In "The road to plunderphonia" <span style="font-weight: bold;">Chris Cutler</span>
looks at the critical role of memory – on which both the origination
and reproduction of music turns – and attempts to unpick to what extent
the specific nature of a memory system shapes the music that it
mediates, with reference, especially, to the third and newest of these
systems: sound recording. Chris investigates how the fact and the
practice of sound recording have transformed every aspect of production
and reception in the field of organised sound, creating wholly new
genres and understandings. If the medium is the message, this essay is
an attempt to understand what the message of this system is.
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<br>Link: <a href="http://bit.ly/fp2QVT" target="_blank" class="postlink">http://bit.ly/fp2QVT</a>
<br>PDF: <a href="http://bit.ly/doEnzf" target="_blank" class="postlink">http://bit.ly/doEnzf</a>
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<br>"The Road to Plunderphonia" also works as an accompaniment to VARIATIONS (<a href="http://rwm.macba.cat/en/variations_tag" target="_blank" class="postlink">http://rwm.macba.cat/en/variations_tag</a>), the Radio Web MACBA series on the history of music collage and sampling curated by Jon Leidecker.
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<br>On Chris Cutler:
<br>At the start of the seventies, <span style="font-weight: bold;">Chris Cutler</span>
co-founded The Ottawa Music Company - a 22-piece Rock composer's
orchestra - before joining British experimental group Henry Cow, with
whom he toured, recorded and worked in dance and theatre projects for
the next eight years. Subsequently he co-founded a series of mixed
national groups: Art Bears, News from Babel, Cassiber, The (ec) Nudes,
p53 and The Science Group, and was a permanent member of American bands
Pere Ubu, Hail and The Wooden Birds. Outside a succession of special
projects for stage, theatre, film and radio he still works consistently
in successive projects with Fred Frith, Zeena Parkins, Jon Rose, David
Thomas, Peter Blegvad, Daevid Allen, The Bad Boys Collective and
spectralists Iancu Dumitrescu and Ana Maria Avram.
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<br>Recent projects include commissioned works for radio, various live
movie soundtracks, pieces for the Hyperion Ensemble, Signe de Trois for
surround-sound projection, a daily year-long soundscape project for
Resonance FM, London and p53 for Orchestra and Soloists. He also founded
and runs the independent label ReR Megacorp and the art distribution
service Gallery and Academic and is author of the theoretical collection
File Under Popular - as well as of numerous articles and papers
published in sixteen languages.<br><br>Follow us on Twitter: <a href="http://twitter.com/Radio_Web_MACBA">http://twitter.com/Radio_Web_MACBA</a><br><br><br>