Recordings as simulacra

[Curvature]

Borges in turn may have drawn from Lewis Carol's 1889 story Sylvie and Bruno Concluded which also featured a 1:1 scale map I thought Swift had done it earlier, but maybe imagined that)

Thanks—I wasn't aware of that reference.

 

[Axo1989]

Recording in some sense means preserving a moment. Engineers can be very deliberate about this and that intent is seen in the detailed study of the technical characteristics of their gear. In that way they establish the capabilities and limits of what is possible for them to capture, and also suggest a way forward for technical improvements. That is a wholly scientific, wholly anti-representational endeavor. Maybe this is where you see a difference in perspective and I don't. Representation as a linking feature tying together the original, the simulation, the dissimulating act, isn't the only order of things. They may all be linked together through a different point of view, one that is active in the attempt to define limits.

Yes, I agree that isn't the only order or things. Calling the recording/production process "wholly anti-representational" seems inaccurate though. It is certainly agnostic as to whether the material is representational or abstract, for example. Is that what you meant, or am I missing something?

Higher up the page @kemmler3D posted some new age ambient as a counterexample to recording "real" instruments (and "real" performance of same). Thinking about this I would also use people like Autechre, Alva Noto or Ryoji Ikeda as examples of wholly abstract music. But Autechre for example may record the mixing desk feed of their real time performance directly. Does the fact that we can ignore acoustic instruments and ambient performance space make the recording less a representation of what is performed? I can argue that this is closer to "the performance" than most alternatives or recording/production methods. So while we may think of this musical genre as a pure simulacrum (following the OP's analysis and @kemmler3D's simplified formulation) it may be that we have the most faithful image/copy instead (the concepts of abstraction and reproduction become orthogonal).

 

[kemmler3D]

Yes, I agree that isn't the only order or things. Calling the recording/production process "wholly anti-representational" seems inaccurate though. It is certainly agnostic as to whether the material is representational or abstract, for example. Is that what you meant, or am I missing something?

Higher up the page @kemmler3D posted some new age ambient as a counterexample to recording "real" instruments (and "real" performance of same). Thinking about this I would also use people like Autechre, Alva Noto or Ryoji Ikeda as examples of wholly abstract music. But Autechre for example may record the mixing desk feed of their real time performance directly. Does the fact that we can ignore acoustic instruments and ambient performance space make the recording less a representation of what is performed? I can argue that this is closer to "the performance" than most alternatives or recording/production methods. So while we may think of this musical genre as a pure simulacrum (following the OP's analysis and @kemmler3D's simplified formulation) it may be that we have the most faithful image/copy instead (the concepts of abstraction and reproduction become orthogonal).

Interesting point. We have to be specific about what the recording is a simulacrum of. I actually saw Autechre live in Chicago a while back. Cool show. Now, is the mixer feed a simulacrum of the experience of going to the concert? Maybe you'd have to put it down as a #2, or 3, sort of like a video or photograph of the show. But it's not a #4 because it's not an artifact divorced from a real reference. The show really happened, I was there, they really played it, the recording is of the actual performance.

Putting it down as a #4 presupposes that electronic music is simulacra of acoustic music, (?) but now I'm thinking I'd better just go read the essay.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Sorry, I'm not following. Where did you and I disagree? Besides having some fun at your expense when suggesting you didn't read the source text.

Right, ultimately the stages aren't important. Baudrillard is asking a social question about what produces and sustains these relationships. You can ask the same about the hifi world. His answer would the be clear: the never-ending upgrade spiral is sustained by a fantasy of making simulation work, of filling in all the gaps.

Recording in some sense means preserving a moment. Engineers can be very deliberate about this and that intent is seen in the detailed study of the technical characteristics of their gear. In that way they establish the capabilities and limits of what is possible for them to capture, and also suggest a way forward for technical improvements. That is a wholly scientific, wholly anti-representational endeavor. Maybe this is where you see a difference in perspective and I don't. Representation as a linking feature tying together the original, the simulation, the dissimulating act, isn't the only order of things. They may all be linked together through a different point of view, one that is active in the attempt to define limits.

