Frank Rothkamm [ Music for TCP ports ]

VIII

NANO MUSIC

The concept of music designed specifically in a technological environment was pioneered by Brian Eno in the nineteen-seventies, and has since become known by the term Ambient. The connotations that this generic term carries are particularly associated with the kind of material that Ambient produces - dumb two-finger melodies arranged and played by stoned and mathematically challenged humans in a derivative manner. Understandably, this has led most discerning listeners (and most composers) to entirely dismiss the concept of Ambient music as an idea worthy of attention.

Over the past 5 years, I have become interested in the use of music as an autonomous being seeded from a small instruction set, and have come to believe that it is possible to produce material that can develop on its own terms without being in any way compromised by human intervention. To create a distinction between my own experiments in this area and the products of the various purveyors of, what Sousa termed, canned music, I have begun using the term Nano Music.

A Nano is defined as a unit prefix meaning “one billionth.” My intention is to seed autonomous works ostensibly (but not exclusively) for particular times and situations with a view to building up a massive but monotonous catalogue of cloud music suited to a wide variety of internet connected devices.

Whereas conventional music proceeds from the basis of regularizing environments by blanketing their acoustic and atmospheric idiosyncrasies, Nano music is intended to de-regulate. Whereas conventional background music is produced by stripping away everything that is not human from the music, Nano music retains randomness. And whereas the intention of background music is to make the environment `interesting` by adding stimulus to it (thus supposedly alleviating the tedium of routine tasks and levelling out the natural ups and downs of the body rhythms) Nano music is intended to induce amnesia and a space beyond thinking.

Nano music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as imperceptible as it is post-human.

Frank Rothkamm

September 2015

VIII



   
Catalog No: FLX25 (LN79)
Title: Music for TCP ports
(Nano 1)
Sound Artist: Frank Rothkamm
Visual Artist: Holger Rothkamm
Label: Flux Records
Length: 1:00:04 (3604s)
Composed: 2014
Location: Los Angeles
Instruments: Yamaha FB01
IFORMM
Ardour
Calf
Release Date: 08/22/2015
Format: Digital
Tags: IFORMM
ambient
 
209 ALBUMs
1100 TRACKs
112 PDFs
1 BIO


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