DIYstopia [work in progress]

in the Wire essay Excess All Areas i wrote about how the hydraulics of culture went haywire in the post-broadband era, the channels and pipes for data transmission expanding astronomically and worse, becoming traversible in both directions... so that every receiver can also broadcast (indeed increasingly cannot stop themselves emitting)

too much to listen to, too much to read, too much to assimilate (remember re-reading? listening repeatedly?)

this excess of access / superabundance of output leading to a scarcity of reception/ a dearth of consumers

supply vastly exceeding demand

DIY becomes dystopia

well here's an article about experimental music today that chimes in with these concerns and starts with the words:

"In 2011, the flood continued"

http://upstatesoundscape.com/2011/12/23/2011-in-review-a-retroactive-mission-statement/

it reminded me of another piece i read earlier in the year, which introduced me to the year's bleakest concept: "the no-audience underground"

http://www.bangthebore.org/archives/1889

the guy who coined the concept seems pretty chipper though and not the least bit bothered by any sense of futility, not the teensiest bit deterred from his maniacal archive fever

but back to the Upstate Soundscape post, this concept of a new kind of "regionalism" seems intriguing... the reinvention of the local ... a deliberate narrowing of range in terms of both input and output

it reminded me of something Charles Hayward said when i interviewed him

"I was from Camberwell. And it’s important to me that music which goes 'outside' still has some sort of semi-folk basis in society. It belongs to a place and comes from a place. Which is something I always hear in Sun Ra. They were part of a community in Philadelphia and Washington, even though their music doesn’t overtly describe the situation they lived in. Everyone nowadays is basing their morality and ethics on gadgets, as if a sense of place doesn’t exist anymore. People feel dislocated when they haven't got that. I'm working with special needs people, the so-called disabled. I work alongside all sorts of people and then I'm trying to assimilate those experiences and do my own synthesis of what it is to be with people and make that come through in my music."