Think with the Goodiepal

[imomus]

I'm sitting in the front row of the Club Transmediale lecture theatre when I feel a hand on my shoulder. "Thank you for the song," says Goodiepal. The song in question is track eleven on Joemus, the one that recommends we "swing with the Goodiepal".



Although I've written a song named after him, I'd never met Faroese electronic musician, artist, educator and eccentric Kristian Vester, better known as Goodiepal, before his Berlin lecture yesterday afternoon. He came to the Kunstraum Kreuzberg to deliver a lecture at Club Transmediale entitled "Radical Computer Music and the War on the Scandinavian Education System". Although his lecture was hilariously bizarre -- he tipped a table on its side and started chalking illegible diagrams on it -- it also made a lot of sense. Goodiepal's main points were:

1. Computer Music and Media Art are stupid to the extent that they ask us to replicate the way computers think rather than complement it with our own human ways of thinking. Even computers, should they develop intelligence, won't want us just to do what they already do. They'll want us to do something different. We should fox them -- and fascinate them. We should make art and music that is "unscannable".

2. The same argument that applies to the relationship between computers and humans also applies to the relationship between Scandinavia and America. There's no point Scandinavian educators regurgitating American music theory from the likes of Kim Cascone, John Cage and Morton Feldman. They must provide an alternative, another way of thinking, a specifically Scandinavian one.

Goodiepal also used the lecture to demonstrate his handmade vinyl artworks and his artist's books, many of them concerned with finding new methods of music notation which avoid showing music as a simple progression from point A to point B.

I made a ten-minute video of edited highlights of Goodiepal's lecture yesterday. He began by telling us the lecture had lost him various prestigious Media Art jobs all over the world and even got him bashed on the head with a beer bottle. (I think this talk of being beaten up for his sharp tongue is a running joke of his.) He went on to show us a model of "black dystopian America" and give a hilarious impression of Bjork.

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Today between 3pm and 7pm Goodiepal supervises a workshop entitled Mort aux Vaches Ekstra Extra (pre-registration required, maximum fifteen people). And even if you're not in Berlin, you can hear him rehearsing the themes of his lecture in this mp3 walkthrough (with accompanying snaps).

To give you an idea of where this visionary Dane comes from, here he is in a forest outside Aarhus eight years ago, playing flute music:

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And here he is in Malmo last year playing a cosmic planet game and making a soundtrack for it:

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What an interesting man!

Comments

GO GO GOODIEPAL!!!

[(Anonymous)]

So happy to see this! (But sad to see that Goodiepal shaved his beird!)
Goodiepal against Cage against Branca... I think I might side with the Parl! That is great that you got to see him live...please listen to the walkthough, everyone, and listen closely and patiently! Also, remember that Goodiepal does not consider himself to be a conceptual artist, but a music educator! And anyone who can aquire his school book can become part of his Mort Aux Vaches Ekstra composition... which i would say is the vangarde of music composition right now...

Sarah from i^3

Re: GO GO GOODIEPAL!!!

[(Anonymous)]

i mean beard.
and hair!
but i still love you!

Stalkers

[(Anonymous)]

Momus, have you ever had a stalker? No that I am offering to fill the post - I'm way too cynical and indolent for that sort of caper - it's just that you seem to have the kind of persona that might attract obsessive interest.

Re: Stalkers

[bugpowered.livejournal.com]

Maybe not a stalker, but he has his own wanker that regularly posts anonymous "critique" here...

[palux-negro.livejournal.com]

I share same thoughts about computer-human music relationship. I see how the use of computers looks still nowadays like "electronic music" and it's something like when I was studing at school and some people talked about "computer graphic design" (even for print media). When I use technology on my shows I allways pretend that it could look something more like magic but it's not easy to mean that, people need to know if there's some computer involved, and then they will say "ahh, electronic music".

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

"1. Computer Music and Media Art are stupid to the extent that they ask us to replicate the way computers think rather than complement it with our own human ways of thinking. Even computers, should they develop intelligence, won't want us just to do what they already do. They'll want us to do something different. We should fox them -- and fascinate them. We should make art and music that is "unscannable"."

I think what he means is "We should be making art that exceeds the replication capacity of current computer technology". We should be expressing the complexities of human existence by pushing the boundaries of "unreplicatability".

