[microsound] 'that's edutainment'

[guiver ben]

well maybe the course i was on was a bit boring. maybe i was young and a bit all over the place. i got much more excited by my guitar and mixing records, and the possibilities afforded by decks. and drum machines, and pedals...and like i said earlier, i was being a bit gobshitey...

i also found it hard being in an environment where, like the article Kim ref'd, people were a bit blinkered in some ways. i played at a gig in a curch my mate organised - it sold out in a day - and his art tutor was pretty condeming of the 'fake art', as he saw it, within the venue. i mean it wasnt like basquiat, or renior, or that sort of thing, but his relfex action was to reject, and write off, immediately, as a sort of defence. 

i think once you say 'politics' instead of POLITICS it becomes much more relevant and meaningful. i have the 'politics of noise' book though i have not yet had the time or motivation to read it fully. other commitments, etc etc 

i think what you say is interesting as once you get to politics it becomes more a study of relationships, like once you get away from psychoanalytic dogma and ritual psychoanalysis becomes a useful and interesting way to study the politics / relationships of different aspects of the mind/personality. but some people take to politics or psychoanalysis like religion, they want something defining and concrete, and i dont think the world is like that.  

POLITICS per say, well, i'm sceptical, i think it can become like religion, dogmatic and unthinking, also impersonal and wooden. with rather lethal consequences also, politics probably ranks with religion as a killer i think.  

perhaps when you refer to 

“politics is the sphere neither of an end in itself nor
> of means  
> subordinated to an end; rather, it is the sphere of a pure
> mediality  
> without end intended as the field of human action and of
> human thought”

you might be talking about something nearer philosophy. i dont mean to split hairs, but certainly in england when people say politics a lot of people i know, including myself, dive for cover. they dont want to get involved in something crude and which is often a displacement activity / acting out for, or of, unthought / unconscious thoughts and feelings. its sad, as there's a lot fo power there, but anyway i dont think this thread is so much about that sort fo politics, but what i am saying is that it's easy to end up in that position in other mediums. 

thats why i ref'd hunter s thompson, as he seemed to have a way of making things very engaging without drying them out or making them boring at all. maybe thats a bit of an idealistic position, although i once attended several seminars on boredom at the philedlphia assocation's introductory course in psychoanalytic psychotherapy, with john heaton as the lecturer, and they were fascinating. i guess personality is as much of a factor as anything else in the animation of a subject: a difference/ balance(ing act) between what you know and who you are. i am aware of this dynamic in myself, and how easy it is to end up being a talking dictionary, and the pleasures of avoiding this with a more real engagement. 

liking your site (sirr-ecords.com), btw. 

ben 


--- On Wed, 1/21/09, Paulo Raposo <sirr at sirr-ecords.com> wrote:

> From: Paulo Raposo <sirr at sirr-ecords.com>
> Subject: Re: [microsound] 'that's edutainment'
> To: microsound at microsound.org
> Date: Wednesday, January 21, 2009, 3:01 AM
> really perplexing that a politics graduate claims politics
> as a poor  
> way to discuss sound/music.
> and more intriguing that someone that is, we hope,
> interested in  
> politics, cannot find a way within it
> to discuss and think about sound (activity).
> Is sound and music separable from political realm and its
> ruling  
> paradigms?
> what is an author (like Foucault asked)? where does he come
> from? what  
> is made of?
> or  are we in such an oblivious condition that we tend to
> aestheticize  
> sound and music as the fascist attempted to aestheticize
> politics?
> the great living philosopher Giorgio Agamben wrote:
> “politics is the sphere neither of an end in itself nor
> of means  
> subordinated to an end; rather, it is the sphere of a pure
> mediality  
> without end intended as the field of human action and of
> human thought”
> 
> and speaking of Agamben, for those interested there's
> great stuff here
> http://v2v.cc/v2v/The_Power_and_the_Glory
> and a lot more easy to find in yotube on paradigm and
> contemporaneity.
> 
> paulo raposo
> http://www.sirr-ecords.com
> 
> On Jan 20, 2009, at 8:19 PM, guiver ben wrote:
> 
> > i think politics (and im a politics graduate) are
> often a poor way  
> > to discuss sound/music.
> >
> > i like authors / people who are a bit more emotionally
> literate: i  
> > think the alt indie scene (well the more mainstream
> alt indie  
> > scene ) in the 90's was compared by someone to
> going to church,  
> > which i found quite amusing. it was the straight faced
> ness of it  
> > which i think appealed to the joker...sometimes things
> are so  
> > wooden, it bores the shit out of me and kills the life
> in things.
> >
> > satire might be a good place to start. pisses of all
> those pofaced  
> > types to begin with, and brings in humour, which is
> surely an under- 
> > rated quality in any kind of communication.
> >
> > that said i wouldnt wish to dismiss anyone who wanted
> to discuss  
> > something they found very serious, i just think
> there's a danger of  
> > taking some things too seriously. and russell brands a
> situationist,  
> > apparently...
> >
> > can anyone think of a good article / paper they read
> on music that  
> > made them laugh? i'd be most interested.
> >
> > best
> >
> > ben
> >
> >
> > --- On Tue, 1/20/09, CraqueMat
> <craque at craque.net> wrote:
> >
> >> From: CraqueMat <craque at craque.net>
> >> Subject: Re: [microsound] 'that's
> edutainment'
> >> To: microsound at microsound.org
> >> Date: Tuesday, January 20, 2009, 8:07 PM
> >> Is there a way to talk about music without using
> ism's?
> >>
> >> I'm not being an ass, this is genuine
> curiosity.
> >>
> >> Sometimes I'm bothered by the way I can't
> be a part
> >> of a conversation
> >> just because I haven't had time to read a book
> (and I
> >> read a lot).
> >>
> >> Damian Stewart wrote:
> >>> Stephen Hastings-King wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> 2. these days, everyone's a
> situationist.
> >>>
> >>> could you explain this a little? i only came
> across
> >> the situationists quite
> >>> recently...
> >>>
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> >
> >
> >
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