All we have is noise
Production and Existence in the Digital Beyond
Is the crisis of the music economy also an artistic crisis, as so often claimed? In terms of content and form, this claim is hardly tenable. For many composers and sound artists for years have worked on very different layers with fluctuating social and ego-economic situations, in song texts, essays on music theory, or the engagement with the aesthetic, political, and technological foundations of production. Furthermore, in all realms there are efforts being made towards the dissolution of the narcissist artistic subject beyond market success. Collective composition, efforts towards the dissolution of copyright law, and open source networks all point in this direction.
The crux here remains the material situation of the participants. While the looming collapse of labels and distributors is currently bringing pop artists into difficult financial straits, the stagnating realm of public funding, fellowships, and academic teaching positions for new music and experimental sound art has not been enough to secure an existence for a long time now. For the one, the market is collapsing, and for the other there never really was one beyond state funding. Cycles of taste and political fashions that might serve as a corrective to balance out these structural crises are lacking. Affordable technology and software have indeed lead to an unprecedented degree of artistic freedom. But the Marxist assumption that possessing the means of production can lead to a secure economic foundation for all through a new kind of economic justice has dissipated within the basic capitalist order. Even the Internet, which had been seen as the great global hope, has now revealed its Janus face. The perpsectivist consolation of Chris Anderson’s “long tail theory” is still more an article of faith than a reality: 85 percent of the pieces on offer at download portals have not yet found a single purchaser.
So what can a poor artist do?
Analogies to art history are here only helpful to a limited extent. The contexts have changed radically. With the global presence and availability of music on the Internet, a huge dialectical noise has emerged. Stimulation and frustration are quite close by.
For niche music in particular, this development has not lead to increased sales. The direct path to fans of every kind is there, but branches out into nothingness. Music has been reduced to a distributional data set to which no value can be assigned. On the one hand, this leads to existential crises and despair on the part of the producers. On the other hand, perhaps this is the very foundation for thinking about new self-conceptions and strategies of artistic action.
The artists gathered on the podium from different musical realms will discuss these developments and the implications for their own work and positions.