Douglas Kahn

A Musical Technography of John Bischoff

John Bischoff has been part of the formation and growth of electronic and computer music in the San Francisco Bay Area for over three decades. In an interview with the author, he describes his early development as a student of experimental music technology, including the impact of hearing and assisting in the work of David Tudor. Bischoff, like Tudor, explored the unpredictable potentials within electronic components, and he brought this curiosity to bear when he began working on one of the first available micro-computers. He was a key individual at the historical turning point when computer music escaped its institutional restric-tions and began becoming widespread.

An Unheard-of Organology

W hen we look to the past to better understand the present, sometimes things go missing: they go unreported or under-reported; they never existed or never rose into a position to be noticed. Usually, acombination of a number of factors is at work. When it comes to music, missing sounds are literally unheard of, and the classification of their techniques and technologies is an unheard-of organology. Of course, when something is unheard of, it can also entail a form of abuse. Luckily, one of the natural habitats of abuse is the editorial, so I would like to take this opportunity to argue for two new organological categories: aural instruments and significant instruments.

Christian Marclay's Early Years: An Interview

The artist discusses with the author his early career and influences. Marclay explains his upbringing in Switzerland and his lack of familiarity with American mass culture, to which he credits his early experiments in art, music and performance using records. Marclay describes the evolution of his use of records and discusses other influences, such as art school and the New York club scene of the 1970s.

Prelude to Live Cinema

This article investigates the increasingly prevalent discourse of ‘live cinema’ as the name of a concrete practice and conceptual aspiration within contemporary media aesthetics. The author argues that this oxymoronic conjunction encapsulates certain fundamental questions recurring throughout the history of 20th-century art in its increasingly important intersection with both media technology and performance. Contrasting contemporary digital ‘interfaces’ with classical musical instruments, he asks how traditional forms of embodiment and virtuosity have been transformed within contemporary audiovisual performance. Finally, he explores ideas of speed and the cut from Sergei Eisenstein’s film theory to explore Abigail Child’s 1983 film Mutiny as a work that, while not itself ‘Live Cinema’, sheds important light on what such a future aesthetic might conceivably entail.

The Art of David Tudor: Indeterminacy and Performance in Postwar Culture

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