Re: No electricity(!)

[James Keepnews <keepnews@node.net>]

Sorry if someone's beaten me to the green punch on this or if this seems 
to be
off/at-the-extremes-of-the-topic, but so far I haven't seen a discussion 
in this
thread about the environmental impact of electronic music production.

This is a particular concern of mine, coming out of an electronic arts 
Master's
program where visiting artists would arrive with multiple "refrigerators" 
on wheels
and, you may be sure, more than one power strip to fire up the watt-hungry 
gear so
chilled. My thesis attempted to address this footprint left by electronic 
art by
presenting a video installation (as it took place in the out-of-doors, I 
dubbed it
an "outstallation") off the grid; most of my time not actually creating 
video and
its soundtrack was spent researching reliable electronic generation means 
that have
the least environmental impact. Solar cells have achieved some advances 
but, sadly,
affordability is not among them. My best solution was a 
air/noise-polluting gas
generator, not really appropriate for those Morton Feldman loops and the 
club you
might want to heft it into might not ask you back...or to stay.

Thoughts? The targato and the shenai are lovely alternatives to wall-warts 
and,
with practice, you can even, for example, shift their pitch and/or get 
chords out
of them (one multi-phonic nutjob saxophonist of my acquaintance once 
prefaced his
discussion of this technique by observing, "Now...it ain't like a 
piano..."). But,
our gear fetish of choice, its means of sounding, this list from that 
website --
these all accept the means of electrical production and consumption as a 
sine qua
non (thus, this thread). I'm not looking to foment any Luddite bashing of
prevailing technological imperatives (on on-line listserves like this, 
such bashing
is, at least, markedly compromised) but I do wonder what an environmental 
impact
study of just the popular music tradition alone, as it is manifested at 
the turn of
the millenium, might reveal. "MP3 kills"?

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