Kieran Daly - BGM MNAR
futow 009
Kieran Daly - BGM MNAR (disc / mp3)
Kieran Daly - BGM MNAR (disc / mp3)
total time: 01°41'16"
Release on October, 2014
if you may, please let me know the concept of this work. MNAR is "missing data analysis" terms?
KD: Yes, MNAR (missing not at random) is one of several terms identifying types of mechanisms involved with missing data. In short, for data to be missing not at random is for the 'missingness mechanism' (its cause for disappearance) to be unsystematic in occurrence and dependent upon unseen observations. This makes it very hard to model for imputation of those missing values, in my understanding. cf. Hedeker and Gibbons (2006).
For BGM MNAR, the impossibility of playback, or incapacity of playback to start, was investigated in lieu of the essential musical necessity of both 'playing' (production) and reproduction. Recordings were made under conditions where sustained playback was impossible: low battery power, no power, and also an inoperable playback system. During recording, playback would disappear often without external control -- i.e. 'not at random', rather than randomly (systematically) determined. Since disappearances (blackouts) were uncontrolled, it was difficult to know by which mechanism playback disappeared. BGM MNAR might be considered a documentation of troubleshooting, in this sense.
There is a common understanding of music as merely sounds, silences, and no thing else. 'No thing else', i.e. finitude, is precisely the focus here. How to present only the end of a recording, its finiteness? Even though BGM MNAR presents sounds and silences, 'no thing' was (attempted to be) emphasized by cutting recordings together, sampling the beginning or end of recordings, pausing/stopping, and of course the preemption of complete playback via incapacitation -- hence the many ostensible 'do-overs', in the latter case. This was an attempt to present only 'cut', rather than what is between cut. Silence is still appearance! Thus, the musical injunction to always have some thing to hear or experience -- where appearances are *for* some thing (us, the musician, the environment, etc.) -- no longer needs affirmation, but while still following the injunction and presenting things to hear.
Additionally, the use of various genres that might function as "background music" (BGM) -- jazz, field recordings (sound therapy), ambient, audiobook -- is to follow that function's principle of not necessarily using/evaluating such genres on musical terms (analysis), but rather on terms of their environmental function (synthesis) (which isn't to negate the possibility of taking the 'environment' as analytic). The use of such genres in BGM MNAR is done according to a subtraction or dampening of (the bias towards) quality/resolution i.e. genre, style, discrete identity, etc. -- most, but not all, samples are at 3.91 kHz -- which compels one to think merely from quantity (adiaphora): frequency, duration, etc. Such "low-resolution" might infer a continuity of irresolution between samples and compel skepticism towards their determination as qualitatively different or even 'musically' bounded.
Acknowledging JF, IM, TU, SS.
Kieran Daly
http://qwone.info/
http://qwone.info/