When uploading you choose between ‘all rights reserved’ or ‘creative commons’ for the license of the uploaded file. Then you can also choose if others are allowed to download your clip or not. But legally the license question is the vital question for how your soundcloud clip is allowed to be shared and spread. Without going in to exactly how the different license options work, I would like to state it as simple as this – if you want your audio clip to be able to be shared by anyone, choose ‘creative commons’; if you do not want this, choose ‘all rights reserved’. (I’m assuming here that you have full rights to the stuff you’re uploading in the first place.) For the user/listener the point can be stated even more simple – if the copyright owner allows sharing, feel free to share as much as you want; if the copyright owner does not allow it, please respect that!

Please comment on this if you’re of another opinion or if you think I’m missing out on something!

I’m currently reading John Cage:s Composition in Retrospect. It is mostly written in his characteristic “mesostics”, a form of art text with linked lines of prose poetry.

A key word in Cage:s production is ‘non-intention’; he wanted to free himself from “memory, taste, likes and dislikes”.

He often used chance operations to attain non-intention, but also other methods. I’m very intrigued by this idea, although I do think that Cage took it to the extreme. I will defenitely go back to this later, but compare if you like this to my previous writing about choice, chance and rules.

To reuse others music in art music is of course nothing new in itself and has been done extensively in the past (often in the form of a variation). But when you borrow both the concept and more importantly the attitude from the more popular remixers it undoubtedly amounts to something new.

Apart from the freshness of these forms of remixes, I am mostly interested in the connection with similar approaches in other art forms.

“A remix may also refer to a non-linear re-interpretation of a given work or media other than audio. Such as a hybridizing process combining fragments of various works. The process of combining and re-contextualizing will often produce unique results independent of the intentions and vision of the original designer/artist. Thus the concept of a remix can be applied to visual or video arts, and even things farther afield. Mark Z. Danielewski’s disjointed novel House of Leaves has been compared by some to the remix concept.”

“A remix in literature is an alternative version of a text. William Burroughs used the cut-up technique developed by Brion Gysin to remix language in the 1960s.[2] Various textual sources (including his own) would be cut literally into pieces with scissors, rearranged on a page, and pasted to form new sentences, new ideas, new stories, and new ways of thinking about words.”

“A remix in art often takes multiple perspectives upon the same theme. An artist takes an original work of art and adds their own take on the piece creating something completely different while still leaving traces of the original work. It is essentially a reworked abstraction of the original work while still holding remnants of the original piece while still letting the true meanings of the original piece shine through. Famous examples include the Marilyn prints of Andy Warhol(modifies colors and styles of one image), and Weeping Woman by Pablo Picasso, (merges various angles of perspective into one view). Some of Picasso’s other famous paintings also incorporate parts of his life, such as his love affairs, into his paintings. For example, his painting Les Trois Danseuses, or The Three Dancers, is about a love triangle.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remix

Another example from pop art is Roy Lichtensteins reuses of iconic images from comics.

Roy Lichtenstein, Whaam! (1963). On display at the Tate Modern, London. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_art)

Many times have I had the notion of using older music in an iconic way.

Even if we agree that (instrumental) music don’t normally contain information, is it possible in some way to create music that does?

Can music contain a code that can be decoded by the listener?

For the moment I just state these questions. I will go back to them later. Feel free to supply thoughts and answers via the comments.

In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work. When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art.

So basically we could say that in a radical or true form of conceptual art the execution of the ideas is merely a trifle. From this it can´t really be concluded though that the execution is swift.  And it can´t even be concluded that the execution doesn´t involve craftsmanship. But one way to make clear the shift from the aesthetical to the conceptual is an apparent lack of (traditional) artistic skills in the work. (In talking about artistic skill we have to  appreciate though that conceptual art involves new and different artistic skills.)

All art forms has been and are in constant change. In my view conceptual art no longer needs to be made in its most crude or radical form; for me it is interesting to combine traditional artistic skills with the new conceptual artistic skills. But even older more aesthetically and artistically driven art of course included ideas, so to be called conceptual the precedence of the idea has to be maintained.

In some if not all of my latest works I have permitted the aesthetical and stylistic choices to be totally dominated by the fundamental idea or ideas, i. e. if the idea have demanded a certain kind of music I have not hesitated in my ambition to create that kind of music or sound world.

I would also like to make a distinction between what would be “conceptual” in a more strict sense, i. e. actually involving concepts; and more idea driven conceptualism not actually involving concepts. Many conceptual works has of course been “conceptual” in this stricter sense, even solely involving words and concepts. But I have not seen the distinction being made. Several of my recent works have also been conceptual in this stricter sense.

I would like to conclude with a comment on a previous post.  Here I stated my belief in what I called conceptual neoestheticism. The idea could briefly be described as an idea-driven return to more aesthetical music. I would (again) like to clarify this: The term “neoestheticism” assumes a crude view which could be applied to much of the post-modernistic movement – the view that the modernistic movement was not interested in aesthetical considerations and that post-modernism implies a return to pre-modernistic views on aesthetical values. At first glance you could very easily come to this conclusion, which I now think is a mistake. My current view is that the modernists were not anti-aesthetic – they were merely “anti” the aesthetic view that preceded them; I think we must conclude that they clearly had a very specific aesthetical belief-system. What then happened when what has been labelled “post-modern” ideas came in to play, was a remission of the modernistic approach; a more liberal view where in its extreme forms everything is aesthetically acceptable. The return to some aesthetical ideas of the past is I think a result of this relaxation and a symptom for the strong distancing of the past by the modernists.  Put in this way my approach of allowing the ideas to rule the aesthetics is perfectly post-modernistic.

As I have written before, and perhaps can get back to soon, I think of contemporary art music as being essentially about ideas and not about craftsmanship. (But craftsmanship can still, as ever, be essential to being able to express and realize the ideas.) Hence I think that art music should follow the general direction shift in art itself from being about aesthetic values to being more about concepts and ideas. (This is of course a very rough description of the development over the last century or so, but I hope you agree with me on the general outline.)

Given this general attitude of mine, the question can essentially be put as being about the relation between art and politics. As I see it art can and should be political. But, and this is important, it should take into account the big issues about humanity that are most strongly felt and it should keep unconditionally impartial towards political organisations.

If we assume the demand above and also assume that the contemporary music have a demand for a greater audience, when will this two demands meet; when will we see a greater demand for new music? Tell me what you think…

Here again I think the concepts of rules, chance and choice can be useful in explaining the idea: The programmer/composer chooses which rules that are to be used and much other things. The programmer/composer also chooses which elements of the music that are to be governed by chance.

The impression that the computer in fact creates the music, is perhaps enhanced by an extensive use of elements of chance. When the music clearly isn’t  by human hand it is easy to attribute it to the computer. But again the computer is just a tool and similar result could potentially be produced by another less powerful tool, e.g. a dice. The important thing in this case is I think that the programmer/composer is choosing where chance is applied.

What then is the nature of this idea that I seek?

I have previously written about musics current relation to art (e.g. art and music and music art) and I think it is very interesting taking a conceptual artists view in creating the idea. But the idea can also be of a more esthetic nature (compare with a clarification).

A conscious limitation can be an interesting start; to use chance or rules can also be interesting from a conceptual or esthetic point of view.