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Re: [microsound] pearls before swine
On 31/03/2008, at 10:19 AM, Owen Green wrote:
babilano wrote:
Do you feel it matters if your music is not heard outside a small
group of cognoscenti?
I'm much more concerned with the activity than the artefact, so I'm
relatively un-bothered about who comes to my shows, buys my offerings
etc. compared to wanting to engage more directly with as wide a range
of people as I can, especially non-specialists. I'm certainly not
attached to the idea that developing a taste for 'difficult' music is,
in and of itself, character building or some such guff.
I wholeheartedly agree. I never inform family members, friends or work
colleges about my gigs. If people are genuinely interested they usually
find out for themselves. Of course I will always inform people I know
would be interested. But others who are not specially interested in
electronic music would normally come only out of curiosity. I don't
want to be a curiosity. For me art/music is an everyday activity, not a
means to a career, or a compulsion to convince the world that what I'm
doing, my music, is the best, most correct, most aesthetically
pleasing/challenging, etc.. Its not going to wean the general public
off a bland mainstream diet. I will leave others to attempt that.
Can that ever change?
Does it matter if it doesn't? I don't think there's anything
necessarily wrong with specialization. The problems, as I see them,
that inform categorizations of music by 'difficulty' etc., are rooted
in our wider musical / artistic culture, and the tendency for many
people to be discouraged from participation from a young age.
It doesn't have to change. Basically the audience for contemporary art,
as I see it, is essentially other contemporary artists. Apart from a
few dedicated theorists and curator types, the general 'art going'
public are still struggling to come to grips with early Modernism. Its
much the same with music. I don't see this as a problem. For me its the
exchange of ideas that is important, and this exchange occurs between
artists. I try to make the ideas that inform my music (though I've been
working with video the last few years) legible to anyone who has an
understanding of the context. I don't try to hide anything or be
mysterious. But, on the other hand, I never try to make work accessible
to a wider public by dumbing it down or being too literal, didactic, or
submitting to popular taste (unless, of course I'm actually working
within a specific genre, which is something I've done before, and might
possibly do again).
Or is it like expecting a monkey to appreciate the taste of ginger?
The word taste here is unfortunate. For me there is no such thing as
good taste or bad taste, astute aesthetic judgment or poor aesthetic
judgment. There are only good ideas and bad ideas.
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