dissonant dissemination; the problematic of weak ties; resistivity

(note: this post will use no uppercase letters, in honor of the monome aesthetic)

as he cut off the final echoing dub-delayed clipped sample, % (pronounced owner/operator) immediately appeared relieved. he looked up into the decently large cheering crowd, waved a bit, then dodged under the table to start unplugging his equipment so ro (tehn's little bro) could play an equally minimal set. afterwards, a bunch of us monomers congratulated him on killing it. he just looked a bit confused and out of place, explaining to us that he, like, only performs out once a year, and he just thought he was going to come here and do some quickie 15-min set but 'accidentally went for double that and…
well, this whole thing is just really fucking weird, man. like, who are all these people? to be living out in yr own little world, throwing up music on the net and thinking maybe a few kids will end up hearing it is a long ways from getting called up by some dude offering to fly you out to princeton to chill with monomers and play a set… this shit's surreal. his face grew even more contorted between joy and confusion when i explained to him that his original two-track videos were, to me, the first works demonstrating the infinite potential of the monome.

i should step back a moment and explain what's going on here. first of all, the video: % is using a monome patch called mlrV to manipulate samples mapped out on his monome, along with a slider bank to control those crazy delay effects. the visuals are being generated by his computer using a programming language known as max/msp/jitter.
to step back fully: monome is a box with buttons on it that light up independently of the others and sends signals to a computer. that's it.
really.
designed originally by tehn (brian crabtree) for use in his own music and installations, the monome was never meant to be a commercial device. however, a friend of his by the name of daedelus picked up the device and knowledge of its existence began to spread, leaded more and more people to ask "wha…?" tehn found his email box overflowing with requests for monomes. so, he decided to make some and sell them. however, he wasn't just going to sell them and packaged software; he was going to use local parts from suppliers he personally knew, hand build every device, and make unassembled kits + full diagrams of the design + source code for every hand-designed patch/program available to all, rather accidentally founding the seemingly impossible: open-source hardware. it's an odd title, but must be a topic saved for later.

due to this open source nature, the monome community is rather prolific in churning out new patches with crazy functionality no one saw coming. of course, the question as it relates to this course is: how do all these people get here, and then to an eating club in princeton for an all-day party/festival?

backtrack: it's the 90's. % is in technical college, learning programming and engineering. his friends are cool, but they don't exactly have the same music tastes: they like dave matthews, he like hip-hop and some of the crazy glitch he's hearing out of the uk as of late. using his programming skills, he discovers some early computer audio programs, buys a sampler, and starts chopping together beats. problem is: it's a rather lonely profession, cause all his friends just wanna hear dave matthews and ask him what the fuck he's doing when he flips on the heavy dubbed-out hip-hop he's been making in his dorm.

so let's transpose this situation into sociological terms. it appears as if the connections between % and his college friends (or at least, the vast majority of those he knew at college) would be strong (or at least stronger than other ties), and the connections between % and the various sources of hip-hop and jungle (early dnb for those not up on electronic music history) music would be weak (or rather, weaker). but if they were really weak, why would % continue producing music on his own, without any determined audience, especially when he was receiving such negative feedback from his closest friends (or, at the very least, people who had stronger ties to him than his music suppliers). granovetter's analysis is also problematized by the student's resistance to his music, their focused attack on it. if dissemination was really as easy as granovetter put it, then groups would constantly be open to new information once fed it, and those groups that never change would only do so due to disconnectedness. This is perhaps where the fall-off rate used in the study of chain letters come in; the spread of an idea is bound to stop somewhere, after the kind of power it has close to the originators+early adapters at the center. But that doesn't make up for the kind of psychological effect this had on the unexpectedly %, nor does it explain why his music sounds so… different.

nor do we know how % finally came to monome. perhaps some weak tie, somewhere, finally connected him up with the kind of people who needed his music as much as he needed the music of new york and uk. of course, the final irony is his inability to really get feedback, the continuance of his very private mode of music making without realizing (despite the many comments and likes on his videos and on the monome boards) that he did have ties pointing outward, people who followed his music. like myself. he didn't even realize this after getting called up by a programmer in australia who wanted to design a new version of the patch all the linked performers use with his programming/musical input.

i'll end with a quote from that daedelus video linked above. he's talking about internet radio, but it sort of applies here: "it's just like broadcasting in outer space, you know…? like, maybe someone alien's listening, maybe not, but at least it's fun to try."

…that last quote might be symptomatic of postmodernism. but it demonstrates my point perfectly, i believe.