Marc Couroux | York University (original) (raw)

Main Texts by Marc Couroux

PRIMERS: Earworm distribution system. The outcome of research carried out in the mid-1990s at an ... more PRIMERS: Earworm distribution system. The outcome of research carried out in the mid-1990s at an institution of higher learning (in a major Canadian city) involving the mobilization of biosonic propensities of select individuals-musicians with perfect pitch-converting the latter into hosts for a continuous production of abductive melodic tropes through embodiment and externalization. The implantation of an algorithm qua recombinant tune machine in the primer-subject ensures continued submission to a phonoegregoric will. These subjects, temporary way stations for a symbiant intelligence, were programmed to irrepressibly surface these self-generated superearworms-which, from their perspective, were seemingly occurring spontaneously, without motivation-by humming them in public places, thereby donating them to unsuspecting, temporarily adjacent bystanders (perhaps in the vain hope that the latter's attenuated aptitude for phonographic incorporation might neutralize the bug). Indeed, an affectively valenced, flexibilized, boned hum lubricates transfer considerably; the inhuman made appealingly human. The surfacing process is likely jump-started by an environmental stimulus of some kind-another sonic fragment, an embedded verbal directive. The public spreading of inscrutable melodic tags might be better understood in terms of later developments in priming, indispensable to the cyberaf fordant model, involving a slow, background introduction of information that becomes creepingly pervasive, such that the figure-or product-that eventually emerges against this inscrutable canvas appears inevitable, logical. The egregore's preference for embedding a program to generate embodied variations rather than simply implanting a robustly immutable earworm is readily explained via the twin concepts of preemptive self-distortion and the incongruity index: instead of running the risk of a melodic trope decaying into ineffectiveness, better to constantly induce variations displaying sufficient incongruity to force automatic pullback and redoubled implantation. When a melodic figure in the same lineage eventually emerged in the context of an advertisement, it would appear as new (incipience effect), and yet distinctly primed for by a multiplicity of same-but-different entities. This avoidance of a too crude ground-to-figure correlation might explain the success of the phonoegregore at covering its tracks. Extraction of these superearworms proved to be excruciatingly difficult and only possible through the design of a recontouring machine (though this method occasions other dangers that make it a risky endeavour at best). Subjects who believed they could neutralize the superearworm through the common technique of replacing the fragmented hook into its original context by listening to the entire piece from whence it came (thus recovering the integral whole, an overall structural picture in which every element is in its place, pace Adorno) were surprised to discover the worm's lack of affiliation with any previously extant entity.

Last night I dreamed that celebrated Russian neuropsychologist Alexander Luria's equally famous p... more Last night I dreamed that celebrated Russian neuropsychologist Alexander Luria's equally famous patient, known as S, was once again expressing dismay at the entailments of his hypermnesic condition. As is well known, a particular side effect of his photographic memory rendered him unable to accumulate snapshots, shadings of an object, into a graspable whole with finite boundaries, an operation Husserl called adumbration. Most notably, S could not collapse the various faces of an individual into a coherent, phenomenologically, and conceptually solid syndrome known as a person, which vexed him to no end.

Any future speculation regarding the coming alien nature of capitalism already has a lot to work ... more Any future speculation regarding the coming alien nature of capitalism already has a lot to work with. The manifold, all--encompassing manner in which inhuman, machinic systems subtended by algorithmic logics tethered to metastatic capitalism, conspire to affectively, cognitively, perceptually nudge our present everyday towards so many manufactured vistas, entangled in a maze wherein the boundaries remain imperceptible, already speaks of an alien present. Scanners, movement sensors, ultrasonic detectors, gesture and gait analyzers-the future is here, unevenly distributed. The homeostat is the apparatus par excellence of cybercapital control, a self--adjusting machine operating via constant feedback monitoring of inputs and outputs. The constant extraction of information from every domain of an individual's life (which occurs most often in the background of daily activities) operates to preempt future outside initiative by constantly predicting her next consumptive move, thereby embedding her ever deeper. Pervasive cyberaffordance eventually melts into system immanence, a pathological condition characterized by the inability to grasp the coordinates of the system one is in, through the isomorphic subjection of the infinitesimal quotidian to analysis, calculation and prediction. Music's key involvement in the cybernetic functioning of capitalism-an instrument of control through modulation-also instantiates an expanded set of tactical vectors and functional affordances, suitable for undermining the stealthy operations of capital, or at the very least foregrounding them long enough for their mètic contrivances to dissemble. Let's call it instrumental music. Consider the following as an attempt to constellate possible entry--points into employing music and its affective vitality towards enacting various forms of parasitic inhabitation within cybercapitalism. I'll do this by retrospectively re--valencing some of my past work, which might be thought of as technomètic assemblages leveraging occult connections between various domains; diagrams which thrive on the constitutive paradoxes of a given system providing provisional handles by which they might be occulted, nudged, intensified. What I'll be talking about today amplifies and extends some of the content of the Preemptive Glossary for a TechnoSonic Control Society, which is a work--in--progress, a repository for technomètic potential.

