The essence of creativity operates within a paradox: it must occur outside a framework, but must also reflect upon the structure that excludes it. Clicks and cuts do just that: they are the sound of right now. This series document the evolution of creativity within the disposable, and in doing so may also create posterity out of sounds that were never meant to register in their original purpose.
The result may not be the ideal forum for the marketplace, rather it is the ideal forum for the excess of that marketplace. Outside economic rigidity exists artistry, and with economic scarcity comes virtual superfluity. These are precisely the parameters that now define clicking and cutting: an exploration of the space that exists between cultural aesthetic reductivism and the waste it produces.
The focus of this third installment of “Clicks & Cuts” is to highlight the range of creative possibilities within that space. And what possibilities they are! The caliber of quality and diversity presented here reflects these artists at their peaks. Whether it be agf or Rechenzentrum or Tim Hecker or Frank Bretschneider, the overarching consensus is that this collection of irrefutably necessary artists has come into its own. This is the sound of experimental maturity. These are the sounds that directly confront the transitional unease of modern society.
That said, the music of mistakes does not have to justify itself conceptually in order to be enjoyed. Perhaps the greatest achievement put forth by these contributors is that they’ve managed to marry high-brow experimentation with a primal urge for listening pleasure.