Re: [microsound] Re: microsound Digest 16 Sep 2000 06:24:23 -0000 Issue 163

[m <m@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> It depends upon what one means by "theory" here.  Are we talking 
> about music theory or are we talking about this recent academic 
> development called "theory," which at first seems philosophical but 
> also wants to divest itself from the problematics that have absorbed 
> philosophy for a long time?  If we are discussing the latter, then 
> the whole question of the difference between theory and practice 
> goes out the door--they are one and the same, unless one wants to 
> insist on a vulgar distinction of the sort that a musical recording 
> is the practice, and the ideas that motivated the recording are the 
> theory as such.  Of course, this is an "idealist" distinction.  As 
> to whether theoretically motivated works "suck" or not, this depends 
> on a category of "judgment" that is equally problematic, which I 
> will get to below.

I think there can be a legitimate distinction between theory (in the 
sense of concept or idea) and practice, at least in what I believe 
Steve was getting at... can't a good idea be poorly executed?



> ...what bothers me about Madonna is the strength of the "commodity" 
> and how capital expediently promotes it to the expense of everything 
> else, including my own preferred commodity.  Avant aesthetes of our 
> type reactively think the solution to this problem is to reinvoke 
> "aesthetic quality" to save ourselves from pop and the dominance of 
> the capitalized tropologies.  In doing so, however, we simply allow 
> ourselves to be dominated by the category of art once again and in 
> the process reinvigorate the predominance of the commodity we would 
> want to abhor.  The solution, apropos Deleuze, would be to "take a 
> line of flight" away from the entire question of the "good" and the 
> "bad" altogether and honestly and frankly assess our 
> phenomenological relations with aesthetic works.

Understood, though one might also say that the solution (at least on 
a personal level, where I believe one has to begin), is to simply be 
more accepting of other folk's sensibilities instead of reacting 
against them in any particular way. OUr emotional response is true, 
certainly, but we need not invoke it on others... and if we then 
create a space to reevaluate the way we interact with art (or 
anything, really), all the better.

Michael

np - schlammpeitziger <augenwischwaldmoppgeflöte> (say that three times fast!)

--
listen here... http://www.foundrysite.com/audio