From 91408f561cdf4bc8b34bfb93288a1fd127e3c220 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: "prompt.ac/@jeffrey" Date: Wed, 15 Jul 2026 10:28:39 -0700 Subject: [PATCH] papers/granularity: add the amateurism / heta-uma thread; 33% women-authored MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Extend ยง4 from "the ceiling is high" (virtuoso turntablism) to "the floor is open" (the amateur's right to fumble) โ€” the paper's clearest tie to AC's own amateur-first ethos: - heta-uma ("unskilled-good," Yumura Teruhiko / Garo) via Gravett; Tori Kudo's Maher Shalal Hash Baz (amateur ensemble, inspired mistakes) as a Japanese primary source; Novak's Japanoise (a scene built on the refusal of mastery, circulating on traded cassettes โ€” which also loops back to the tape theme). - Chun (Programmed Visions) anchors the "downsampling is a choice, not a limit" claim: software naturalizes its decisions so a fixed 1.0x feels like a given. The itemized menu forecloses the amateur's fumble most of all โ€” nothing to be bad at, so nothing to get good at. Women-authored citations now 12/36 (33%; 31% strict); non-Western improved (Kudo, Eshun, Chun) but still short of 20%. 10pp; passes the column gate. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) --- papers/arxiv-granularity/granularity.tex | 4 +- papers/arxiv-granularity/references.bib | 38 +++++++++++++++++++ papers/cli.mjs | 2 +- .../papers.aesthetic.computer/index.html | 2 +- 4 files changed, 43 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-) diff --git a/papers/arxiv-granularity/granularity.tex b/papers/arxiv-granularity/granularity.tex index 30ea8161b..e92f5d3aa 100644 --- a/papers/arxiv-granularity/granularity.tex +++ b/papers/arxiv-granularity/granularity.tex @@ -222,7 +222,9 @@ Turntablism is the existence proof at the human end. \citet{hansen2010scratching Elastic audio is the existence proof at the tool end. Every serious production environment already treats a recording as a stretchable material. Ableton Live's Warp modes use granular resynthesis to decouple time from pitch, so you can slow a passage without dropping its key or drag its tempo around a grid in real time~\citep{ableton2024warp}. Pro Tools' Elastic Audio does real-time time-stretch and pitch-shift on any clip~\citep{avid2024elastic}. Serato Sample offers real-time waveform scrubbing and needle-drop, letting you stretch or contract individual hits while preserving pitch~\citep{serato2017sample}. The hard algorithmic problem underneath all of this --- high-quality time-stretching that preserves pitch --- is so thoroughly solved that most tools license the same off-the-shelf engine and move on. The pitch-preserving stretch that would let YouTube offer a smooth, gestural speed control without the chipmunk effect is a commodity. It runs on a phone. And it is not new: \citet{mills2020aural} trace pitch-preserving time compression back to mid-century Talking Books, engineered so that blind readers could speed up their listening without the pitch rising --- accessibility drove the very technique the consumer layer now withholds from everyone. -There is a larger pattern here, and it is not only about speed. Every platform decides the \emph{resolution} at which it will let you engage its material --- how much of the thing you are allowed to touch. \citet{menkman2011glitch} treats the resolution of an image not as a neutral technical fact but as an imposed, contestable standard --- a politics of what a medium permits you to see; \citet{steyerl2009poor} reads the compressed, degraded ``poor image'' as the residue of exactly those decisions about circulation and control. Granularity of control is that same decision applied to \emph{time} rather than pixels: a five-item speed menu is a recording downsampled to four playable states, and the downsampling is a choice, not a limit. \citet{eshun1998brilliant} heard the opposite choice in the turntable and the sampler --- machines that refuse the finished recording as finished, turning it back into raw material and the listener into an author of sound. +There is a larger pattern here, and it is not only about speed. Every platform decides the \emph{resolution} at which it will let you engage its material --- how much of the thing you are allowed to touch. \citet{menkman2011glitch} treats the resolution of an image not as a neutral technical fact but as an imposed, contestable standard --- a politics of what a medium permits you to see; \citet{steyerl2009poor} reads the compressed, degraded ``poor image'' as the residue of exactly those decisions about circulation and control. Granularity of control is that same decision applied to \emph{time} rather than pixels: a five-item speed menu is a recording downsampled to four playable states, and the downsampling is a choice, not a limit. \citet{chun2011programmed} names the sleight of hand by which software naturalizes exactly these decisions --- Spotify's fixed 1.0$\times$ presents itself as a constant of nature precisely because the code has made a choice feel like a given. \citet{eshun1998brilliant} heard the opposite choice in the turntable and the sampler --- machines that refuse the finished recording as finished, turning it back into raw material and the listener into an author of sound. + +And it is not only a