Life w/ Technology & In Through the Out Door

An Introduction, or My (Ambiguous) Life with Technology
Steve Reich

The author of this article, Steve Reich, seems to have meticulous ideals for his creations. From ideation, to execution, and ultimately the final product, his methods and philosophy stray greatly from conventional music composition. When asked to compose an orchestra piece, Reich's thoughts were, "I don't need 18 first violins - I need one, amplified. I always knew there must be something I could do instead of conventional opera, but I just didn't know what." This contrarian attitude towards traditional music indicates how important it is to Reich that his compositions remain consistent with his own ideologies.

Interestingly, Reich also mentions taking several breaks from technology over the years, and expresses a recurring need to step back and forth between technologically engineered sounds, and more organic music ("...in 2002, I felt I needed a few years of just instrumental vocal music before I was ready for another trip back to the lab"). Go goes on to say, "We've always thought of our brains in terms of our latest technology. At one point our brains were steam engines...telephone-switching networks...digital computers...We probably haven't gotten it right yet." This perspective may indicate that although Reich is very steadfast in his ways, he also believes in the evolution of technology and that it will never truly end.

In Through the Out Door: Sampling and the Creative Act
Paul Miller

Throughout the article, Miller draws conclusions about humanity's current relationship with the origins all things, from technological advances, to various sounds that he has encountered. He says that "civilization isolates all of us, ideologically and physically, from the source of all life - nature." From this statement, it is reasonable to assume that Miller's belief about the aforementioned relationship is that it continually dissolves as technology evolves.

Near the beginning of the article, Miller also alludes to the idea that silence is rare. I believe that this claim is meant to not only be taken literally, but to also imply that our world today is constantly bombarded with noise in the form of ideas, words, social constructs, physical objects, etc.

Continually in his article, Miller writes about relationships. He notes that, "buildings in architecture are nothing more than correspondences between relationships - presence and absence, form and formlessness." Here we can see that even in instances of physical objects, Miller's primary interest is relationships.