I don't want to venture too far into obscure reasoning without understanding what you mean first.

Well I wasn't sure, seemed like a bit of disagreement and some of your post didn't. Anyway, venture where you want, as this was a thread to hear from others.

I actually am leaning toward this statement:
"Engineers can be very deliberate about this and that intent is seen in the detailed study of the technical characteristics of their gear. In that way they establish the capabilities and limits of what is possible for them to capture, and also suggest a way forward for technical improvements. That is a wholly scientific, wholly anti-representational endeavor. Maybe this is where you see a difference in perspective and I don't. Representation as a linking feature tying together the original, the simulation, the dissimulating act, isn't the only order of things. They may all be linked together through a different point of view, one that is active in the attempt to define limits."

That bolded portion is where I think understanding the stages is helpful in an engineer to guide how he might wish to record different artists. If it is understood these are choices then you eliminate squabbles of perspective as the perspective is fluid. Now such things in a society as a whole can create problems which is also what Baudrillard was pointing out. It would be helpful to have this perspective knowing in what stage of simulacra one is existing, thinking, acting socially.

 

[JeremyFife]

Maybe it would help to give examples I have in mind. You can agree, criticize, object or disagree, but at least we'll know where my thinking is for better or worse.

So starting with stage 1.
The first stage is a faithful image/copy, where people believe, and may even be correct to believe, that a sign is a "reflection of a profound reality"...

So in this I would put minimalist techniques with no processing of the recording. Spaced omni's, crossed figure 8's, narrow microphone pairs like DIN, ORTF, Jecklin discs. Maybe J_J's soundfield reconstruction method which I guess he isn't allowed to develop. It used 9 closely spaces microphones to record MCH including height. J_J's method did involve a couple simple math steps so some processing. There are also similar MCH arrangements using as few as 3 microphones or 4 if you need height. The Bell Labs 3 channel system from the 1930's can do very well.

Now even here you cannot just plop the mikes in the best seat in the house and record. You have to move closer than being in person. Often you put the mikes up in the air. Despite limitations these are pretty unfiltered recordings having a good direct link with a real event that was recorded. You can check out Mario's free examples for a taste using figure 8s in a Blumlein configuration.

Play Classics, classical music at its best

Listen to the world's most transparent recordings. Feel the sound as if you were present on the hall. Enjoy classical music at its best.

www.playclassics.com

These recordings done this way can sound pretty real, give a good sense of space where the recording was, let you hear directionality in good agreement with reality. Not perfection, but pretty good as a facsimile for physical reality of the sound. At least the end of your room will open up as if there were a larger space there.

So doing recordings like this, the result was very pleasing. I was surprised at how easy it was to get this good audiophile approved sound. If you had a good group of musicians and a decent to good sounding space results were generally nice.

Why would you record any other way? The recordings were a failure. A failure in the sense of people listening to them. A commercial failure had that been the goal. I ended up with a rule of thumb from this. If you cannot listen and enjoy it in a car, most people won't listen to it. Few have a dedicated quality listening room like most of us here. While they might stop and just listen, they often listen in a car, over phones or with other things going on. They don't have the high audio temple for music. They want to listen to music and enjoy it in many more places and circumstances. So you need some compression, and possibly skillful limiting and gating to get these close to what people might make use of. You might do a minimalist recording of a rock band in a club and get by, but they are likely doing compression and other stuff to start with. Not mention distorted electronic/electric instruments are already a step away from basic physical reality.

A thought experiment;

What if the four examples that you give (Posts #31-34) result in identical recordings? Theoretically possible with enough time, skilled engineers and good samples. It's unlikely, I accept that, but possible.
Can these four identical recordings, produced in different ways, still be said to represent different stages of reality? The recordings are their own reality, they are the source.
Do we need to have supplementary information to go along with the recording in order to assign a reality stage to them - and if we do that we don't actually need the recordings, we just need the context.
(don't drop the recordings and mix them up btw, you'll never know which was which )

It's a different conversation to review and consider different recording techniques, and to have preferences.

