity and practical constraints. Models not only signify the friction between our theoretical and practical resources versus reality but also navigate conflicts and conformities between various theoretical and practical frameworks.
In this sense, models are not mere idealizations, useful fictions, or indirect ways of talking or acting upon the world but encapsulations of know-whats and know-hows inherent to theoretical and practical commitments pertaining to framing and unframing the world, namely knowing and acting upon it. Given their entanglement with the suppositions and partialities—whether implicit or explicit—embedded in theoretical and practical frameworks, models can either reveal or surreptitiously carry and reinforce these elements. They create what is often called black box systems or black box societies in which programmatic schemes of operations have been not only automated but kept away from our awareness and intervention.“
[7]Liner notes of Lucid „YOUR MUSIC IS WORTHLESS“
[8]https://pcmusic.bandcamp.com .
[9]https://eco-futurism-corp.bandcamp.com/music .
[10]https://bio-future-lab.bandcamp.com/music .
[11]A label run by David Russo: https://dreamcatalogue.bandcamp.com .
[12]https://pitchfork.com/features/article/2010s-rise-of-conceptronica-electronic-music/ .
A critique of S. Reynolds text is to be found here: https://www.madamasr.com/en/2020/10/26/feature/culture/conceptronica-on-the-elitism-of-contemporary-electronic-music/ .