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Re: [microsound] adorno essays
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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