Dust Theories

by Kim Cascone
Cycling'74, San Francisco, 2001
Audio CD and CD-Rom (60 mins)
c74-004

Reviewed by Robert Pepperell
Polar (Posthuman Laboratory for Arts Research)

pepperell@ntlword.com

The cover of Dust Theories sports one of the photographs Man Ray produced in collaboration with Marcel Duchamp of grains of dust accumulating on Duchamp's Large Glass, in accordance with instructions given in one of the artist's Green Box notes. This impeccable visual reference, and the eerie landscape it evokes, prepare one perfectly for the bleak, almost featureless terrain of Cascone's audio compositions (one hesitates to burden them with the expectations of "music").

Kim Cascone is happy to talk about his compositions in terms of the postdigital, which for him reflects his interest in the computer processing of digital audio signals, particularly using real-time synthesis software such as Max/MSP. A discussion of his methods, and related materials can be found at the microsound.org discussion site, which summarises itself in the following way:

".microsound is an unmediated mailing list oriented toward discussion of the styles of digital and post-digital music promulgated by the proliferation and widespread adoption of digital signal processing (dsp) tools."

Cascone is a regular contributor to the site (below) and from the discussions one gets the sense of a lively field of audio theory which seeks to exploit the possibilities opened up with new sound manipulation and synthesis systems.

The compositions contained on the audio portion of the CD (there is an Mac CD-Rom component too) are minimalistic, but not in the sense of being empty. Rather their quietness invites close attention which is then rewarded with a potential richness of associations. In the twenty-minute opening track Dust Theories 1, for example, there are bird-like tweets and sub-aquatic pings that suggest some natural analogue within the purity of the digital processing used in the piece's construction. The shorter track Edgeboundaries 123 is a complex collage of frying sizzles, crackling squeaks and sub-bass rumbles while the remixed version, Edgeboundaries 123 (ben.sampl~ mix), pulses with an languid, funky rhythm (I could almost hear James Brown's Sex Machine), offset by periodic interruptions of rattles and rustles.

The overall effect of Dust Theories is of a kind of digital meditation on the nature of electronic sound, which is by turns demanding and quiescent. One problem with the production was the bundled demo application designed to allow the user to remix some of the tracks on the CD. This seems to need require considerable dexterity on the part of the user with the Open Music System, without it the user may find that the application tends to crash the machine. More information about the recording, and the systems used to generate it, can be found at the publisher's Web site at:

www.cycling74.com/index.html

I would urge those interested in this genre of music and the theoretical work that accompanies it to consult this site.