ABSTRACT
The universe begins with a moment of profound silence followed by a “primal scream”. Dissonance is the echo of that missed encounter, that big bang, the jarring noise of the singular (non)relation to one’s own piece of reality. The register of the “inspiring, universal, blah-blah” is dissonant, and its repetition lays out a locus of low level annoyance and irritation, delineating the discordance, within themselves, of the organic and inorganic elements of techno-bureaucratic assemblages. The dissonance that sounds in the singular chance encounter with one’s own profound reality echoes in the repetitive everyday actions of social reality governed by the pleasure principle that seeks out a harmonious existence. The repetitive dissonance of Brian Eno’s generative music is an effect of a software programme that allows a finite number of tones/sounds to yield a practically unlimited diversity of combinations in which, however, each one is perfectly equivalent and exchangeable.
