[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

[microsound] re: two very important questions



A short time googling nets these:

"What is called music today is all too often only a disguise for the monologue
of power. However, and this is the supreme irony of it all, never before have
musicians tried so hard to communicate with their audience, and never before
has that communication been so deceiving. Music now seems hardly more than a
somewhat clumsy excuse for the self-glorification of musicians and the growth
of a new industrial sector."

    * Jacques Attali Quoted in Classic Essays on Twentieth-Century Music, ISBN
0028645812.

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Power

---

" In Code: And Other Laws of Cyberspace, Lawrence Lessig warns of
"architectures of control" that have an increasing capacity to regulate
behavior (30):

    When you first purchase a book from Amazon.com and establish an
    account ... Amazon.com's server places an entry in your cookie
    file. When you return to that site, your browser sends the cookie
    along with the request for the site; the server can then set your
    preferences according to your account. Amazon.com can recommend
    books for you to buy, given the pattern of purchases you have made
    before. (34)

The very fact that, by recognizing my "type," Amazon can predict what I am
likely to purchase, suggests that what I perceive as individual choice or
personal taste is actually part of a more objective social structure. But
corporations are responsible for creating as well as exploiting such
structures. One cannot help but recognize with Amazon something of the
pervasive, mysterious power described by Foucault not as a repressive force but
as one that "produces reality; it produces domains of objects and rituals of
truth. The individual and the knowledge that may be gained of him belong to
this production" (194). For all its proclaimed edginess, indie rock would
appear to satisfy more than it challenges preexisting social and economic
structures. As poignantly demonstrated by recent ad campaigns, the desire for
otherness, for distinction from the masses (a sentiment coherent with the
tradition of"culture and society" mapped out by Raymond Williams more than 40
years ago, and dating perhaps as far back as the Industrial Revolution), is
highly marketable. Volkswagen's use of songs by Jay Farrar and Nick Drake; its
small group of friends who conscientiously turn away from the party, preferring
instead the select company and superior space of their car; the unanticipated
sounds of Mogwai on both a Levi's commercial and Sex and the City episode--all
these suggest that the desire to be different is little more than commonplace,
that the indie elite are more numerous than they would perhaps care to think."

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2822/is_1_28/ai_n9507897/pg_10

---

"Although the Internet has historically been praised as "the world's
largest functioning anarchy," it is rapidly changing as governments
start to regulate it and large corporations get more and more
involved. "The tendency toward decentralization, even in the face of
the enormous concentrations of power in the entertainment and
broadcasting industries, is an exciting and optimistic sign. [...] In
some circles, there is an argument that technology and information
systems invariably decentralize and thus challenge the very powers
that created them. This has a utopian and romantic ring to it" (Roger
Johnson in Computer Music Journal). "The paradox is that there is a
highly personalized, contained art that fits into the confines of a
small screen, and yet that belongs to a global network that relies on
a huge governmental or otherwise bureaucratic entity to support it.
Personal computers may be just that [personal], but the technology
needed to make them talk to one another [...] relies on just the kind
of establishment that networked art is trying to subvert" (Richard
Povall in Computer Music Journal)."

http://amsterdam.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-9805/msg00078.html

---

"Within any given society there may be a variety of sub-codes and conventions,
some of which critique and subvert the dominant codes and conventions. Some
cultural commentators use the Gramscian notion of hegemony to describe the
relationship between dominant cultural practices and resistant counter-cultural
practices. For Gramsci, hegemony refers to the way in which dominant ideologies
circulate in and through societies with fairly strong social stability, such as
British
society, to maintain the moral and intellectual leadership of the ruling class.
In
Gramsci?s model, counter-hegemonic subversive ideologies emanating from
subordinate classes are also allowed to circulate, at least to a degree that
the
dominant classes can bear. The Manic Street Preachers may write songs full of
subversive left-wing lyrics, but they are also a commercial pop band signed up
to
EMI, a company which is happy to allow the band to peddle subversive lyrics as
long as they continue to make money not only for themselves, but also for the
record company."

http://www.ashgate.com/subject_area/downloads/sample_chapters/Indexing_Multimedia_Creative_Works_Ch1.pdf

---

This is ill-considered, but, therefore, pessimistically, the impossibility of
complete subversion? Negativland attempts subversion with U2 and Casey Kasem
and suffers while Bono becomes the moral voice in Switzerland. Dangermouse
grabs Jay-Z, but Jay-Z rides the wave. Neither Bad Religion (and hordes of
others) mashing up Bush's speech to make him say what they believe is on his
mind nor a lot of surplus-wearing leftists and anarchists seem to have
prevented a second Iraq war or a second Bush term.

Buckminster Fuller would say that critique pales next to creating superior
alternatives. (?You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To
change things, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.?)
Personally, I'm burnt on pop culture's ironic overload. Take off the gimme caps
already.

Renick

Renick Bell
http://www.the3rd2nd.com


		
__________________________________ 
Do you Yahoo!? 
Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new resources site!
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/resources/

---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: microsound-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
For additional commands, e-mail: microsound-help@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
website: http://www.microsound.org