I wrote earlier I’m working on a loop piece. It started as an explaration of a new concept of minimalism I have been thinking for a while.
Minimalism feels often like gold paint — a thin surface which says nothing but: “I can afford this”. It is a style that justifies consumerism by making it look almost spiritual.
On the other hand, minimalism still has its point. We live in an abundance of things and yet people crave for more. A powerful minimalist expression is capable of showing that we don’t need so much to feel whole.
Another point is that achieving a perfect white canvas has become easier because in most cases all you need to do is to press cmd+n. Digital nothingness is not rich, it’s disturbing. A white painting has shades. A silence recorded with a microphone sounds like silence, while digitally generated silence is perfectly nothing.
One of the strategies that I have used when fighting clinical silence in my audio works is adding subtle noise to my recordings. Sometimes I have composed the noise with synths, sometimes I have recorded it from tapes or vinyl records, broken cables or by micing broken speakers. To achieve a more realistic “silent canvas” I have had to compose the silence behind all sounds.
Next step is to incorporate the “imperfection of silence” in my live expression. Which means that I don’t have to produce it separately from the rest of my expression.