You could argue that all art except computer generated art has a degree of unreplicatability. For example, seeing a painting on your computer screen isn't the same as seeing the three dimensional textures of the paint in real life. The same goes for music even though we generally don't stray far from digital stereo. Last year I went to listen to Roberto Cuoghi's sound installation Šuillakku (http://www.ica.org.uk/Roberto%20Cuoghi:%20%8Auillakku+17448.twl) at the ICA and this installation cannot be replicated with current home technology or as an MP3 file. You need a room full of speakers because the sounds come from many different channels and two 2 separate rooms at once.

Sound and vision dominate art and digital technology, in fact there's no technology at present that can replicate taste or touch (smell has been attempted). However, there are good examples of other art that requires the 3 neglected senses.

I'm going to see the Lucky Dragons (http://www.myspace.com/luckydragons) play later tonight and they incorporate touch into their gigs, it's a major aspect of their art:

"Lucky Dragons shows are about the birthing of new and temporary creatures, creating equal-power situations in which audience members cooperate amongst themselves, to build a fragile network of digital signals connected by touching on the skin."

I'm probably gonna raise a few eyebrows by mentioning this guy but I'm a fan of the so-called culinary alchemist Heston Blumenthol (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heston_Blumenthal). Food get's a raw deal in the art world, it seems to be separated off from it for some reason.

He obviously represents the smell and taste aspects of unreplicatability in art. He treats food like science and creates meals that try to replicate human memories and experiences, his most famous being "The sound of the sea".

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Lucky Dragons are doing a concert and workshop here on Thursday, again part of Club Transmediale.

Food get's a raw deal in the art world, it seems to be separated off from it for some reason.

I can't agree with this. Food-as-art is such a trendy meme it's in danger of getting over-exposed. The first event at the last Documenta was a meal in a restaurant, presented as a performance. The founding work of the Relational Aesthetics school is Rirkrit Tiravanija's Thai curry suppers in various galleries. And I just interviewed Jerszy Seymour for ID magazine, and Jerszy is staging banqueets in various museums as artworks these days.

[diesel-pioneer.livejournal.com]

Blumenthol

Okay, I know we're no longer talking to eachother but that's the best typo I've seen today

[diesel-pioneer.livejournal.com]

I can't remember how I came to it, it may possibly even have been through click opera in fact, but about a year ago I saw a recording of Goodiepal's lecture broadcast on a Danish TV show. I have to say that I found it so brilliantly hilarious I didn't actually glean any of the above points from it at all. The first point is really interesting, to the point that I don't quite have enough time right now to address it..

The second one, however:

There's no point Scandinavian educators regurgitating American music theory from the likes of Kim Cascone, John Cage and Morton Feldman. They must provide an alternative, another way of thinking, a specifically Scandinavian one.

Firstly, assuming that you agree with Goodiepal here, don't you think it's always tended to be the role of educators to establish the status quo, and of the students to challenge that status quo?

Secondly, although my musical education is seriously limited (a rather tepid GCSE qualification), it's struck me that by and large music education has never really had a strong nationalistic remit. Cage, I know, admired Satie, for instance. I know too that you push the post-nationalist idea in click opera..

I suppose the idea here is that because the US is some kind of cultural-imperialist behemoth, even in the field of avant-garde media art, it is the role of The Rest Of The World to blithely reject the ideas of Cage, Feldman et al. because of their implicit association with said imperialist behemoth.

Which I think is pretty stupid, actually..

[(Anonymous)]

Ah, yes, Goodiepal, he's Danish not from the Faroes. Didn't his family (I mean in the biological sense) invent LEGO? Interesting fellow indeed, the non scannable part of his "lecture" of course resonanates nicely with those of use who prefer to remain nameless... check out the misleadingly attractive Snappidagg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/32556543@N05/sets/72157609437204597/) attack.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I suppose the idea here is that because the US is some kind of cultural-imperialist behemoth, even in the field of avant-garde media art, it is the role of The Rest Of The World to blithely reject the ideas of Cage, Feldman et al. because of their implicit association with said imperialist behemoth.

