@kargatron...which immediately involves us in discussions of plasticity and the degree to which the brain's predilections are further shaped and mediated by cultural formation and selective attention. I hear things as music that my wife does not, and I see things as sickeningly kitsch that others are apparently prepared to hang on their living room wall, and there are cultures that have works of art that likely both of us would need to learn how to perceive (there seems to be some evidence that people from different cultures looking at the same picture are not necessarily "seeing" quite the same thing; likewise there are active pathways from the brain to the ear that "tune" the ear to hear certain ways as well as pathways from the ear to register stimuli. My understanding is that neither hearing nor seeing are passive processing of stimuli, it's more interactive, which is where there is space for cultural formation). That's not *just* brain differences - the neurology is always a part of what is going on but I am not sure it evaporates much of anything in terms of an adequate overall picture of what is happening - when it comes to which kinds of stimuli we are prepared to recognize as art there is more than basic processing going on.
I'm not trying to reduce anything but the apparent mystery. One can identify aural and visual arts that seem to intellectually bear resemblance, and investigate similar ideas, themes, approaches - my claim is only that no one should expect people to react similarly to them, even under continued exposure, because of the basic differences in processing.
New old stuff, from the even more extensive archives than we ever realized,
dug up by Gerald Malanga. Early electronics from the ex-Velvets,
ex-Theater of Eternal Music, ex-Fluxus, ex-ex-ex-(...) ethnopsychic shaman.
@karagatron, sure, just saying that in addition to "because of the basic differences in processing" there is also "because of the basic differences in cultural formation and priorities" - and the latter is what makes it interesting to me to ask "what does it say about us that we position different things in different ways that we in principle could have positioned otherwise (because the processing differences underdetermined the preferences)"
Thanks for the heads-up on those titles.
I would add to those (in case you don't
know them) these two extras. I haven't
been to Ubuweb to see if they're there,
so this may be redundant...
---
Now playing: C.P. McDill - Where Fog Comes From
Haven't decided over the years whether this release is sublime sedentariness,
willful wandering or just an aimless anachronism. Interesting concept that could've
been delivered more successfully. It's on again, but "listening" is a big word for this.
@Gp, I don't disagree with your statement above, but would not agree here with your statement: "Funny how representation is coded so differently in the different artistic media." - I specifically think that the physical processing differences *could* plausibly explain every bit of funniness (thinking of visual vs aural, that is). Not that it does, but that it could, and you'd need some difficult-to-achieve data collection and analysis to establish otherwise.
On glorious CD with the 2 pieces finally labeled correctly.
Now if I could just get the sudden track-change clicks from my
forever played 8-Track version out of my mind. Bernie Krause
claims that he was just demonstrating the Moog to Harrison and
was taped without his knowledge and then released. Harrison says,
"Nobody's gonna make a moogkee outta me!" Krause replies,
"George, I think you're mixing up your pop bands."
A pleasant surprise on my return to emusic to find this was released a couple of weeks ago. It is labels like Real World that make emusic membership worthwhile.
The inscrutable Tribe of Astronauts performs a darkly delicate operation on your mind with this long-form soundscape.
Sunburnt nomads of the celestial reaches, the masked collective known as Tribe of Astronauts has gifted us with yet another mysterious epistle, telling us all about their strange peregrinations, if only we could decipher the code in which it is set down.
Tribe of Astronauts is a secret netlabel society in which any one member does not know all the others. The only law is free but anonymous sharing of sound experiments within the netlabel scene. Dare you take the pathless journey of the Astronaut?
Cover illustration: Støvkornenes dans i solstrålerne (The Dust Motes' Dance in the Sunbeams) by Vilhelm Hammershøi, 1900. In Public Domain.
Not that it does, but that it could, and you'd need some difficult-to-achieve data collection and analysis to establish otherwise.
Right, a lot of things are in principle possible, except that I don't think the burden of proof is on establishing otherwise. I think the burden of proof would be on brain-oriented reductionism; it's the hypothesis that culture would not be involved that is more in need of proving itself, especially as there are cultures that do not value representational art the way subsets of Western culture do, and that even in the West realism in visual art is a historical phase.
I don't think we disagree on the impact of culture - I didn't mean to imply it wasn't heavily involved. Perhaps I mistook a connotation from your earlier comments - it seemed to me that you (and I've seen others even more explicitly) may have found it notable that "similar" aural and visual arts generally have very different receptions. That outcome alone I think one should expect, regardless of culture, due to physical processing differences. I don't mean to imply at all that culture doesn't heavily impact those receptions.
@kargatron, yes, I suspect we agree. Perhaps another way of putting my original interest would be autobiographically, I.e would be to say that it is not really that long ago in lifespan terms that I myself would have scoffed at arranged field recordings as a form of "music" (or even aural art, if you will), whereas now I find them particularly interesting. In my own process of thinking that through and watching my own changing reactions as I learn to listen to new things, I have had conversations with myself along the lines of "wait a minute, you like nature documentaries on film, and you like photography and paintings that are representational, why are you reacting differently to someone who set about artistically arranging sound as their medium to do something similar. Isn't that kind of a double standard?" Now I have shifted (in part through thinking that through), but am aware that I know folk who would find some of what I listen to weird while applying the same kind of double standard (from the standpoint of logic, which of course is not really what determines how we process things most of the time). When I said this was funny I was not particularly intending to imply that it's inexplicable, or even abnormal, just that it's interesting to see these kinds of internal tensions in the way we process different things at different times. At any given moment, some forms of art are coded as safe and comfortable and others are weird, and that is malleable (one generation's shock music becomes the next's venerable classics, for instance), and it interests me to watch these kinds of processes underway in myself and others.
ETA, and maybe tl;dnr, yes, it's not surprising *that* there are different perceptions of different media at all, but it is interesting to ask why those differences take a particular form at a particular time.
Comments
dug up by Gerald Malanga. Early electronics from the ex-Velvets,
ex-Theater of Eternal Music, ex-Fluxus, ex-ex-ex-(...) ethnopsychic shaman.
Show me the way to go drone.
FYI: Angus MacLise @ the Ubuweb Goodies thread
From the same page on Ubuweb Goodies:
I would add to those (in case you don't
know them) these two extras. I haven't
been to Ubuweb to see if they're there,
so this may be redundant...
---
Now playing: C.P. McDill - Where Fog Comes From
Hüsker Dü - New Day Rising
willful wandering or just an aimless anachronism. Interesting concept that could've
been delivered more successfully. It's on again, but "listening" is a big word for this.
On glorious CD with the 2 pieces finally labeled correctly.
Now if I could just get the sudden track-change clicks from my
forever played 8-Track version out of my mind. Bernie Krause
claims that he was just demonstrating the Moog to Harrison and
was taped without his knowledge and then released. Harrison says,
"Nobody's gonna make a moogkee outta me!" Krause replies,
"George, I think you're mixing up your pop bands."
OK, so I made that last bit up...
At the time of its release I really didn't like the Clash; funny how tastes change with time....
A pleasant surprise on my return to emusic to find this was released a couple of weeks ago. It is labels like Real World that make emusic membership worthwhile.
Second play - I liked it first time round, so hoping it will get better this time
ETA: Hmmmm ?
NP: Kreng, with Emusers link:
Afro-mash rap-up
ETA, and maybe tl;dnr, yes, it's not surprising *that* there are different perceptions of different media at all, but it is interesting to ask why those differences take a particular form at a particular time.