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Re: [microsound] anti-retinal



On Tue, 15 Jan 2002, anechoic wrote:

> imo: music should allow the listener to participate in the production of
> meaning...I have no interest in manipulating people's emotions via music
> (film composers are paid to do this) or particularly care for music that
> attempts to manipulate my emotions (it's a narrow bandwidth mode of
> "listening")...

I would have to agree.  Intentionally dramatic work, for example, Arnold
Schoenberg's pre-serialist work, comes across as overwrought with emotion
and begs for sympathy.  It can get tired.  And again, film composers are
typically using socialized sound events to imply an emotion toward a 
sympathetic end.  When we here the violins that start in when a hero
falls in love, or the staccato bass line of a villain's approach, we
already know how to react.  It's a part of our culture of sound, and it's
very cliche.  I do think that it is important to recognize that a composer
can and does do this in his or her work.  And even when the composer has
no dramatic intent, there are many sounds that already have dramatic
meaning and associations, regardless.

> a calculus textbook is a good example of an object that contains a 
certain
> transcendental beauty but which can be different things to people
depending
> on how they're looking at it...I prefer music which generates different 
> ideas as it changes contexts...

I'm not sure about "transcendental beauty", but I certainly would agree
with "different things to people".  Transendental implies that an infinite
beauty, an ideal state, which I think is contradictory to the
latter.  Perhaps you could make the argument that the concept of calculus
has a spiritual primacy and beauty because of its completeness as a world,
but then again, you'd have to have some sort of universal agreement to
make that claim.  I personally don't think that just because a concept is
whole unto itself makes it transcendent.  And there are plenty of
mathematicians who would probably disagree with that idea of perfection,
anyhow.  But I digress..

I think that your last comment is one of the smartest goals that an artist
can have.  Allowing your work to be open enough to evolve in
meaning.  Didactic work, if an artist is lucky, is only penetrable for a
very short time.  Besides, leaving some ambiguity makes work for 
historians and critics, who just love puzzles.  Which means speculation,
writing, puzzles, fun...

_________________________ 
Christopher Sorg
Multimedia Artist/Teacher
http://csorg.cjb.net
csorg@xxxxxxxxxxxx