Noise is Nuance and you better believe...

here.  we find ourselves, again, introducing an alignment, or stance, or {im}posture, or address [form(al) of] into a crowded yet unpeopled space.

Knowing/Not who will stumble in/across the words (just cheap signs for the sounds, themselves just cheap sines) and noises [really distinguishable only by the condition and capacity of the newPerson-ed, the stumbler] we (ex)spend our/t ime (s) pace into.  I'm knowing, that sooner or later there will be many discussions of the materiality of the so-called 'matter' we are 'sculpting' (some might argue 'mattering', or 'highlighting, we'll try and clear this up muddily 'today'), but for (k)now ing, I will try and keep off that softRock for the extension of the post.  I am also sure - sooner or L8er - that some grammar lessons will come in to make some ruckus [a regulator must only make a un-noise, an(d) anti-crash, a de-bruit (if-you-will), right??]


Nuance:  I have spent two many years trying to think and then sound, if not write, that nuance is noise.  Nuance is the what still draws one in to that which should be wholly over-defined and over-coded (by [now, which is to say] time {spent := con-fect}).  And then one runs into hidden amongst piles of books half-read; "Now this opposition of matter and form, which corresponds to that of a measurable time and a flexible duration, is called into question, or so I believe, by the consideration of timbre, or rather, the nuance of a sound or a set of sounds." (TI, 155)  Now, J-FL, in his way, does paint a lovely picture of the inapprehensibility of what is really the matter apprehend is the need for other matter as a "support" to compare the apprehended with [the ochered].  This is familiar-ish territory for those who've dipped into Massumi or D and G, but there is here an emphasis on the matter-ed-ness of our coming-to-sound that brings up some resonant tangents.

There is also later (more explicitly, but implicit throughout), if I understood the essay at all, this: "If there is no possible repetition of this nuance [he means here, the way THIS sound SOUNDS NOW, before being taken up (you might say corrupted) as heard/listened to], it must be because it is not inscribed.  Our disappointment when we listen to a recording is directed at the singularity that can't be found." (157)  I think many 'modern' readers would stagger a bit at the last statement, just from their habit of listening.  And I think Lyo is doing a bit of the same covering here.  As is his M.O. he needs every aesthetic experience to offer (in-itself) the possibility of revolution, or change.  There is an intellectual desire for some apparent (yet unnoticed, by definition) "singularity" in the way THESE SOUNDS ARE happening.  It would be a fault of the material for not offering itself differently every time.

But the 'materials' are come to differently every time to the extent that one is ready and able to 'hear' something 'different' in them.  And I'm not (neither is J-FL though) talking [just?] about "I never noticed that hi-hat" or "wow, that back-masking really does sound like (all) the Mozart Horn Concertos sped up..."  We might put forward that the materials [which obviously go beyond what could be measured of them] are really only 'materialised' when the listener does exactly the reconstruction that Lyo is arguing makes hearing 'what is' impossible yet/and makes listening worth it.  We materialise not with physics (its numbers and units, not what occurs that it models) but with the support of every other sound we've ever folded into our selves....

There is so much more to say, but Trottertrotter web 2.0 is just about live so back to uploading... more soon.

n.

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(TI) The Inhuman.  Jean-Francois Lyotard.  1991.  Stanford U.P. Stanford, CA.

(not a proper biblio entry, I know, bite it)