[microsound] 'that's edutainment'

[Owen Green]

Hi All,

Really interesting discussion - glad it hasn't been shouted down.

Stephen Hastings-King wrote:
> ok so there's 4.
> i noticed in kim's mail of a couple days ago references to critiques of
> information theory (shannon et al).
> any pointers for reading material?

Terre Thaemlitz has been critical of information theory's use as the 
basis for aesthetics, at least as far as having issues with comments by 
Attali that regard music as 'pure information'.

I don't know if you've read any Abraham Moles, but the ease with which 
his info-theory based aesthetics (from the 60s) argued itself into 
providing a purportedly natural basis for the musical hierarchies of 
labour as they stood at the time should be grounds for immediate 
suspicion :)

I can't see any basis for a critique of the theory *per se*, but 
obviously there are plenty to made about misguided applications (say to 
complex areas of human activity like musicking).

-- 
O