"Reject" is the wrong word. "Complement" is better. Goodiepal simply doesn't want peripheral points to replicate the information in central points. Just as computers will thank us for being humans rather than replicant computers, so Americans will thank us for being Swedes, Danes etc rather than replicant Americans. That's what his beatboxing (in the video) is about. Do Berliners want a Swedish beatboxer, when they could have an American one? No, because of Sweden's social situation it's pretty unlikely to be better than the original. Sweden should supply specifically Swedish culture. Goodiepal mocks this a little (with his Bjork-as-Nazi impersonation), but what he's really saying there is that nationalism is only bad in the context of power. When nations like Iceland are nationalistic, it's quite different. As I see it, Goodiepal is supporting "asymmetrical multiculturalism" here -- the idea that everything depends on context and power balances when it comes to nation and race.

And I certainly wouldn't say that I push the post-nationalist idea on Click Opera. I'm very much into Japaneseness or Germanness or whatever. See Tutti frutti requires fruit, but folk soul doesn't require Hitler (http://imomus.livejournal.com/308507.html). The idea is that specific rooted cultures and multiculturalism are in a symbiotic relationship. You can't have one without the other. They complement each other. That's what harmony means: different notes resonating well with each other.

Firstly, assuming that you agree with Goodiepal here, don't you think it's always tended to be the role of educators to establish the status quo, and of the students to challenge that status quo?

I only half agree with Goodiepal -- obviously I discuss Cage et al as much as anyone else. But I also discuss Goodiepal, and I think it's crucial that we keep encouraging people like him, who are actually much fresher and more relevant to what's happening now than Cage or Morton Feldman is. Their rootedness in Scandinavia is central to this freshness. Goodiepal's riff on Mickey Mouse isn't just a joke. How can Mickey be our friend when he's everywhere and has done everything? We can never say "My friend Mickey would never do this!" Because Mickey has done it all. He has no flavour because he has no limits. And the US is rather like Mickey. We cannot befriend something with no limits, no flavour. And we cannot avoid the question of our friend's power. What we can do is avoid the blandness and blindness that power brings with it. But, again, it isn't either/or. We don't destroy the US, we complement it. We offer compatible alternatives.

As for teachers and students, they also complement each other, but I don't think the roles have to be as fixed as you're suggesting. Either can challenge, and either can represent the status quo.

[(Anonymous)]

Shouldn't you be blogging on the likes of the Sugarbabes, Boyzone or indeed latest sensation in the hit parade, Lady GaGa. Surely their pop sensibility plays a far more important role in your solo music than the likes of Cage, Branca or Goodiepal. What gives?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I don't see any songs entitled "Sugababes" or "Boyzone" on my Joemus album. I do, however, see one entitled "Goodiepal". (http://imomus.com/momusgoodiepal.mp3) What could be more natural than blogging about him?

Goodiepalindromes

[xyzedd.livejournal.com]

Maybe I'm in a Stanislaw Lem frame of mind, but the talk here led me to thinking about our preconceptions about computers, artificial intelligence, and humans. Am I wrong in thinking that Goodiepal envisions a sort of idealistic future of machines and mankind producing brave and beautiful new music together, braver and more beautiful than what we have so far created? Is that just too simplistic?

But what if we really do give the keys, so to speak, to the computers themselves, and liberate them from our silly human limitations at last? Allow them to play not so much for or with us but for themselves (not that this hasn't been tried already). No good, no evil, no difference, none of those self-limiting carbon-based lifeform binaries. I'm probably not making any more sense here than I normally do, but I suddenly had this fear that in the future our computers will, without any help from us, become roboticized Celine Dions and Barry Manilows, serving up the frothiest schmaltziest cyber-melismatic emotional gush, with realistic intensity and synthetic tears--because, you know, computers are, after all, only human. And we'll have to listen to it in airports and on esplanades everywhere.

No, I'd rather have Harry Partch's music machines come to life and play themselves, screw and noodle and fondle and funk each other. Are Buchla and Subotnik the Muzak of yesterday's future?

Re: Goodiepalindromes

[bennycornelius.livejournal.com]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2009/jan/26/david-bowie-ziggy-stardust

What do you make of this?

Ben

PS The best palindrome I've ever come up with is "Stiff O Dairyman in a myriad of fits" ... I'm imagining a Robin Askwith film soundtracked with either Mr Proctor or Strewf!

