Semi-Conducting: Rambles Through the Post-Cagean Thicket
- Author: Collins, Nicolas
Semi-Conducting: Rambles Through the Post-Cagean Thicket
- Author: Collins, Nicolas
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About
Written by a composer long immersed in new and experimental music, this book provides a tour of the music, technologies and people that have transformed how we make, hear and think about sound over the past fifty years.
As both a participant and critical observer in the post-Cagean musical landscape, Nicolas Collins uses anecdotes and analysis to survey the history and aesthetics of the musical avant-garde. Among the topics explored are: relationships between popular culture and the avant-garde; the shifting definitions of improvisation and composition in a world where musical scores might take form as charts, drawings, words, notes written on a staff or electronic circuits; the social and aesthetic effects of analog and digital resources in the production and consumption of music; and more broadly, the nature of experimental thinking in creative pursuits.
The book follows a personal chronology of observations and experiences with music, technology, economics and culture-from youthful encounters with John Cage and Minimalism, to the Downtown and East Village scenes of the 1980s, the assimilation of avant-garde sensibilities into European concert halls and global pop, the burgeoning of sound art, and the transformative influence of digital technologies both positive and negative.
Contents
- 1. The Hidden Switch
- 2. I am Sitting in a Classroom
- 3. Worlds of Music
- 4. Four Ridiculously Large Speakers
- 5. Playing with Chips
- 6. The Infinite Amplification of Silence
- 7. Old Guard Avant Garde
- 8. Newcastle to Narvik
- 9. The Eden Before Apple
- 10. A Bright Red Electric Guitar
- 11. Devil’s Music
- 12. Planes, Train and Step-Down Transformers
- 13. A Computer Walks into a Bar
- 14. We Were All Seated Around the Campfire
- 15. Still Lives
- 16. STEIM: IRCAM with a Human Face
- 17. Whistling in the Woods
- 18. Strange Heaven
- 19. Art School
- 20. Hardware Hacking
- 21. Salvage
- 22. The Missing Switch
- 23. Surprise Me
