Re: [microsound] Re: Alternative performance devices

[Michael Arnold Mages <marnoldm@xxxxxx>]

On Fri, 30 May 2003, vze26m98 wrote:

> On 5/30/03 at 2:38 PM, Michael Arnold Mages <marnoldm@xxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > Miles may have said that he didn't care what the audience
> > thought, but he obviously did, because he was _there_, at the
> > gig, and not at home in his living room.
>
> Miles didn't SAY anything about the audience. What I said was that in
> his performances he refused "to acknowlege the audience and their
> appreciation."

> On stage, he was remodeling the
> audience's expectation that their appreciation would rewarded with the
> smile of negritude.
>
> Which gets right to the heart of what you and Trace are articulating,
> no?

Yes.  I wanted to go into that, but the whole thing was getting long...
Miles, in his (aggressive) reticence, did establish a compelling
relationship with his audience...  As a performer, he was *there* for
them, to play brilliantly and defy stereotyping and foil expectations.

>
> > But I do question the value of the celebrity performer as
> > manufactured by the entertainment megalopolists.
>
> What are you questioning about it? It seems as though the celebrity
> performer is valuable as entertainment. Isn't their a distinction
> between entertainment and art?

I don't think so.  The culture of celebrity is there to (force)spoon-feed
us whatever the industry chooses to throw it's weight behind. (Britney
Spears, Matrix Reloaded, New Kids on the Block, Gulf War II, American
Idol, Reality TV, McDonald's 'food'...) Popularity is manufactured by
hype, with intellectually and aesthetically bankrupt content.
Manufactured celebrity steals people's ability to think, to judge for
themselves what a good experience is be it "artistic" or "entertainment".
I think that the only distinction between Art and the rest of the world is
Art's desire to be set apart from the rest of the world.

> > There is far too much desire to "sex it up" with lots of
> > discussion about the poststructuralist foundations of the
> > computational language that was founded as a result of hegemony
> > of the interplanetary hoosegow.
>
> I'd be concerned that this type of parody is limiting your insight into
> the conditions under which musical artists perform...

Although I am not quite sure how you are relating "the conditions
under which musical artists perform" to overtly academic velvet-rope
jargonizing, let me say this: Don't be concerned.  I can hold my own on
the theoretical line.  I just get discouraged when people get too
concerned with justifying everything theoretically.  A structurally
sound/theoretically justifiable work does not equal an aesthetic
experience. Some have a religious need to justify every aspect of a
piece--every note, every brushstroke.  Analysis is for critics. Not to say
that you shouldn't consider the structure, or avoid having a mathematical
underpinning to a work.  Just that work that rides solely on illuminating
a mathematical structure without considering the aesthetics and experience
of the perceiver has always left me cold...

-Michael

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