Re: [microsound] adorno essays

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Todd Wallar wrote:

>I believe Gann has a few things backwards. Understanding the
>commercialization and socialetal role of music has little bearing on whether
>or not a particular piece of music is good (aesthetics). 
>
This comment assumes that determining whether a work is "good" or "bad" 
can be separated from the operative cultural situation that makes it so. 
 Aesthetic quality is a social construct, not some immutable, universal 
designation.  Like Lyotard once said, someone makes a mark on a wall in 
a cave.  Is this mark writing (iconography) or is it art?  It is 
neither; the distinction will come later.  In other words, in Adorno's 
case and in so many others, the commercialization and societal role of 
music has EVERYTHING to do with whether a piece of music is "judged" as 
good.

>But you must establish
>an aesthetic framework first.
>
"Good art" doesn't come before the community decides to see it as such.

>Without such, all one can do is create more labels and categories
>(unpopular, anticorporate, degenerate, entertainment) to serve a political
>agenda, and worse, confuse them with aesthetic values (honesty, style) as
>Gann has done.
>
You apparently believe aesthetic values are autonomous in relation to 
the real world.

> This only contributes to the alienation that Gann says he is
>trying to avoid.
>
One doesn't avoid alienation.  One negotiates the conditions that create it.

>  
>

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