GIVE ME A SIGN

Tue. October 28, 2003
Categories: Abstract Dynamics

Hyperdub‘s Steve tells me that a lengthy interview with none other than Wiley is forthcoming on Hyperdub. The man will be discussing his love of winter and will broach the question of those oriental influences. Can’t wait.
I saw Steve at Middlesex’s University’s Capitalism and Philosophy Lab (organized by the estimable Ray Brassier ). I burbled briefly about Baudrillard’s For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign , and tried to initiate some discussion on the question of mp3’s and sign value. You might remember this being raised here (or at the old site , if you are being pernickety).
Baudrillard’s point is that many traditional analyses of capitalism have left what he calls ‘sign value’ out of account. Marx’s analysis, for instance, was based solely on the difference between exchange value (how much a thing costs) and use value (what it does). According to Baudrillard, more important than both of these guages are sign value (the prestige attached to a particular object). It isn’t exchange value, still less use value, that determines sign value; just the opposite in fact. Things acquire monetary value on the basis of their prestige, not the other way around.
The mp3 has limited exchange value (as we all know, there are sites where you can pay for mp3s, but these are flying in the face of the general trend towards gratuity). My question was: does it have any sign value?
Baudrillard argues that the level of sign value ascribed to an object has no relation to the intrinsic qualities of that object. Rather, sign value is determined by the object’s differential relations to other objects. Baudrillard’s example is fashion. If a mini-skirt is deemed ‘beautiful’, it is not because of any of its own qualities, but simply because of its difference from the maxi-skirt.
So does the mp3 have sign value? My conjecture was that, lacking the allegedly supplementary features of the record or the CD (the cover, even the materiality of the disc itself), reduced to pure functionality, the mp3 lacks those elements in which sign value could be invested.
Steve pointed out that the mp3 is an audio object, and that there is no reason to assume that only visual objects have sign value. Others pointed out that an mp3 collection as a whole could have prestige. In certain online filesharing communities of course, if your collection reaches a certain size, you garner extra privileges (a form of online exchange value).
The relation between sign value and the visual is an interesting one. A record collection can be displayed , and the display itself has an aesthetic quality. Yes, in a certain sense, an mp3 collection can be displayed but such a collection has a non-aestheticizable brute functionality.
With music, as Steve said, prestige is acquired not solely or even primarily by being seen to possess something , but by being seen to have heard it (the journalist or the blogger) and being heard to have heard it (the DJ).
All that said, I still think that there is something different about the mp3. This isn’t only about its lack of visual presence; there is also the issue of its lack of tactility (nothing to touch or hold).
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Speaking of ‘Give me a sign….’, Pop latest:
Britney/ Madonna. I’m with Spizzazzz on this one. It’s Madonna who lets down a really rather serviceable single. The video has reached such a velocity of kwick-kutting delirium that it is almost nightmarish. Witness that wood slatted corrdior straight out of Welles’ The Trial (the scene with Titorelli the painter). I want this to be a hit. Britney has attained a tragic, pathetic grandeur over the past year or so (which reached its apogee with the painful humiliation of her appearance at the MVA’s). Give her a break.
The new Kylie is rather good, too. Be much better if she wasn’t singing on it, though.

5 Responses to “GIVE ME A SIGN”

  1. Abe Says:

    very interesting. some actually recommended that Baudrillard book to me the other day and I forgot the title, big up for the refresher.
    On the value of MP3, there are couple ways to look at I think. Its pretty damn hard to place a metric value on an intensive object like a song or piece of art. I’d argue that they tend to have too main states, one where they have no monetary value at all, and one where they are *infinitely* valuable. Now in reality *infinite* has a threshold determined by each individuals financial state and philosophy. There are certainly times when given a million dollars I’d pay it all to hear *that song* that’s in my head. Other times that song might not be worth a dime to me.
    A recording really sells you the *potential* to hear what you want when you want it. Its worth nothing except in that it might provide you with infinite value at some point. Hence the ability for price to fall close to zero, both in the used CD market and online. It also explains that the economies around musical experience, concerts, clubs and jukeboxes are completely uneffected by the fact that the objects are now free.
    There is also an interesting connection to time and value here. In some of the less publicized corners of the file sharing world the users *are* actually paying for certain privileges. In one space people pay about $12 a month for a service that provides 150k a second downloads with no queuing. Interestingly this space has significantly less selection then most file sharing spots. In another space people pay $5 a month in order to get priority access to downloads (they get placed ahead of non payers in the queue). In this space the value is on obscure and high quality files.
    In both circumstances, the value is not in the files themselves, but in the speedy delivery of music. And that’s what gets sold, the fact that that song will be there in the moment it might be priceless.

  2. luke Says:

    when’s the wiley thing coming?

  3. mark k-punk Says:

    when’s the wiley thing coming?
    Soon is all I know. I’ll let ya know as soon as I hear it’s up….

  4. Steve Says:

    its up now at http://www.hyperdub.com/softwar/wiley.cfm

  5. sean Says:

    Is there some sort of melancholy virus going around? Get it together lads.