 

[Blumlein 88]

A thought experiment;

What if the four examples that you give (Posts #31-34) result in identical recordings? Theoretically possible with enough time, skilled engineers and good samples. It's unlikely, I accept that, but possible.
Can these four identical recordings, produced in different ways, still be said to represent different stages of reality? The recordings are their own reality, they are the source.
Do we need to have supplementary information to go along with the recording in order to assign a reality stage to them - and if we do that we don't actually need the recordings, we just need the context.
(don't drop the recordings and mix them up btw, you'll never know which was which )

It's a different conversation to review and consider different recording techniques, and to have preferences.

Without choosing one of the stages as your goal you would have no reference for the other three. Plus for those other three you would likely be creating extra work.

 

[Multicore]

Great post.

I agree. Thanks @Blumlein 88

We could argue that certain factions of audiophilia (in the vernacular sense, not the simple meaning of loving sound) posit a) an analog reproduction chain (and listening to same) as a pure sacrament or b) the process of somewhat stochastic acquisition and experimentation with esoteric gear as a pursuit of the sacramental order. Contra this, ASR people often see such (and the language of poetic subjective reviews) as a play of signs.

I have made the point before here that the behavior of a certain kind of audiophile does seem esoteric. It posits something in the equipment that has the key features of magic: i.e. that it is unknowable but at the same time they say they know that it exists and kinda what it does, and initiation and training are necessary to get closer to understanding and controlling it. Essential to the esoteric is this quality of being both secret and not secret. It's a tease.

For my part, my preferred music is often entirely synthetic. But I could argue that a synth is just as real as a viola. A virtual synth, even, but we are not always comfortable with dematerialisation.

I think you all know I believe all recorded music is artifice and the techniques and instruments doesn't change that. So why don't we regard the recording as an object in our ontology? It's not any of the 4 levels mentioned on the OP. The recordings are reality.

When we talk about it we might be using signs in one of the 4 levels. And when I make music I might be using signs and/or putting them in the music. But when the recording of the music I made goes out into the world to fend for itself and do its artistic work on others, it drop back down out of the symbolic order and becomes real.

 

[JeremyFife]

Without choosing one of the stages as your goal you would have no reference for the other three. Plus for those other three you would likely be creating extra work.

Agree with that.

I'll have to give some thought to this in terms of 'choosing one of the stages as your goal' i.e. your four stages as choices. I may have to read the essay too!

Great thread btw

 

[Timcognito]

This stuff is way over my head. It all comes down to transducers their placement and accuracy, input versus output. Your ear being one of them. The electronics in between can be highly accurate.

 

[Multicore]

Anyway, just wondered if anyone has some contrary or alternate thoughts and ideas on this. As someone who records music now and again, I think examining which stage you want the result of your recording to exist within is helpful in making decisions. I enjoy, respect, and find worth in music in all the 4 stages of simulacra.

I want to come back to this later when I've read more of the thread and had a think but I want to give my immediate reaction just now.

With my musician or sound artist hat on I don't think in these terms. And now, challenged by your question, I feel that I don't want to. Whatever works, whatever gets the job done, what really matters is the artistic effect, i.e. the social communication of whatever it was my unconscious needed to say. It's not that I think the symbolic analysis cannot be applied but I feel it's not the important thing in my efforts.

I've used techniques that range from highly alienating and abstracting to intimate, immediate and quasi-realistic (you helped me with that recently) but to me they are all artifice and all aiming to do the same thing. The only escape is to avoid recording. And as time goes on I am more aware of the pernicious effects of how recording has come to dominate music.

 

[Multicore]

The central issue is how to interpret representation. A map meant to represent a territory will always show the map to lack something, just like a recording can't capture the exact soundfield. But, if you let the map have its own reality instead of always casting it as being just a simulation of another, more basic, more important reality of the territory, then you can examine the map itself for its qualities.

