spreadsheet culture

1/   “Digital recording and editing often feels like working in a spreadsheet—it's not always a place for dreams" 
-- Chris Walla -  quoted in press release for Tape Loops, project by ex-Death Cab for Cutie man whose says of his choice to go analogue: “I can't change a closed, physical tape loop with a mouse-click or a keystroke, and that’s precisely the point"

2/ " The code of ones and zeros found in the pits of a disc’s surface was, at its base level, no different from the ones and zeros that represented the code of a spreadsheet program."
-- from  Mark Richardson's excellent piece about Oval's 94Diskont  reactivating his Resonant Frequency column at Pitchfork. (94 Diskont - 20 years old! or is it 21?)

Mark further notes: "This marked a philosophical shift, because data implies flexibility and transportability" and adds "Popp... once said that what Oval did was not “art” or “capital-M music” but rather could best described as “file management”—a term so functional that it can’t help but shatter the persistent myth of creativity. What we are doing, Popp seemed to say, is sitting in front of computers, opening folders, creating files, and arranging them. The work was, at base level, no different from an administrative functionary in a large office tracking inventory with Microsoft Access: You figure out what needs to be done and engage the software and hardware tools at hand in completion of the task." 

^^^^^^^^^^^

Walla's Tape Loops thing is really nice actually

hear a track from it here

interview about it here