an unsigned note tacked to the student board in the music building of McGill University. It state... more an unsigned note tacked to the student board in the music building of McGill University. It stated (in broken English) that shortly after I had participated in a series of neurological experiments testing perfect pitch ability, a conversation had been overheard which suggested there was more to these sessions than met the ear. The message, destroyed in a house fire ten years later, alleged that a neural program or 'algorithm' could be implanted in subjects with substantial mnemonic capacities who are also 'good hummers', though the modalities of this invasive operation remain to this day utterly mysterious. A stimulus of some kind was to trigger an internal generation of melodies, each of which would get stuck until expunged, externalized by humming, jumpstarting contagious circulation. Though the experimenters were apparently of mixed feelings concerning the effectiveness of this implantation (as the note indicated, if in a tortured tongue), the intention was that these generations would proliferate as anticipations of corporately--valenced melodies--to--come. What follows is an attempt, admittedly provisional, to digest the implications of this still--cryptic transmission. It traverses multiple creative iterations tasked with pinging some of the still--murky domains adumbrated by the haunting frequency of this aberrant missive, concretized by subsequent investigation into corporate technologies of viral sonic infestation before online modalities definitively entered their metastatic phase. This method is adopted in order to situate the 1995 event as a lynchpin in the elaboration of a network of sonically abductive procedures instantiated by the imperatives of emergent neuromodulatory research. To dismiss this communication (however roundabout) as the practical joke of a conspiratorial crank would occult the opportunities it affords to induce effective revalencings of psychosonic capture operations into forces hurtling towards a future beyond capitalist instrumentalization. What concerns us here pertains to the domain of the phonoegregore, a spectral sonic cabal. Though the diagram ( ) which accompanies this debriefing appears split into upper and lower realms-the upper assembling elements constitutive of cybercapitalist circulation, the lower, techniques for intensifying, neutralizing, subtending such elements-it is in reality a totality the parts of which can be equally appropriated by any phonomagus, and employed to leverage the disposition of a given spacetime. In other words and at all times, the descriptive modes used below to frame contemporary cyberaffordant machinations can be simultaneously thought as prescriptive invocations, taking as credo that any position asserting that neurobiological abduction by Capital is inevitable and hermetically foreclosed to any possible escape is insufficiently nuanced. The notion that art and its constitutive assemblages might become preemptive again, functionally virulent, instead of playing perpetual catch--up to the new (military--industrial--entertainment--etc.) avant-gardes of our era, is absolutely key. Edison is said to have expressed his fear of a shadowy phonic consortium gaining access to the disembodied, objectified words of an individual, ripe for circulatory contamination. His anxieties were well founded. The schizophonically 1 mobilized effects of recording and transmission 1 Schizophonia = split sound, referring (especially) to the electronic decoupling of sound from its source both spatially and