You're right and I wish this could somehow be less of a concern for me as artist. There exists in this picture also the music, which is beyond the realm of acoustic and physical phenomena and beyond signals and bit streams. It's probably even somewhere beyond the phenomenology of hearing.

 

[kemmler3D]

As Stevie Wonder said, music is a language of its own. You could look at the music in the recording like a story - whatever medium (book, comic book, movie) the ideas conveyed about (say) Harry Potter exist independently of the medium, to an extent. Of course the whole point of this is they don't exist independently at all, but Ode To Joy is still Ode To Joy (to an extent) whether you play it on an ocarina or with the world's largest orchestra.

 

[Timcognito]

but Ode To Joy is still Ode To Joy (to an extent) whether you play it on an ocarina or with the world's largest orchestra.

Yes, but if you have a good system, betting that you will enjoy the Naxos version over the K-tel version. Just sayin'.

 

[Curvature]

Yes, I agree that isn't the only order or things. Calling the recording/production process "wholly anti-representational" seems inaccurate though. It is certainly agnostic as to whether the material is representational or abstract, for example. Is that what you meant, or am I missing something?

Higher up the page @kemmler3D posted some new age ambient as a counterexample to recording "real" instruments (and "real" performance of same). Thinking about this I would also use people like Autechre, Alva Noto or Ryoji Ikeda as examples of wholly abstract music. But Autechre for example may record the mixing desk feed of their real time performance directly. Does the fact that we can ignore acoustic instruments and ambient performance space make the recording less a representation of what is performed? I can argue that this is closer to "the performance" than most alternatives or recording/production methods. So while we may think of this musical genre as a pure simulacrum (following the OP's analysis and @kemmler3D's simplified formulation) it may be that we have the most faithful image/copy instead (the concepts of abstraction and reproduction become orthogonal).

What was "wholly anti-representational" was, specifically, when engineers "establish the capabilities and limits of what is possible for them to capture".

It may not seem like much, but shifting the question away from "What happened then?" regardless if it was an instrument playing or some kind of electronic jiggery-pokery, to "What is happening now?" is big.

I would point to discussions about perceptual vs. physical accuracy of recording and reproduction vs. the more abstract "fidelity". The latter is representational, the former is not. Or at least, the meaning of "representation" in the former is severely different.

If you look at the discussions of listening experience on Audiogon (or even Gearspace), there is a strong tendency to allow a chunk of mystery to the whole thing. You experience something. You represent that experience through some report or anecdote. There is always a gap between what you wrote vs. what happened. Everyone is aware of it. They know they were not there and did not experience that event. You know that what you experienced you cannot deliver to others. That gap is the same one found in the map and its territory. There is an order to it: the cartographer to the map to the territory to the emperor. Call that "traditional representation". For traditional audiophiles, you have: the producer to the music to the experience to listener. The question of intent is very prominent here because it establishes the priority of origins and reality: the recording playing before you is less than itself because it is the simulation of a lost reality. What this suggests further is power: the map is important because of the emperor and the empire establishing its borders, so the music is important because of fidelity to the event that you, the listener, can re-experience.

"New representation" saves the sequence but breaks the links of priority. You are not re-experiencing a past event in listening to a recording. You are causing a new event. Furthermore, the limits of this event are not found in your subjectivity. They can be examined. The question is not of fidelity but what, concretely, occurred. The circumstances.

There are consequences to this in terms of how to understand simulation and so forth but I'll save that for another time.

 

[Curvature]

You're right and I wish this could somehow be less of a concern for me as artist. There exists in this picture also the music, which is beyond the realm of acoustic and physical phenomena and beyond signals and bit streams. It's probably even somewhere beyond the phenomenology of hearing.

That is a very medieval perspective. Not in the sense of "vastly outdated". I mean that it is literally medieval: musica mundana as defined by Boethius, a kind of music that can only be appreciated by the intellect as opposed to that which is merely heard.

 

[Multicore]

That is a very medieval perspective. Not in the sense of "vastly outdated". I mean that it is literally medieval: musica mundana as defined by Boethius, a kind of music that can only be appreciated by the intellect as opposed to that which is merely heard.

