A Southerner's Perspective
Ricardo Dal Farra · Computer Music Journal · 1996
To think about the of the is to think about individual perspective, personal involvement with creation, one's own contact with technology. In computer music, as in so many other things in life, there are recognized systems, software packages, composers, compositions, etc., but a of the for one person is not necessarily a of the for everyone; sometimes of the is fixing the establishment, against something more radical, revolutionary, or different. Or maybe of the is just setting standards, rules, and guidelines, that many will strive to reach. I have lived in Argentina all of my life, and perhaps my point of view toward of the reflects a perspective that is shared by other composers and researchers living in this region (however, I don't pretend to speak for them). For me, things, possibilities, even aesthetics, usually seemed to be, to work, or to evolve, far, far away from my own place-I mean Western Europe, the USA, Canada, or Japan (the so-called first world). Many composers and researchers emigrated from my land or other Latin American countries to these northern regions to obtain access to the state of the art; even today there are lines waiting to take the plane. Everyone knows (well, maybe not everyone in our global village), though, that technological progress is changing our lives. Access to stateof-the-art hardware, software, information, and knowledge is not as complicated as before (though it's not easy, either), and the situation is probably continually improving. Composers born in Argentina, such as Horacio Vaggione, Mario Davidovsky, Alcides Lanza, Alejandro Vifiao, Mauricio Kagel, and many others, left their original countries trying to find a state of the art of some kind. Likely they were trying to find a way to do what they wished, to find the best place to access state-of-the-art conditions. Surely state of the art in life does not exist, but after living where I am for so many years, one knows there are some places (or states) that are much closer than others to this situation.