virtuoso's claim. The playback cultures that matter most have often prized the amateur, the mistake, the crude-but-alive gesture over the polished one. Japan has a word for it --- \emph{heta-uma}, ``unskilled-good,'' coined in the pages of \emph{Garo} by Yumura Teruhiko: work that looks bad and is, on the second look, exactly right~\citep{gravett_hetauma}. Tori Kudo built Maher Shalal Hash Baz out of largely untrained players and inspired mistakes, songs often written the day of the show~\citep{kudo_maher}; the Japanese noise underground David Novak documents was an entire scene founded on a refusal of mastery, passed hand to hand on traded cassettes~\citep{novak2013japanoise}. What they share is a conviction that the value is in the touch --- the amateur's hand on the material, error and all. This is the part the itemized menu forecloses most completely: it does not merely deny the expert a scratch, it denies the amateur a \emph{fumble}. There is nothing to be bad at, so nothing to get good at, and none of the accidental beauty that lives in the gap between. A real instrument lets you play it badly. That is where playing it at all begins. So the picture is not "consumers want expression but the technology is not ready." The technology has been ready for twenty years, it is standard equipment in every studio, and a whole art form is built on doing exactly this by hand. The expressive ceiling is high and well-mapped. The consumer playback UI is sitting on the floor of the room by choice, having decided its users get a menu. diff --git a/papers/arxiv-granularity/references.bib b/papers/arxiv-granularity/references.bib index e48c4e9a2..42809fd7e 100644 --- a/papers/arxiv-granularity/references.bib +++ b/papers/arxiv-granularity/references.bib @@ -370,6 +370,44 @@ address={Cambridge, MA} } +@book{chun2011programmed, + title={Programmed Visions: Software and Memory}, + author={Chun, Wendy Hui Kyong}, + year={2011}, + publisher={MIT Press}, + address={Cambridge, MA}, + note={Software naturalizes its own decisions --- makes the programmed feel + like a given fact rather than a choice} +} + +% === Amateurism, Imperfection, and the Right to Fumble === + +@misc{kudo_maher, + author={Kudo, Tori}, + title={Maher Shalal Hash Baz --- Interviews and Writings}, + howpublished={\url{https://torikudo.com/archive/}}, + note={An amateur ensemble built on inspired mistakes; songs often written the + day of the performance. Accessed July 2026} +} + +@book{novak2013japanoise, + title={Japanoise: Music at the Edge of Circulation}, + author={Novak, David}, + year={2013}, + publisher={Duke University Press}, + address={Durham, NC}, + note={A Japanese underground founded on a refusal of mastery, circulating + hand-to-hand on traded cassette tapes} +} + +@misc{gravett_hetauma, + author={Gravett, Paul}, + title={Heta-Uma \& Mangaro}, + howpublished={\url{http://www.paulgravett.com/articles/article/heta_uma_mangaro}}, + note={On \emph{heta-uma} (``unskilled-good''), coined by Yumura Teruhiko + (King Terry) in \emph{Garo}, 1970s. Accessed July 2026} +} + % === Prior Art: Gestural / Direct-Manipulation Playback === @inproceedings{lee2006dimass, diff --git a/papers/cli.mjs b/papers/cli.mjs index d03f2b05e..ebe52d309 100755 --- a/papers/cli.mjs +++ b/papers/cli.mjs @@ -1005,7 +1005,7 @@ function updateIndex(entries) { // Paper detail descriptions and short previews, keyed by siteName. const PAPER_COPY = { "gaps-in-granularity-26-arxiv": { - detail: "Expressive Control and the Impoverishment of Consumer Playback · arXiv 9pp", + detail: "Expressive Control and the Impoverishment of Consumer Playback · arXiv 10pp", abstract: "A record scratch gives you continuous, gestural, real-time control over a recording; YouTube and Spotify give you a dropdown of round speeds, and some give nothing at all. This paper names that gap 'granularity,' grounds it in the theory of directness and the mature craft of turntablism and elastic audio, and shows that Aesthetic Computer already ships the alternative across its players. The real opening is not that the instrument is impossible, but that it lives everywhere except the default transport of the apps you actually listen and watch through.", }, diff --git a/system/public/papers.aesthetic.computer/index.html b/system/public/papers.aesthetic.computer/index.html index e0cabb35c..c1ab20fd5 100644 --- a/system/public/papers.aesthetic.computer/index.html +++ b/system/public/papers.aesthetic.computer/index.html @@ -1066,7 +1066,7 @@
Gaps in Granularity
-
Expressive Control and the Impoverishment of Consumer Playback · arXiv 9pp
+
Expressive Control and the Impoverishment of Consumer Playback · arXiv 10pp
A record scratch gives you continuous, gestural, real-time control over a recording; YouTube and Spotify give you a dropdown of round speeds, and some give nothing at all. This paper names that gap 'granularity,' grounds it in the theory of directness and the mature craft of turntablism and elastic audio, and shows that Aesthetic Computer already ships the alternative across its players. The real opening is not that the instrument is impossible, but that it lives everywhere except the default transport of the apps you actually listen and watch through.
@jeffrey07/14revision 1Jul 14 17:53
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