Re:laptop hell/Hegel/ theory

[Bill Ashline <bashline@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

From: Ian Andrews <i.andrews@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [microsound] Re: laptop hell/Hegel/ theory

> This is great Bill. Very well argued. I'd like to add that many people who
distrust theory and theoreticians miss something vital.  Cultural theory,
like music, or maths, or cooking, or whatever, is a pleasure in itself. Not
all those talk theory do it to look cool or win letters to put at the end
of their name. Many enjoy it for its own sake. For many people theory does
not limit thought, it enables thought to expand, by providing more tools
for thought to work through.<
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Thanks Ian.  I agree with you.  Theory, when one learns to do it and 
appreciate it, is no different than listening to music.  Theory can provide 
comparable pleasures to those of listening or any other form of life that 
one appreciates.  I?ve said as much here before.  One of the real pleasures 
of listening to complex music is the ability to grasp it intuitively.  When 
one is ?capable? of reading theory and grasping it, a comparable delight 
takes place.  A lot of times people reject theory simply because they don?t 
have the capacity or desire to share in the delight.  It?s a shame really.
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> The question here is: is the laptop performance an artwork. I think it is
(or should be) but when the processes remain ambiguous, for me, it can come
very close to resembling the work of the DJ. Now I don't think that what
most DJs do could be classified as an artwork.  They are superb technicians
in their inaudible suturing of music, they are great arbiters of taste
(aesthetic judgements), and have the ability to create moods. They are more
or less like interior decorators. They are very creative of course, but I
what they do falls more into the category of craft than art (of course
there are  rare exceptions).<
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I can?t abide by this, Ian, but mainly because I?ve given up on the category 
of art, particularly any one that is opposed to ?craft.?  All of the 
descriptions you use for DJs would seem to qualify them as ?artists? if the 
concept is at all meaningful.  Of course, whether we need to classify 
anything as art over and above anything else is something that might also be 
examined.  You could also make the argument that all musicians of any form 
are interior decorators (unless they?re working outdoors, in which case 
they?d be ?exterior decorators?).  Some people I know who like jazz improv 
refer to laptop performances as ?ambient wallpaper.?  As if any form of 
music isn?t some form of wallpaper.  As if wallpaper is always a lesser 
thing.  As if we could never fathom a wallpaper that doesn?t have a banal 
concept of beauty as its operative principle.



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