courtesy of theocculture.net, 2013

PRIMERS: Earworm distribution system. The outcome of research carried out in the mid-1990s at an ... more PRIMERS: Earworm distribution system. The outcome of research carried out in the mid-1990s at an institution of higher learning (in a major Canadian city) involving the mobilization of biosonic propensities of select individualsmusicians with perfect pitch-converting the latter into hosts for a continuous production of abductive melodic tropes through embodiment and externalization. The implantation of an algorithm qua recombinant tune machine in the primer-subject ensures continued submission to a phonoegregoric will. These subjects, temporary way stations for a symbiant intelligence, were programmed to irrepressibly surface these self-generated superearworms-which, from their perspective, were seemingly occurring spontaneously, without motivation-by humming them in public places, thereby donating them to unsuspecting, temporarily adjacent bystanders (perhaps in the vain hope that the latter's attenuated aptitude for phonographic incorporation might neutralize the bug). (Hosts, confounded by the hyperrealistic contours of the hallucination-for all intents and purposes indistinguishable from typical hi-fi headphone immersions-for the most part remained oblivious to the worm's internal origin.) Indeed, an affectively valenced, flexibilized, boned hum lubricates transfer considerably; the inhuman made appealingly human. The surfacing process is likely jump-started by an environmental stimulus of some kind-another sonic fragment, an embedded verbal directive. The public spreading of inscrutable melodic tags might be better understood in terms of later developments in priming, indispensable to the cyberaffordant model, involving a slow, background introduction of information that becomes creepingly pervasive, such that the figure-or product-that eventually emerges against this inscrutable canvas appears inevitable, logical. The egregore's preference for embedding a program to generate embodied variations rather than simply implanting a robustly immutable earworm is readily explained via the twin concepts of preemptive self-distortion and the incongruity index: instead of running the risk of a melodic trope decaying into ineffectiveness, better to constantly induce variations displaying sufficient incongruity to force automatic pullback and redoubled implantation. When a melodic figure in the same lineage eventually emerged in the context of an advertisement, it would appear as new (incipience effect), and yet distinctly primed for by a multiplicity of same-but-different entities. This avoidance of a too crude ground-to-figure correlation might explain the success of the phonoegregore at covering its tracks. Extraction of these superearworms proved to be excruciatingly difficult and only possible through the design of a recontouring machine (though this method occasions other dangers that make it a risky endeavour at best). Subjects who believed they could neutralize the superearworm through the common technique of replacing the fragmented hook into its original context by listening to the entire piece from whence it came (thus recovering the integral whole, an overall structural picture in which every element is in its place, pace Adorno 1 ) were surprised to discover the worm's lack of affiliation with any previously extant entity. In effect, these slogans were not synecdoches for greater totalities, but simply splinters that referred to nothing but themselves, lying in wait for future associations. (Not to mention that in a colloidaudial environment of total electrification, any notion of an unscarred whole that might have remained sheltered from the fragmental imperative, and that could be unproblematically conjured in a vacuum, remains a suspect vestige of a long-forgotten time.) (Information donated by an experiment subject who wished to remain anonymous.)

The Idea of the Avant-Garde, ed. Marc-James Léger, Manchester University Press (forthcoming), Jun 2014

for the Duration (Before and) After Media workshop, OCAD, Toronto, 2011

Le Merle, Vol. 0. n. 0, 2011

Circuit : musiques contemporaines, vol. 16, n° 3, 2006, p. 83-94. , 2006

The "thousand points of light" syndrome: how to explain to a mature composer the nature of creati... more The "thousand points of light" syndrome: how to explain to a mature composer the nature of creative process, and to defend the notion of a praxis which exists independently of the punctual fruits which are thrust out to the world? Because the compositional world in Canada (and elsewhere) is predicated on these punctual fruits, which are devoid of context and occur in unconnected regions of activity, process itself has been relegated to a forgotten substratum of consciousness. It isn't mentioned, it doesn't matter. What counts are the individual commissions (for financial reasons, of course) and the often bad performances, and the resultant idiocies of newspaper critique to evaluate an "artistic life" in this country.

Circuit : musiques contemporaines, vol. 15, n° 1, 2004, p. 57-64.

qui a choisi très tôt dans le cours de son apprentissage de se consacrer à l'interprétation du ré... more qui a choisi très tôt dans le cours de son apprentissage de se consacrer à l'interprétation du répertoire du XX e siècle.

Contemporary Music Review, 2002, Vol. 21, Nos. 2/3, 53-67

by Iannis Xenakis represents a major turning point in composer-performer relations, when the well... more by Iannis Xenakis represents a major turning point in composer-performer relations, when the well-oiled (and hardened) paradigms of Western Classical piano performance practice ®nally fell apart, replaced by provisional and open-ended values. The study of this work provided an impetus to search out other composers testing the notion of a``critical virtuosity'' in their music, deliberately writing against conventional physical paradigms in order to trigger new relationships between body and matter. In effect, the old conceit of projecting a traditionally con®dent, totalized vision is no longer in the foreground. The author concludes by confronting Evryali head-on and provides personal, and ultimately provisional, performance solutions.

