the work of art in the age of cultural overproduction

Last night I was listening to an old CBC interview with an electronic/ambient artist named Tim Hecker. I’m far from an electronic music buff, but I do like some of the stuff on Montreal’s Alien8 recordings. Tim Hecker’s particularly endearing to me because he grew up in the same leafy Vancouver suburb as I did. (You can listen to some of his music if you click on the album covers listed on this page).

Hearing this interview was timely considering that this week’s readings have raised the question of Boredom and Machinery. A few people now have wondered whether there’s a genre of music we can characterize as self-consciously boring. As a result, I’ve been thinking about electronica as a genre that links all three of these ideas - boredom, music, and mechanization.










One feature that aligns electronica with Warhol’s concept of mechanical action is its use of sampling and looping techniques. It’s not only created with machines, but often consists almost entirely of ‘inorganic’ material: guitar riffs, voices, bleeps and bips that are lifted from other recordings. Even when electronic artists record their own material, it’s often only with the aim of sonically deconstructing it later. Frequently these sounds and samples are so distorted that their original source is unidentifiable. Witness Hecker’s “My Love is Rotten to the Core,” an entire album consisting of plundered Van Halen riffs. You’d never know.

This technique of reworking familiar sounds shares similarities with the situationists’ practice of de-familiarization. Yet the effect is quite different. Despite the layering upon layering of details that goes into these recordings, the resulting experience is as often holistic as it is detail-oriented. Hence ambient recordings’ equal suitability for “headphone listening” and “background music” (Alien8). The repetition of certain elements and the often overwhelming sense of static lures a listener into a state of perceptual boredom. Yet I wouldn’t call it unpleasant – perhaps ‘hypnotic,’ or ‘soothing.’ It’s as if the music’s impenetrability presents boredom as an aesthetic experience, one that isn’t predicated on the transcendence of tedium but on its enjoyment.

I’m also interested in this idea as a means of continuing Felski’s line of thought about the redeeming elements of repetition. I’ll pilfer Susan’s quote, which states that “the potential of the loop, as an exact repetition, opens the emptiness of meaning (in its infinite proliferation) in a way that directs our attention to new terms of thought while watching the same exact thing.” I can’t think of a better way to express what I mean. Granted, electronic music isn't always engaging. But the techniques of sampling multiple sources, levelling them through mechanical production, and constructing repeated loops creates a listening experience that often renders repitition beautiful.

Could electronic music be the quintessential boring art form?