[microsound] just the cute squirrels

[david turgeon <david.t@xxxxxxxx>]

i will respond to 2 messages at once so as to not clutter the list anymore 
than it already is!  :)

(i know i've been joking about it, but there have been some interesting 
posts in this thread i hate so much.)

> However once you understand the *phenomenon* of
> lightning or the *recipe* of the tuna sandwich
> you can come to a greater understanding of said lightning bolts and tuna
> fish sandwiches.

not only a greater understanding, but there's also a possibility of greater 
appreciation...  & depreciation!  some find it hard to appreciate shirt 
trax, for instance, until they learn that they only use generic software 
anyone could find, which explains the simplicity of their sounds; it does 
change the perspective.  but perhaps this phenomenon is more obvious in 
live performance, particularly in conceptual music.  how can you appreciate 
_4'33"_ without seeing it performed or having it explained to 
you?  likewise, live house music usually does more to make me dislike the 
music than anything.  it's usually hard or impossible to appreciate 
abstract art for what it is without questioning the concept or what we can 
guess of the intent, or simply having forged a certain appreciation towards 
abstract art over time; only at that point do we experience something 
aesthetic from the work.

i think a less extreme, more topical example would be this: if you listen 
to say plastikman, expecting a complex arrangement of beats & different 
synths because you are new to techno & someone said "if you like aphex twin 
you'll like this too" (did i mention the scene is happening in 1998?)  once 
you've listened to it, you say "the beats are too simple & all there is is 
a goddamn 303 for the basslines!" & you will be absolutely right.  but 
then, you surf around the net & you find out that this is just plastikman's 
Big Shtick!  it's not supposed to be alien, this guy has made a whole 
career out of making records like that!  not only this, but other people 
(link to "chain reaction") do the same kind of stuff too!  oh, then it 
suddenly makes sense.  you know just what to expect.

perhaps "expectation" is the key word to explain autechre's always 
controversial status in the music scene.  some would say "you never know 
what to expect with them" but i don't find that true; i think they're 
pretty predictable, good as they are.  much on the contrary, there exists, 
ever since _tri repetae_ & _chiastic slide_, two mythical beliefs about 
that band.  one is that One Day Autechre Will Go Back To Making Normal 
Music, the other is that Autechre Are The Most Experimental Thing Ever 
(there's also a third school of thought, I Only Like Amber Really, some of 
whom can be found on the ambient list.)  of course, the band lives up to 
none of these expectations, so there's always a lot of people expecting 
either a complex electroacoustic chef-d'oeuvre (it IS autechre after all) & 
others who will hope that they sound a little more like arovane this time 
around.  i suppose there's no big deal about escaping people's 
expectations, but you've got to wonder whether it's not a little fabricated 
by the Reasonable People in sheffield...

the only measure i have for art for tonight is the speed at which it is 
forgotten.

> Do we care what sort of typewriter Thomas Pynchon used?  Another tired 
> Selectric novel, yawn!

but imagine you didn't know who thomas pynchon was.  what more, you would 
be trying to read his books & they would be nonsense to you.  there would 
be no plot you could recognize, no characters, no evolution of anything to 
discern amidst the murky mud of words; what more, you don't even understand 
the language it's written in, or the alphabet for that matter.  it could be 
an abstract drawing for all you know.  & you're used to reading books the 
other way around to begin with.  so supposing there would be no one to tell 
you what you're missing, you might figure there's got to be some hidden 
secret in the fact that he used a selectric to write it.

as a last resort, here is a quote from the northrop frye book (_anatomy of 
criticism_) i begun to read this morning:

"the attempt to reach the public directly through "popular" art assumes 
that criticism is artificial and public taste natural.  behind this is a 
further assumption about natural taste which goes back through tolstoy to 
romantic theories of a spontaneously creative "folk."  these theories have 
had a fair trial; they have not stood up very well to the facts of literary 
history and experience, and it is perhaps time to move beyond them.  an 
extreme reaction against the primitive view, at one time associated with 
the "art for art's sake" catchword, thinks of art in precisely the opposite 
terms, as a mystery, an initiation into an esoterically civilized 
community.  here criticism is restricted to ritual masonic gestures, to 
raised eyebrows and cryptic comments and other signs of an understanding 
too occult for syntax.  the fallacy common in both attitudes is that of a 
rough correlation between the merit of art and the degree of public 
response to it, though the correlation assumed is direct in one case and 
inverse in the other."

i'm not sure it helps the discussion in any way, but i found the 
description of "masonic" communities funny.

~ david