GegenSichKollektiv (since you’re here):GegenSichKollektiv wrote: In Michael Pisaro’s composition, A wave and waves, we can see how Pisaro and Greg Stuart work to re-create the natural dynamics of waves (after coastal observation) in a soundscape piece to delight the listener, with the grandeur of nature. What is the impetus for trying to mimic nature’s processes? This interpretation, with its strong emphasis on the phenomenological character, does nothing but deliver to us the idea of placid nature, her inherent beauty, completely forgetting that a set of waves can also be a destructive tsunami, that there is nothing caring, nature is indifferent to us. This interpretation is clearly the product of Michael Pisaro´s individual self-expression when he chose the series of waves.
At first I will try to deal with questions of fact, since for me most of the interpretations you have made are not really worth arguing over. Also although there are errors throughout, I think I had better confine myself to the area I know most about, which is of course my own work. I would normally not bother you or anyone else with this kind of discussion, but the notion that this could appear in print by a publisher I respect has motivated me to challenge a few of your statements.
I have no problem with critique or critical inquiry into my work or any other. Actually I welcome it—and also try to use it to investigate work I care about. But given the statements in your text I wonder if you actually know the work in question. Your comments suggest that you know about it but may not have experienced it. In A wave and waves there is little or no “re-creation.” The fact that the timing of the second section may have been modeled on one pattern of waves I happened to hear, does not automatically imply that a soundscape has been re-created. I don’t think anyone will ever confuse one of the waves in the second section with the sound of any real wave. As far as I know there are no vibraphones in the ocean. The pattern that results from the process I used is a musical one that cannot be found in “nature” at all. It sounds different and behaves differently and these differences are deliberate.
By the way, what do you mean by "nature"? It seems to me that you’ve settled on a very naïve idea of it as something like the “natural world,” but I hope that’s not the case. Perhaps you are aware that our friend Adorno had a lot to say about this in his Ästhetische Theorie. But you are not using the word in a way that suggests you have understood that discussion.
Have you listened to the first section of A wave and waves at all? Do you know that the “wave” in question is not a natural one (in the sense of the environment), but is in fact an attempt to deal with the nature of the event as depicted in John Ashbery’s poem of the same name? Do you really think, on listening to this piece, that we are dealing with placid “nature”?
It is clearly your interpretation that we seek to “delight the listener with the grandeur of nature” (there’s that word again). I can honestly think of nothing more maudlin or idiotic than such a goal, and will not own up to it. If you are going to say such a thing about our intentions, it is incumbent upon you to prove that those intentions exist. But I’m telling you right now that this is absolutely as far from my own intention as it is possible to get.
