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Text by Christopher Penrose

This text is the original version of Christopher Penrose's critique of the treatment of studio music works by the Prix Ars Electronica 1998 selection committee, first appearing in November 1998. For continuing discussion of this topic, please visit his website at http://www.sfc.keio.ac.jp/~penrose/ars/ars-critique.html.

As a composer and listener of music, I was deeply offended by the long, complaint-rife rant, The Conquered Banner ... bring on the noise! found in the Prix Ars Electronica 1998 compendium, CyberArts 98. The article reveals a disturbing disdain for studio music: works that are purely musical without visual composition.

I was quite surprised to receive this lavish hard-cover book via international mail. Beneath its gloss it is quite disappointing, particularly as it is a completely silent record of the competition. If designed to be a coffee table book, they have succeeded. The content of CyberArts 98 suggests that ARS juries look, and not listen, specifically for works that are successfully represented in shallow media. The production cost of such a book, is ten-fold that of a cd-rom or even a DVD. It is quite tragic and strange that ARS has exclusively chosen this archaic, and lossy medium to represent the art of avant-garde technologists. One is left again to wonder whether we are traveling forward or backward in time.

The Conquered Banner ... bring on the noise! is offered by ARS as a description of the music submissions for 1998's competition. The article is filled with petty bias such as: "... [ARS] must accept the limits of perception offered by the CD/Tape listening format..." Parochial statements such as this provide quite saddening evidence that the ARS music jury is perhaps visually dependent and hearing impaired. They are either incapable of or unwilling to experience sound as a total experience. There is incredible variety among the listeners of our world, and there are many who find the audio recording medium ultimately rich. Some even find the medium visually stimulating without the intended imposition of external visual composition; the stark lack of visual stimuli afforded by audio recordings provides a powerful catalyst for synesthetic perception. Moreover, ARS' suggestion that the recording medium is fundamentally limited marginalizes the rich advancements in digital audio signal processing that are currently overwhelming the music community. Is the ARS jury tragically unaware or incapable of perceiving these developments? In music, is visual accompaniment always more powerful and valuable than the musical spaces afforded by highly complex signal processing technologies and the intense panscopic control of the digital computer music studio?

There are also other audio artists that attempt to transcend the admitted limitations of the cd recording format. They choose to utilize multichannel audio, Ambisonics, and other spatialization technologies. If it is the desire of ARS to encourage composers to extend the boundaries of pure music, then ARS will somehow have to provide facilities for these works to be auditioned as intended by their composers. For example, I have never felt free to submit a multi-channel musical work to a competition such as ARS Electronica, nor have I felt confident that an ARS jury would listen to a binaural work with inter-aural headphones as intended. Instead, what ARS intends by calling for composers to extend their notions of music is to solely interrelate and effectively relegate sound to other media. This is unfortunate as the extension of purely musical media is discouraged. This serves to preclude and dilute music as a viable art form. Recordings often succeed at communicating intense musical innovations; clearly ARS fails to recognize that the medium is not the only message.

The most hilarious statement in the article is the politically-correct complaint about the overwhelming representation of male academic composers in the Computer Music category. Such a complaint is blatantly hypocritical: just browse through CyberArts 98 and you can find amazingly contra-feminist works such as Steven Stahlberg's Virtual Actress Move Test (see above image). Steven's 3D modelled blonde bimbo is clad in a bikini and is strapped to a Tron-like cycle/rocket, in reverse crotch-rocket orientation. She is lying prone on the cycle with her large breasts realistically smashed against the ribbed seat, and her ass acutely raised; her position blatantly suggests that she is being fucked by the cycle. There is also what appears to be a machine-gun or "laser-turret" mounted above her ass. Furthermore, her head seems to be uncomfortably wedged between two rods and her hands bound, suggesting that this woman might actually be trapped inside this rape rocket against her will. Is this animation at its best? For ARS to complain about male-domination in the music category and to crassly reward and glorify the reptilian sex fantasies of a male visual artist, is obscenely hypocritical. Male winners and mentions outnumber women by a large margin in all categories. This is not something for ARS to be ashamed of if the entries reflect the same distribution; this is a much larger cultural dilemma. But for the Computer Music category to be singled out for this distribution, particularly when the other categories have this tendency also, and I personally know several unrecognized women who have made music submissions, is thoroughly asinine.

