Andrew Lison (UB-DMS) presents “New Media, 1989: Cubase and the New Temporal Order.”

Please join us for a discussion/workshop of Andrew Lison’s article and the larger book project from which it emerges, New Media at the End of History.
His book proposal/project overview and article draft are available by request (alison@buffalo.edu).

ARTICLE ABSTRACT:
The year 1989 is well known as the moment, in Francis Fukuyama’s famous formulation, of the ‘end of history,’ but this development has rarely been considered in relation to the concurrent rise of digital multimedia. This article examines the 1989 musical sequencing program Cubase in relation to contemporaneous multimedia authoring software. With its ‘timeline’ and graphical arrangement view, Cubase introduced a pivotal method of visualizing information, enabling its users to manipulate an entire composition at a glance. Sonic theorist Steve Goodman has noted that this development, along with the thematically similar technique of timestretched sampling, shares a novel relationship to time aligned with theories articulated by the French philosopher Henri Bergson. Examining the way that multimedia technology put this philosophical conception into practice demonstrates the paradoxical nature of new media’s novelty, how its mainstream arrival institutes its own limit, securing a present wherein nothing new can seemingly manifest itself again.