Yes except I would not use the word intellect because I believe the purpose of art is to communicate that which the intellect cannot adequately express. If the intellect can say what we mean in plan language then we don't need music, painting or poetry.

 

[Curvature]

Yes except I would not use the word intellect because I believe the purpose of art is to communicate that which the intellect cannot adequately express. If the intellect can say what we mean in plan language then we don't need music, painting or poetry.

Intellect did not equal language back then. It's the action of the soul. Language is something terrestrial (and somewhat dirty).

You look at a thing, you speak the name of the thing, the intellect imagines the form of it.

(Sorry for the pedantry.)

 

[Multicore]

I want to ask about your elaboration of Stages 2 and 3 in #32 and #33 above, to which the following should link.

Stage 2:

Stage 3:

In both methods, the artifice can succeed or fail. There are bad natural-ish recordings attempting what you described in Stage 2 and there are a lot of good ones. Stage 3 techniques are more recent and for a while there were a fair few pretty grim results. Everyone was using the same few plugins and unless they were used carefully they could become completely distracting.

But let's say we only consider the successful examples of both, skipping quickly over the difficult task of defining success. Let's just say that we've got the best tools and technicians you can in principle imagine doing a Stage 3 production in a computer. What you said of Stage 2...

Here there is a real source, a sound reality though obscured. The instruments were real, singers real, space likely not any hall sound is not real. So reality is not faithfully revealed as the whole purpose is to create the unreal. You've abstracted the process away from the real though still with the intent of servicing it and presenting it as "possibly real". In time it becomes what most consider the reality.

... seems also to apply to Stage 3.

To understand the hierarchy I think we should try to separate failures of implementation from the formal differences.

 

[Robin L]

Yes, but if you have a good system, betting that you will enjoy the Naxos version over the K-tel version. Just sayin'.

Even better; the Bis version:

 

[Blumlein 88]

I want to ask about your elaboration of Stages 2 and 3 in #32 and #33 above, to which the following should link.


In both methods, the artifice can succeed or fail. There are bad natural-ish recordings attempting what you described in Stage 2 and there are a lot of good ones. Stage 3 techniques are more recent and for a while there were a fair few pretty grim results. Everyone was using the same few plugins and unless they were used carefully they could become completely distracting.

But let's say we only consider the successful examples of both, skipping quickly over the difficult task of defining success. Let's just say that we've got the best tools and technicians you can in principle imagine doing a Stage 3 production in a computer. What you said of Stage 2...

... seems also to apply to Stage 3.

To understand the hierarchy I think we should try to separate failures of implementation from the formal differences.

In Pink Floyd's album Dark Side of the Moon there are heart beats. They are artificial. Maybe even wholly artificial. Yet they sound close enough to a heart beat heard in a stethoscope to make you answer the question, what is that with.... a heart beat or beating heart. Stage 3. Yet even here though nearly everyone will hear a beating heart, if you listen to a real one it isn't quite like this. It is artificial.

Alan Parsons (involved in making the Floyd album too) has what likely are synthesizer or heavily processed bass stringed instrument chords. The pacing, and use of it is like a heart beat. If questioned about what you are hearing you'll not say that you hear a beating heart. You might say that it reminds you of the beats of a heart or the rhythm of life, but it is not and does not sound like a heart beat. It is totally divorced from any real heart beat, yet it creates a mood, a timing and effect on the listener of the beating heart of life from a total abstraction. Stage 4.

So does that make it clear, even though these are successful rather than unsuccessful implementations?

See my line of thought here is not so much about success as aligning intent with methods of making the music. Maybe my thinking is overwrought on this. I think Alan Parsons was acutely aware of when he wanted to create real sounding artifice and when he wanted to create the same effect with a greater gap to anything real. Tales of Mystery and Imagination are all about imagining unreal soundscapes to create moods and feelings. For that purpose an extra step into the unreal facilitates his aims.