Within CyberArts 98 only the Computer Music category was subjected to a long diatribe which marginalized a large segment of its entrants' submissions. If studio music as an end is not desired by ARS, then ARS should simply reject audio recordings as submissions. It does art and culture no service to marginalize and discredit one of its rich and sharply focused mediums. The fact that ARS has complained about an over-representation of recordings in this category may simply indicate that these recordings represent a breadth of music far more rich with diversity and innovation than the jury process can reasonably assimilate. Further, to complain about a lack of multimedia entries in the Computer Music category when ARS has awarded distinctions and mentions this year to works in the Interactive Art category that explore sound and music (Audio Grove, by Christian Moller; Audible Distance, Akitsugu Maebayashi; Sound Mapping, Iain Mott, Marc Raszewski, Jim Sosnin) seems to reflect that ARS itself is confused about the delineations of its own categories.

When ARS describes the distinctions it awarded to Aquiles Pantalleao (Three Inconspicuous Settings) and Hans Tutschku (extremites Iointaines), they seem to be apologizing because the works are "nominally" recordings. For these works to be acceptable to ARS and its discerning aesthetic, they must euphemistically bend reality and suggest that the recordings are something altogether different. Has this medium really fallen from favor to such a pathetic extent that brilliant recordings have to be consistently over-justified and apologized for? Further, the article takes great pains to distinguish the works as if an audience would not be able to discern that they came from "... markedly different traditions ..." upon listening. If I were one of these composers, I would be greatly offended to receive an award in such a denigrating, apologetic manner. Is ARS that insecure about its adjudication process? And why isn't the Golden Nica piece, Krachtgever, an installation work by Peter Bosch and Simone Simons, subject to such scrutiny? Perhaps because ARS can clearly see its concept, a computer controlled matrix of stacked crates interconnected by springs, without having to exercise the gruelling exercise of listening to it. I have not had the luxury of hearing this work either, and I imagine the chaotic sound it produces is truly remarkable. But I can't begin to understand how a studio recording is inherently inferior to an installation, as ARS suggests. It is not obvious to me that the recognition of recorded works should require apology and excessive justification; such behavior is quite offensive to studio composers and it sharply weakens the value of ARS Electronica as an aesthetic forum. If this rhetorical behavior simply reflects a concern to meaningfully represent musical works in this silent coffee table format, perhaps it isn't so obvious to ARS that they should consider documenting its competition with a modern medium such as CDROM or DVD which can represent music with actual sound. Unfortunately it seems evident that this rhetoric instead reflects a larger tendency to irrationally ghettoize studio music compositions, and reinforce the vulgar supremacy of the visual modality. Virtual Actress Move Test is a case in point.

It is truly unacceptable for an institution to claim to value music and then hypocritically criticize composers who produce and extend it in its purest and most focused form: studio recordings. If the number of musical entrants is too large and the labor to listen and process them critically is too arduous, simply remove the music category from the competition. ARS is unjustified in criticizing the recorded sound medium and its composers simply because of their adjudication shortcomings. If the jury prefers something sexy to peruse with its eyes, or a conceptual work with concise and enticing documentation that substitutes for a lengthy critical listening, then ARS submissions should be required to have these characteristics. There is no room for music among exclusive visual fetishism. I have heard many astounding recorded works that have never received attention from ARS; this is not surprising as it seems clear that ARS would much rather look than listen.

- Christopher Penrose penrose@sfc.keio.ac.jp