Much contemporary ‘electronic’ music is pieced together from other works, or at least incorporates the music of others, repeating these musical texts in unexpected contexts that often transform these texts in new surprising, and even unrecognisable, ways. This process merely, of course, accentuates what occurs within everyday listening contexts; we juxtapose music with other music, start listening and then skip tracks, fast forward, rewind and so on. However, the Law often frowns upon such practices (when recorded and sold) and would aim to carefully regulate such repetitions of the ‘original’ work, yet can it? Organisations like MACOS would hope not.
For Serres, time is approached as non linear, as chaotic; percolation. This is reflected in his ‘method’ as Serres eschews the traditional philosophical tradition of critique. When he writes about time, to take a particularly pertinent example, Serres does not write in relation to traditional linear concepts of time that have preceded him and that he would critique or revise. As Ma notes, Serres’s writing is free from negation, it does not overcome previous theories (240-1). To do this would be for his own work to become part of a linear series, a succession of other theories and hence would, in a sense, undermine what he is claiming about time. Rather, Serres breaks entirely with the past and offers a new paradigm, a "new object for philosophy" (Genesis 2). In Serres’s analysis of Frenhofer’s (fictional) painting, some of the consequences of this approach become apparent. The painting is removed from historical specificity (the male gaze in the history of painting, for example) and given abstract values: it "is not a picture, it is the noise of beauty" (18). One could, perhaps, mobilise Benjamin in opposition to such an approach.
A number of 20th century composers (such as Karlheinz Stockhausen and John Cage) have produced works in which chance plays an important part; they are written in a way that makes exact repetition of the work impossible, there can be no ‘definitive’ version. While this is true of all music (no two performances can be identical), the difference is that this music opens itself up to such dispersal and chance, rather than guarding itself against this, and attempting to hold onto the abstract (and mystical) idea of the authoritative and true version of the work.
According to Benjamin (224), with the invention of film, actors lost their ‘aura’. In order to counter this there has been a build up of the ‘personality’, through the star system that operates outside of film. Similarly, the invention of photography has lead to a decline in the aura of painting; it no longer has the "unique phenomenon of distance" that would make the object "unapproachable" (Benjamin 216, n.5 236-7). Photographic reproductions of paintings can be repeated in any number of simultaneous contexts, meeting "the beholder or listener in his [sic] own situation" (Benjamin 215). The painting can no longer hold onto a single set of associations that would cluster around it and produce its aura (Benjamin 182). Through its reproductions, the painting can be brought into the lives of the masses, and rather than seeming inapproachable and distant, it loses its awe, mystery and uniqueness, and becomes open to interpretation in relation to immediate historical, economic and social conditions. In order to counter this, painting (like the movie ‘star’) has been mystified and abstracted, given an "eternal value and mystery" that would be at odds with the "revolutionary demands in the politics of art" (Benjamin 212). The art object itself no longer has an intrinsic value, nor is it attached to a singular context, its meanings are fragmented and multiplied. Furthermore, having lost its ‘distance’ the space widens in which one can interpret the relation of the present to the past through the painting. Serres’s approach to Frenhofer’s painting could, perhaps, be criticised for performing the type of analysis that would resurrect the ‘aura’ of the painting (not examining, for the moment, that Serres is writing about a fictional painting). The painting is removed from time, from history, distanced from the viewer it is imbued with ‘eternal’ values, as Serres claims that the painting stands for the fundamental noise that surrounds us, the infinite set of possibilities, the ichnography. Serres does not consider, for example, that the painting also represents a tradition of painting based on appeals to ‘ideal forms’, artistic ‘genius’ and ‘expression’, and the woman as aesthetic object; appeals that, when acknowledged, destroy the distance of the object, its ‘mystical’ qualities, and ground it in relation to both its own historical situation and our own, as multiple and shifting as these histories may be.
But, what does it mean for a painting to be dispersed among multiple, contingent and constantly transforming histories and contexts? Furthermore, what is the relation of this question to the "perhaps" that has invaded (and undermined (?)) the above argument that would, apparently, position itself against Serres?
Many contemporary musicians, when embarking on collaborations, eschew the idea that this can produce any simple synthesis. Instead the ‘styles’ collide, sometimes the results are harmonious, sometimes discordant. This is reflected in the common practice of using the conjunction "vs" (rather than "and") to bring together the name of the two artists, for example: "dj spooky vs scanner" and "dj spooky vs the freight elevator quartet". (dj spooky is also known as Paul D. Miller)
I have contrasted Benjamin and Serres in relation to painting and criticised aspects of Serres (ahistorical) relation to it. However, rather than discounting Serres, the very possibility of such multiple, and disjunctive, readings actually confirms the noise/chaos of the painting to which he refers, while introducing a critical distinction: the painting does not ‘represent’ noise, it ‘is’ noise. It is not a singularity, but rather, is a multiplicity; it is, as illustrated by the possibility of various readings of it, an ichnography, a noise from which contingent unitary events can emerge, and this is true of all texts. The painting is thus demystified, it is no longer unique or distant. As the dissemination of photographic reproductions of paintings has made obvious, paintings do not hold a ‘timeless’ value, but can be grounded in shifting histories and contexts. Frenhofer’s painting gives rise to representation upon representation (this essay included), which may converge, clash or miss each other completely. The uncertainty of the still-to-come has opened up the painting’s multiplicity and undermined its singularity. In this sense, Serres and Benjamin can be brought together, after the apparent conflict, or opposition, described above. This is not a perfect synthesis, rather, like the relation of the noise and the unitary, this collision of Benjamin/Serres is fraught with disjuncture as well as harmony.
It is not fortuitous that Serres uses the term ‘noise’ to describe the fundamental chaotic ichnography mentioned above. Even though a painting has been used as the example here, Serres himself notes that hearing, rather than vision, is a better model of this noise: it is continuous rather than intermittent; we are constantly emerged in sound. Examples can be taken from the world of sound that intersect in crucial ways with the above discussion.
Kyle Weise
