notesdontmatter

Forum – Week 11 – Semester 2, 2008: “Robert Moog and Other Things That WOW”

The robots are coming. This kind of Tech-Nerd fear mongering poses a significant question for me; “Where is the higher consciousness going to come from?” I wonder if anyone thinks it will just miraculously happen when technology reaches a given threshold of complexity. Seriously, the amount of programming and engineering that must have gone into the ‘cute’ robot from the Steve Reich clip - to achieve far less than a sub-epsilon-semi-moron level of intelligence indicates that we have little to worry about, at least in the immediate future.

Far more exciting was the K. Emerson keyboard solo. I find it perplexing that a great many keyboard players are not interested in embracing the possibilities for expression they are offered by technology. Don’t great concert pianists wish they could bend a note once in a while? Or add some vibrato? Or throw in a dive bomb? Or dirty it up with a distortion pedal and a Wah?

It was interesting to see how some conventional musicians from the 1970s had taken to synthesisers. They may have called it Avant Garde, but their “New York Minimalist” approach to electronic music was a far cry from Stockhausen to my ears (this is a good thing).


Reference:

Whittington, Stephen. “Forum – Week 11 – Semester 2, 2008: Robert Moog and Other Things That WOW.” Workshop presented at EMU space, level 5 Schultz building, University of Adelaide, 23rd of October 2008.

Labels: Forum IIIB

posted by David J Dowling @ 9:20 AM