Re: [microsound] Re: grabbing people with a statement

[Kenric McDowell <kenricm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thursday, March 7, 2002, at 06:55 
AM, ---------------- --------------- wrote:

> I have no gripes with any matters of dis-respect towards audiences or 
> venues due to the fact they do or should know what they are getting 
> themselves into.
>
> My concern is with what Christopher Sorg started to mention.  I 
> understand that most of the individuals involved in "contemporary"(i do 
> not use the word experimental because it hardly applies) music attach 
> some kind of  "statement", "message", or "meaning" to their work.  This 
> idea puzzles me.  Sound has no meaning.  It just is.  We may want to 
> dress it up in any infinite possibilties but that doesnt make it so.  
> Many artists present their work with so much talk that I wonder what 
> would happen if the talk wasnt there.  Would the work hold itself up?  
> Sometimes I feel there is a definite amount of over intellectualization 
> in the arts fields.  It is almost masturbatory.  If you have a message 
> or statement words are alot more efficient.   Is it possible to 
> appreciate sounds for what they are, not as some vessel for my 
> self-expression or ideas?

Language is musical. And thank you for that statement about sound I 
suppose I 'll be thinking about it when I'm listening to only-themselves 
sounds. Context, interpretation, interpenetration. Law of the observer. 
It's possible to fetishize a void. Both an artist and a monk?

In a contractual, legalistic, consumer sense, of course, you are right 
when it comes to matters of  respect.


-km