Re: [microsound] Cutting edge???

["aleks" <bvasic@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Bob said:
"""" I don't care if I was the first person to use Arizona Iced
Tea cans to make music; it was never experimental, it was never meant
to be progressive, or cutting edge, and god forbid revolutionary"""""

Aleks said:
""But that is a label imposed by others, is it not?  More so because it 
doesnt follow  traditional music making techniques, an exploration or 
experiment if you will?  I agree that this is a overused buzz word but 
what other optionare we left with?""


When I am asked to describe the work that I can use terms and concepts 
people are familiar with or not. The majority of
people I come in contact with have limited musical experience, and
so when I say "music for music's sake" they have no idea what I mean.
At the pub I am left to say "Experimental" and then they go "Ah, I see."
Almost everytime someone hears I have an MA in computer music they are
stunned to think of a graduate degree in techno. I am left to say I
have a degree in electrical engineering instead.

"""The only thing I will predict is that these term abuses will
continue. People are complex bundles learned behaviors who usually aren't
aware of why they act the way they do""""

""People also have a need to catagorize things.  Not all that do this are 
evil genre destroying johnny come lately mongers.  Some people need to be 
able to describe things 3when they communicate.""

I don't think this is cross cultural, i.e. essential to the human spirit.
Like Sontag says in the beginning of her
essay "Against Interpretation", art began 40,000 years ago and ended when
the Greeks began theorizing upon it. Or, "Interpretation is the revenge of 
the intellect upon art." Along with categorization comes specialization, 
which Buckminster Fuller denotes as the enemy of comprehensive thought. I 
can see how categories are destructive to comprehensive thought when I 
walk into Sam Goodies. Over here is the Urban, there is the new age, here 
is jazz, that little stack over
there is classical budget, and this wall is pop. I easily lose sight of 
the interconnections which exist between all these groups and their 
subgroups. That knowledge
creates a context for understanding between say Velvet Underground, 
Conrad, Lamont Young, Glann Branca, Sonic Youth, Philip Glass, David 
Bowie, Brian Eno, Jimmy Rodgers, and so on.

No doubt, categories make possible Encyclopedias, the Olympics, and
Virgin Records/Airlines: some of the greatest Western inventions. 
But I hesitate to say that categories are conditions of the human spirit.

-- 
     ,ooo.
 .  a888888:..--.
\\\ 8888888:`\   \        Bob L. Sturm
 \\\`Y888P'   \.  \       
 =\\\_..' @ ^_ \   \      
 `c\`-'  `-\'   \.  \     Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla
    \  \   <\  .'`  )     http://www-ccrma.stanford.edu/~sturm/
     \  \n   .'  ._/      http://www.composerscientist.com/
      \__|).\  ._/        http://www.mp3.com/BobLSturm
      `--: .-)_/