Deleuze’s Lecture Series: Anti Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus V

On Music

 

Gilles Deleuze

 

Lecture Vincennes – May 3rd, 1977

Gilles Deleuze: You’re the one who’s introducing this notion of translation. In what music do you find it ?

Richard Pinhas: I couple this notion of translation with those of interference and harmonic resonance. It’s a music that plays tirelessly with speeds, slownesses, strong differentiations or a complex repetition, or even both at once, there’s nothing exclusive about it, it’s a music which is built on totally inclusive syntheses. I suppose that it’s the music I like, it goes from Hendrix to Phil Glass by way of Ravel, Reich, Fripp and Eno.

Deleuze: It makes a large group of problems, it’s very good. Shall we begin right here ? One thing disturbed me in what we did last time. We had spoken of the notions of mass and class, and of their utilization from the point of view of the problems which occupied us, and I tried to say a certain number of things. And then Guattari in turn said a certain number of things, and I was struck that we said opposite things. I told myself that it’s perfect, but have those who listened been as sensitive as me, or was it the opposite? Well then, we commence upon this story of time. It would be necessary to find a definition of “pulsation,” or else we cannot be understood. Or shall we bypass the difference between a pulsed time and a non-pulsed time? It’s quite variable….

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Related Posts: Article, Global Art Database, Philosophy, Music

Deleuze’s Lecture Series: “Musical Time”

Lecture 1978

Gilles Deleuze

I would like to make an initial remark on the method employed. Pierre Boulez has chosen five works: the relations among these works are not relations of influence, dependence or ***** [inaudible], nor of progression or evolution from one work to the other either. There would be virtual relations among these works, rather, which are only released [se dégagent] in their confrontation. And when these works confront one another in this way, in a sort of cycle, one specific contour [profil] of musical time X rises up. So it’s not at all a method of abstraction which would go towards a general concept of time in music. Boulez obviously could have chosen another cycle: for example a work by Bartok, one by Stravinsky, one by Varèse, one by Berio… This would then release another specific contour of time, or the specific contour of a variable other than time. Then we could superimpose all these contours, make a veritable map [carte] of variations, which would follow the musical singularities each time, instead of extracting a generality on the basis of what are called examples.

But in the precise case of the cycle chosen by Boulez, what one sees or hears is a non-pulsed time [which] is released from pulsed time. Work I shows this release by a very precise play of physical displacements. Works II, III and IV each show a different aspect of this non-pulsed time, without claiming to exhaust all possible aspects. Finally V (Carter) shows how non-pulsed time can restore [redonner] a variable pulsation of a new type.

Well, the question would be to know what this non-pulsed time consists of, this floating [flottant] time which is almost what Proust called “a little time in the pure state….

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Global Traffickers of Music

Up, Bustle and Out is a group from Bristol, England that travel around the world to different locations in order to make music with the local musicians of different countries. The core of the group consists of two members, ‘Clandestine ‘Ein” and Rupert Mould, who travel the world recording in different countries and locales which have included Jamaica, Tibet, Cuba, Mexico, Palestine infusing their music with influences from each place. Their practice belongs in the realm of global art as they seek to navigate and negotiate new ways of interacting with other cultures that them come in contact with.

Up, Bustle and Out - click on the photo to download a song preview in mp3

Instead of stealing these musical traditions and recording them on their own,  Up, Bustle and Out often recruit local talent to play and sing on their recordings, providing a non-exploitative, collaborative process that could be useful in creating a meaningful form of global art. They can be seen as global traffickers of music as they go to different countries and ‘translate’ their musical traditions into a cultural form that is more accessible to western sensibilities. Yet in doing so they run the risk of misinterpretation or creating only a surface understanding of other countries’ musical traditions and forms or creating a two way dialogue that is limited in scope and doesn’t take the scheme of the global project into consideration.

Zorn Pink

 

Fusion music: the disappearance of local music

Musicians in Exile (1992), directed by Jacques Holender, follows the lives of severalmusicians who had fled their country. This film illustrates the musical styles the displaced musicians brought with them and how through their music they find their identity in a home away from home. The music is not particularly joyful or exciting, but melancholic and powerful. These musicians are reconnected to their homeland and the people they have left behind through their music. As they incorporate their feelings and reflection of the exile experience into their songs, they continue to share these sentiments with others who seek to belong.

Diaspora art, in Hans Belting book (Art History after Modernism, 2003, 63-73), meant a genre of art that people in exile would produce in order to reclaim a part of their identity. It however no longer considers as world art, as they have left the old identity behind and created a new style in the new world. Similarly, the musicians here are not producing world music but a fusion of world beats styles to grasp as part of their identity. Fusion music better represents today’s globalized world and diasporic peoples, as local music no longer exists. From an anthropological perspective, I believe that local music or art cease to exist due to influences from explorers, neighboring villages and even the radio and television.

Athena Wong

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Conjure One: global network of music

At first listen, Conjure One’s self-titled album (2002) is just a standard electro-pop record. Delve deeper, however, to find that each track has been masterfully composed, layering lush musical textures and combining cultural influences. The artist behind Conjure One is Vancouver native Rhys Fulber, who recorded the album over three years in Vancouver, Los Angeles, Amsterdam, and London. Stunning guest vocalist Chemda Khalili, who sings exclusively in Arabic on four of the tracks, adds a Middle Eastern feel to the album and evokes an almost primitive and primal sound.  Other guest vocalists include Poe, Sinead O’Connor, and Marie-Claire D’Ubaldo, each adding a more traditional pop sound.

Live music video for Redemption: Conjure One and guest vocalist, Chemda Khalili

Essentially what Fulber has done is create a cohesive global sound by gathering instrumentation, samples, and musicians from around the world through a number of digital means. Throughout the album, Fulber samples percussive beats he collected traveling around the Mediterranean and loops them against live string orchestration and his electronic keyboard driven melodies. String orchestration was composed in London and recorded in Vancouver. Sinead O’Connor recorded her vocals on Tears From the Moon from Ireland via Ednet, a phone patch network. (As a result, Fulber and O’Connor have never physically met.) These musical contributions from around the world are harvested by Fulber and transfused together. The end product is a single global musical effort made possible by the global network of communication. 

Matthew Sy 

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Radiohead: 3D images in House of Cards

The recent music video for Radiohead’s “House of Cards” directed by James Frost was shot without cameras or lights; only a pair of realtime digital scanners that recorded data points which were then interpreted by computer into 3D images resembling their referent. One scanner was calibrated to detect fine detailed surfaces such as vocalist Thom Yorke’s face as he sang, and the other was calibrated to record large landscapes like the suburban neighborhood in which part of the video takes place. Rather than prioritizing photorealism, the “House of Cards” video uses an alternative type of technological imaging with different capabilities and different weaknesses. This alternative technology is further highlighted by the engineers’ deliberate attempts to distort the image using mirrors, water, and other interferences to test the limits of the device. 

Nancy Shaw

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