muuuusic — gggglitch?

“Under certain circumstances failing, losing, forgetting, unmaking, undoing, unbecoming, not knowing may in fact offer more creative, more cooperative, more surprising ways of being in the world. Failing is something queers do and have always done exceptionally well; for queers failure can be a style, to cite Quentin Crisp, or a way of life, to cite Foucault, and it can stand in contrast to the grim scenarios of success that depend upon “trying and trying again.” In fact if success requires so much effort, then maybe failure is easier in the long run and offers different rewards.” – Jack Halberstam

Ultimately, popular conceptions of gender as binary and accordingly rigid to particular roles serve
as oppressive yet largely invisible and
unquestioned structures in contemporary society.

Just as glitch resists
ideal mediation, individuals of non-normative gender identities reject oppressive systems of expression and fight for visibility.

In this way, we can understand gli
tch as a sonic marker of both human and machine, rupture and unity, embodied and disembodied, digital and material.

“Literature and visual art are almost always concerned (at least in part) with the organization of sexuality, the construction of gender, the arousal and channeling of desire. So is music, except that music may perform these functions even more effectively than other media. Since few listeners know how to explain how it creates its effects, music gives the illusion of operating independently of cultural mediation. It is often received (and not only by the musical untutored) as a mysterious medium within which we seem to encounter our “own” most private feelings. Thus, music is able to contribute heavily (if surreptitiously) to the shaping of individual identities: along with other influential media such as film, music teaches us how to experience our own emotions, our own desires, and even (especially in dance) our own bodies. For better or for worse, it socializes us.” –McClary, Feminine Endings, 53.

“Visually, glitch more obviously reveals materiality, as we can clearly see a breakage in visual material. In sound, glitch reveals materiality in the same way; however, we tend not to conceptualize sonic as material.” –Sean Cubitt

Music is particularly suited as a lens through which to investigate the postmodern te
ndency towards material obscurity and th
e late-capitalist intent towards mystification.

In many ways, the lack of consideration of materiality in a digital realm mirrors that of the sonic re
alm.

Compared to visual art forms, such as cinematic, image-based, or sculptural arts, sound arts are oft
en popularly considered to be immaterial. For this reason, people often find trouble defining, describing, and intera

cting with music itself as it evades the common way we are trained to interact with visual subjects.This lack of rec
ognition for the materiality of music cau
ses abstraction which has led to a
similar fetishiza
tion of mus
ic.

“Music...rarely has dimensions that are readily identified with aspects of the material or social world. Moreover, the theoretical discourse about music tends to treat musical shapes as self-constrained entities and systematically blocks consideration of its content.”

“The mind/body split that has plagued Western culture for centuries shows up most paradoxically in attitudes towards music: the most cerebral, nonmaterial of media is at the same time the medium most capable of engaging the body. This confusion over whether music belongs with mind or with body is intensified when the fundamental binary opposition of masculine/feminine is mapped onto it.” –Susan McClary