courtesy of theocculture.net, 2013

PRIMERS: Earworm distribution system. The outcome of research carried out in the mid-1990s at an ... more PRIMERS: Earworm distribution system. The outcome of research carried out in the mid-1990s at an institution of higher learning (in a major Canadian city) involving the mobilization of biosonic propensities of select individualsmusicians with perfect pitch-converting the latter into hosts for a continuous production of abductive melodic tropes through embodiment and externalization. The implantation of an algorithm qua recombinant tune machine in the primer-subject ensures continued submission to a phonoegregoric will. These subjects, temporary way stations for a symbiant intelligence, were programmed to irrepressibly surface these self-generated superearworms-which, from their perspective, were seemingly occurring spontaneously, without motivation-by humming them in public places, thereby donating them to unsuspecting, temporarily adjacent bystanders (perhaps in the vain hope that the latter's attenuated aptitude for phonographic incorporation might neutralize the bug). (Hosts, confounded by the hyperrealistic contours of the hallucination-for all intents and purposes indistinguishable from typical hi-fi headphone immersions-for the most part remained oblivious to the worm's internal origin.) Indeed, an affectively valenced, flexibilized, boned hum lubricates transfer considerably; the inhuman made appealingly human. The surfacing process is likely jump-started by an environmental stimulus of some kind-another sonic fragment, an embedded verbal directive. The public spreading of inscrutable melodic tags might be better understood in terms of later developments in priming, indispensable to the cyberaffordant model, involving a slow, background introduction of information that becomes creepingly pervasive, such that the figure-or product-that eventually emerges against this inscrutable canvas appears inevitable, logical. The egregore's preference for embedding a program to generate embodied variations rather than simply implanting a robustly immutable earworm is readily explained via the twin concepts of preemptive self-distortion and the incongruity index: instead of running the risk of a melodic trope decaying into ineffectiveness, better to constantly induce variations displaying sufficient incongruity to force automatic pullback and redoubled implantation. When a melodic figure in the same lineage eventually emerged in the context of an advertisement, it would appear as new (incipience effect), and yet distinctly primed for by a multiplicity of same-but-different entities. This avoidance of a too crude ground-to-figure correlation might explain the success of the phonoegregore at covering its tracks. Extraction of these superearworms proved to be excruciatingly difficult and only possible through the design of a recontouring machine (though this method occasions other dangers that make it a risky endeavour at best). Subjects who believed they could neutralize the superearworm through the common technique of replacing the fragmented hook into its original context by listening to the entire piece from whence it came (thus recovering the integral whole, an overall structural picture in which every element is in its place, pace Adorno 1 ) were surprised to discover the worm's lack of affiliation with any previously extant entity. In effect, these slogans were not synecdoches for greater totalities, but simply splinters that referred to nothing but themselves, lying in wait for future associations. (Not to mention that in a colloidaudial environment of total electrification, any notion of an unscarred whole that might have remained sheltered from the fragmental imperative, and that could be unproblematically conjured in a vacuum, remains a suspect vestige of a long-forgotten time.) (Information donated by an experiment subject who wished to remain anonymous.)

The Idea of the Avant-Garde, ed. Marc-James Léger, Manchester University Press (forthcoming), Jun 2014

for the Duration (Before and) After Media workshop, OCAD, Toronto, 2011

Le Merle, Vol. 0. n. 0, 2011

Circuit : musiques contemporaines, vol. 16, n° 3, 2006, p. 83-94. , 2006

Circuit : musiques contemporaines, vol. 15, n° 1, 2004, p. 57-64.

Contemporary Music Review, 2002, Vol. 21, Nos. 2/3, 53-67

MARX: "if appearances corresponded to reality there would be no need for science." -the same goes... more MARX: "if appearances corresponded to reality there would be no need for science." -the same goes for art video's initial mandate -and how one might reconfigure it in light of the present so what has happened in the last 40 years and where can we go from here?

