[microsound] 'that's edutainment'

[Damian Stewart]

Jason Wehmhoener wrote:

> I guess I'm personally interested more in the sounds than the ideas. 

i often feel like that. in fact, in my broader work as a an 
interactive/newmedia/digital/electronic/whateveritscalled artist, i'm much 
more interested in the experience than the ideas (which is surely the point).

i'm reading Audio Culture at the moment -- the Michael Nyman essay 'Towards 
(a Definition of) Experimental Music' has a nice line:

[W]hile it may be possible to view some experimental scores as concepts, 
they are, self-evidently (specific or general) directives for (specific or 
general) action. Experimental music has, for the performer, effected the 
reverse of Duchamp's revolution in the visual arts. Duchamp once said that 
'the point was to forget with my hand ... I wanted to put painting once 
again at the service of my mind.' The /head/ has always been the guiding 
principle of Western music, and experimental music has successfully taught 
performers to remember with their hands, to produce and experience sounds 
physiologically. [comes from pages 214-215]

and a another nice one from Bernhard Günter a few pages back:

I wish to get away from the paradigm of music as language-like, the 
aesthetics that believe music, or art in general, is a form of 
communication. My favorite metaphor for explaining what I'm after is a tree 
in a meadow: the tree is just standing there, it's not a message for you, 
but looking at it, you may thinking about a lot of things, feel a lot of 
things. ... When you associate things with what you hear, visualizing this 
or that, language gets back into the game and destroys the possibility of 
perceiving the existence of sound, its "being like this".

-- 
damian stewart | skype: damiansnz | damian at frey.co.nz
frey | live art with machines | http://www.frey.co.nz