Sonic Fragments (The Poetics of Digital Fragmentation)

John Cage says in his last lecture (‘Overpopulation and Art’): ‘I think now of Marshall McLuhan; the world has become a single mind, we have extended the central nervous system. Electronics… our technology, makes the revolution for us.’ Sonic Fragments is ‘A manifesto in the medium’. Born of the capabilities of digital editing technology itself, the identity of the digital medium (cut and paste) is investigated. Re-mixing is intransigently unfinishable; the process could, in theory, go on and on. The Re-Mix reminds us that the rational is merely one possible system among others: it suffices that there be a system, even if this system is apparently illogical, uselessly complicated and curiously disparate. The project Sonic Fragments comprises seven short experimental ‘re-mixes’ by seven directors, each with a very different background: from experimental, feature, documentary, television, graphic design, visual arts to the new field of VeeJaying. The basic material is formed by the six short films from the project Sonic Images (made in co-production with VPRO television), that looks at the relationship between electronic music and digital image, from Stockhausen to Squarepusher, and involving five of the seven directors.