The question is how to metaphorize all this. Is the performer the watcher or the watched? Like Ki... more The question is how to metaphorize all this. Is the performer the watcher or the watched? Like Kissinger he could be both at the same time. In this regard, one should study leaks a little more carefully. The Wilson-Plame case, for instance. But how can a musician-performer lie? How does one define lie in this context? After all, Haldeman and Ehrlichman are dead. Also an excellent way to try out some of the subliminal ideas. I think this is the right idea. And not very romantic. Sort of a reverse-spin. The material is complexified rather than dumbed-down. Maybe he's a really bad spinmeister. The out-of-control side would happen by accident. Then what? Some catastrophic patches? A sort of deus ex machina. A Karl Rove-like character, as in here's some filler material that has proven to be successful. He was a bad guy anyway, the world is a safer place etc. Bait and switch, shock and awe. Make it look good. This should happen entirely metaphorically. However, the use of antiquated FBI documents from a bad time in history should be embraced. Instant replay as it were, Howard Cosell-like. Another way to distract attention away from some potential problems, using the metaphorical potential of the glitch as carrier of truth, which would in some sense save the pianist from getting into structural hot water. Perhaps a couple of gross jump cuts might make a kind of gauche point. Think about the standard concert practice of dealing with screw-ups. You cover them up. What happens? The viewer doesn't notice and thinks it's a bad piece. Do not expose yourself to criticism at any cost. It's almost as if performers had some kind of immunity from prosecution. The performer will always do his best. We'll just keep spinning it to make it seem like our reasons have always been the right ones. He must have destroyed them. Resistance? No problem. No one is going to take apart your chronology. Kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Media can enable such untruths to become received wisdom. No-one can really turn away from a TV. That's the other thing. The idea of complete ignorance and complete cynicism being the same basic thing. We cannot turn away from the corrupt. We think we can quit anytime, but we really can't. We're hopelessly addicted to the thing. Almost mechanically replaying the past, unconsciously manipulated by the corrupting strings of perpetual insecurity. Should there be a solution built in somewhere, a spanner, a leaker, an informant-signifier who is tired of being a cog in a cynical power-hungry wheel? Should there be catastrophic clues? I know how to get that effect, look good doing it and make everyone happy. The composer won't even know what hit him. The panopticon is a good analogy for the concert ritual. Gould called it Climbing Everest. It's kind of gross actually, and runs the risk of being some kind of voyeuristic titillation. Freak show. That's really dangerous. How dishonest can you really get? Jacques Derrida had it right with his oscillation. Jarrett and Gould in effect reaffirm the dominant concert ritual. It still is possible to absorb them. Yes, technology mediates so much of our lives, but OK, then what? (PS: Ken Burns could make Hitler look like your friendly uncle.) How does one convey facts in so little time, with such rigid constraints? Very little flinching, little grimacing. They've learned their lesson! Is that all there is? Meanwhile, they're in the process of coming to a negative conclusion about the content (too silly and too simple a venture for a serious new music society). The music itself is only a tool to promote the personality and career of the artist. How cynical! Too complex ideas sound crazy or completely opaque. They don't make it through the concision filter. We're all impressed by circus animals. Anything more subtle than that won't make it. One-way only though. Sort of Smithsonian. It's not being done to him. He's involved in the conspiracy. How does the TV try and bend that? Does it distract you away from the local idiosyncrasies or steer you towards them? Is the pianist embarrassed by his inconsistencies, or does he use them strategically, to show some kind of superficial personality? Almost like a mistake. This should not be revealed, but unfortunately is. The wizard's pants are down. It's a hint dropped into the middle of the piece for anyone paying attention. Yes, subversives are always under fire, in one way or another. But it is possible to speak at once autobiographically and conceptually? Yes, the dark side of an already dark work. This piece is a slab of non-excerptable music. It's not a last performance. Take him back to an earlier, more successful (naïve) time. Is it the old Fanon saying? Being in the world is itself a difficult proposition. Why should being on stage be any less so? Again, it's an inside-outside affair. Actually, isn't the point that the listener should not really know that? Crimes are caught by accident. Don't need to actually work investigatively anymore, do actual research. We can just wait and let it fall into our laps. At this point, countless artists already bought the farm years ago.

Le Merle, Vol. 0. n. 0, 2011

A television series comprised entirely of altered commercials. The intervention in question takes... more A television series comprised entirely of altered commercials. The intervention in question takes advantage of the standard durations and structures of conventional commercials (30 seconds / 1 minute) by simply swapping their sound and image tracks without any further manipulation. These new assemblages asymmetrically remainder indeterminate quantities and qualities, laying bare the structural stresses intrinsic to the domains of sound and image, liberating new associations (surplus value) while suppressing others, flickering between affective composites which collapse distinctions to those which strictly enforce the independence of either. More than a pruning of successful swaps (which appropriately signify), the series through the scale of its development over 24 episodes works on the level of the viewer's propensity to associate the visual and the sonic, where components differ freely instead of being wrought into binary oppositions. (What happens when efficient semiotic connections start to withdraw into infra-legible territory?) Ultimately, the series aims to be consistently noisy to the idea of legibility in favor of an ongoing negotiation, where indigestible combinations thwart the propensities of language to marshall meaning ahead of time. Not to mention the added complexities memory affords, as compounded repetition propels the consolidation of matter into an uncertain future...