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Grazing on the Washtub Hills Essay written by Andrew Clifford In the liner notes for the Ultra Lounge compilation, Space Capades (1996), R.J. Smith remarks that science is no longer any fun. Whereas advancing technology was once about nutty professors, auto-defrost refrigerators and cocktail-mixing gizmos, few can fathom what the latest latest Nobel Prize winning physicist is working on.A trite remark, perhaps, but it belies the romantic relationship popular culture once had with industrial advances. This was when lounge furniture looked like it was designed for space, sci-fi films could be made with tinfoil and tape and still look more advanced than the actual lunar landing (which many still believe was created on a film set), and inventors concocted strange new gadgets in their garden shed on weekends. Icy vibraphones, zinging springs and the swirling futuristic waves of the theremin were the quintessential soundtrack of choice for any UFO landing and, with the exotic sounds of Les Baxter on the stereogram, you could travel to the moon without leaving your armchair. Post-war industrialisation had a can-do attitude but the new frontiers being conquered were mostly suburban ones. Although the cold-war cast the space-race with a military subplot, the idea of interstellar life remained a site for domestic aspirations of hi-tech utopias, where the latest advance in robotics is more likely to help Ma Jetson with the hoovering than have anything to do with soldering silicon chips or aiding particle acceleration. And although 60s sitcom I Dream of Jeannie made a wish-granting genie housekeeper for an astronaut, Tony’s day-job at NASA was merely a period backdrop for odd-couple domestic gags. Blockbuster movies like Terminator2: Judgement Day (1991) or The Matrix (1999) demonstrate a more cynical view of progress, depicting machines that have advanced beyond human control and comprehension. With budgets bigger than the income of a small country, this technological sublime is simulated by supercomputers, resulting in slick, alien vistas and over-the-top battle scenes that strategically toy with contemporary anxieties for a cheapened response that is ultimately emotionally detached. Without the CGI resources that both directors later became accustomed to, George Lucas’ THX 1138 (1971) and Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982) portray disenfranchised worker drones servicing the demands of a megatropolis. Needless to say, it is well know that the latter was derived from a book titled Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, neatly contrasting its dystopian future with idyllic visions of uncluttered rural life. Industrialisation makes the realisation of a convivial society difficult to imagine, argues Ivan Illich1. Although not espousing luddite-ism, he describes the quality of conviviality as being the antidote to the disenfranchising effects of industrial productivity. Taking an egalitarian stance, he states that over-specialisation of resources isolates people from their tools and their own abilities, making them dependent on institutional structures run by experts. “Convivial tools are those which give each person who uses them the greatest opportunity to enrich the environment with the fruits of his or her vision,” he says in his book, Tools for Conviviality (1974), which has been a key reference for Adam Willetts in developing his pared back constructions. “Tools foster conviviality to the extent to which they can be easily used, by anybody, as often or as seldom as desired, for the accomplishment of a purpose chosen by the user.” Using small, simple technologies and rejecting excessive supporting technologies are key strategies for Willetts to ensure the conviviality of his robotic systems, which do not function as anti-convivial human replacements but as semi-autonomous entities in their own right. A minimum of ingredients and intervention are also a key policy for much of Brian Eno’s music. In the notes accompanying his Discreet Music album (1975), Eno uses a flowchart to describe the simple tape processes employed to put in place a system for generating music. Quoting another pioneer of ambient music, he cites Erik Satie’s desire to compose gradual music that could “mingle with the sound of the knives and forks at dinner”. In a section on landscape in his book Ocean of Sound (1995)2, David Toop compares Eno's environmental music, which features titles such as Another Green World, On Land and Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks, with experimental composer John Cage’s “Imaginary Landscape” series of compositions begun in 19393. Toop describes Cage’s imaginary landscape as “a place in which forms and features are allowed to emerge and co-exist, regardless of the personal desires of the imaginer.” These were performed on turntables, tape machines and radios, and structured improvisation using the chance methods of the I Ching. In a 1969 manifesto, composer Steve Reich also proclaimed the benefits of restraint in composition as a way of empowering the listener through “perceptible processes”4. He separates himself from Cage’s strategies of chance and improvisation in favour of approaches that are more apparent in the final result. He compares listening to gradual musical processes to “pulling back a swing, releasing it, and observing it gradually come to a rest”. Like Willetts, by employing systems that can be observed slowly slipping from the composer’s control, Reich’s convivial approach engages the audience by inviting them to participate in the experiment with him.
Andrew Clifford is a freelance writer, artist and broadcaster and is currently curator of the Auckland Art Gallery’s In Audio performance programme. As well as regularly producing programmes for Radio New Zealand and contributing stories to the New Zealand Herald’s art pages, his writing has appeared in a number of magazines here and abroad, including Art Asia-Pacific, Eyeline, Pavement Magazine and various gallery publications.
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