Re: Goodiepalindromes

[xyzedd.livejournal.com]

Of course, for some time now software has been trying its best to do what I'm just lazily conjecturing--viz Microsoft's Songsmith for a recent example. (I trust you've all seen some of the videos on Youtube; maybe it's just because I'm sick to death of the songs the jesters have posted, but I actually prefer some of the new accompaniments I've heard to the originals. They're not so much different from Casio-era Momus!).

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

I'd be very interested to know if he's shared the premise/object/rules of his planet game somewhere. Provided there are any, of course.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

By the way, the point Goodiepal makes about Bjork's Declare Independence -- that only context prevents it from being a fascist statement -- seems to me to be already present in the video she made for the song:

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Why else would Bjork have portrayed herself as a sort of fascist puppeteer (she even makes some gestures that look like Nazi salutes) and the people she's addressing as authoritarian automata wearing semi-Nazi helmets? Surely the irony implicit in this whole situation has to be deliberate -- the "independence" being demonstrated is a totally conformist one. It's the same paradox Bjork already touched on in her line "I thought I could organize freedom -- how very Scandinavian of me".

Parl

[(Anonymous)]

The Parl is the most amazing guy around !

America Cut Record

[(Anonymous)]

I love his America record! I agree about Ipods and the trillions-of-gigs-of-music becoming valueless. In the future more people will cut records and make them into interesting shapes and works or art. Records are great not because they 'sound warmer' (which is needless excuse perpetuated by fidelity-geeks) but because each time you play them they wear down, meaning each time you listen is not only unique but contributes to their ultimate destruction. It's kind of like living; mp3s are eternal ghosts, records have physical, mortal lives.

Momus, you should look at my own experiments with record cutting:

http://rabbitscgi.blogspot.com/2008/12/cave-paint-records-coming-2009.html

My goal is to cut my own lathe, a diamond cutting needle, and start cutting music into every kind of material I can think of!

Adam Bruneau
(Oliver COBOL)

Re: America Cut Record

[imomus.livejournal.com]

That's (http://rabbitscgi.blogspot.com/2008/12/cave-paint-records-coming-2009.html) both a great art idea and a great business idea, Adam!

Re: America Cut Record

[krskrft.livejournal.com]

Many small independent record labels in America are already (and have been for decades now) doing limited runs of vinyl in weird colors and shapes.

Momus & Eternal Life

[endoftheseason.livejournal.com]

Another question for young Momus. A spectacularly off-topic one, or maybe not, given this business about eternal mp3s vs. stricken, mortal records.

There is a jellyfish that is apparently immortal:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article5594539.ece

And the natural question that occurs to one upon reading such a piece is: "What does young Momus think of the prospect of living forever?" And so I ask: provided you knew it wouldn't backfire in some Dorian-Gray, be-careful-what-you-wish-for way (could you know that?), would you want to be immortal? Obviously, there would be some ethical dilemmas involved, such as whether being so wildly selfish as to want eternal life is, well, just too selfish. On the other hand: "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." So, there'd at least be a hell of a lot of stuff to do--to learn about, discover, create, and what have you--during those infinite days and nights.

Re: Momus & Eternal Life

[imomus.livejournal.com]

On the face of it, immortality seems like a good thing. But all immortality would have to be temporary -- therefore not immortality -- because of the death of the sun, the universe, and so on. Being immortal and living on beyond the end of the universe in some kind of non-place and non-time is a nightmarish prospect. It would be bad enough seeing those around you age and die one by one, but surviving the gradual separation of all stars from each other and then the death of the universe would take the biscuit. You'd be so bored. You'd also start feeling terribly guilty, like some sort of vampire whose life came at the expense of everyone and everything else. I think David Bowie's song "The Supermen" would soon apply; you'd soon be longing for release, if you hadn't gone howlingly mad.

don't call him a dane!

[(Anonymous)]

don't call him a dane! that's like calling a catalonian Spanish.

Mort aux Vaches Ekstra Extra

[womanonfire.livejournal.com]

now if only Goodiepal would turn this lecture into one of those GarageBand instructor videos! Would be much more interesting than learning piano from Norah Jones. But some re-writing of the application interfaces would be necessary...