The Aestetics of failure: “post digital” tendencies in contemporary computer music by Kim Cascone begins by assessing an all to familiar quote by Marshal McLuhan “the medium is the message”, she begins by stating that although this was a good philosophy when it was thought up, in todays society it is an almost obsolete quote. She states that “the medium is no longer the message; rather, specific tools themselves have become the message” she is stating that the medium has become so much more then what we expected, it has become its own identity. She continues on to say that it is the failures of any given medium that helps them to progress. In her example she uses the Internet, stating that “…system crashes, clipping, aliasing, distortion, quantization, noise and even the noise floor of computer sound cards are the raw materials composers seek to integrate into their music.”. This however is not mutually exclusive to this medium (internet); we see in some of the most famous paintings in the world, it is some of the smallest imperfections are the thing that makes them so intriguing. For example the Mona Lisa, would it have been such a famous painting if she had a regular smile, or if it hadn’t been stolen? Doubtfully, we see time and time again that it is the small imperfections that keep people coming back to art, it makes them question the individual imperfection which leads to a discussion of the piece as a whole. She does go on to say that any work with too many imperfections can be quite easily dismissed, and so it is up to the artist to find the perfect harmony between imperfection and perfection, which admittedly is not an easy task.
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