By Marc Weidenbaum <\/p>\n
Matthew’s previous post got me thinking about a lot of different things, starting with the possible illusion that remix-based music production is inherently simple to accomplish. While the effect of a turntable can be approximated with a mouse click, to equate the two is to miss the qualities inherent in vinyl manipulation (and other such means of working with recorded sound, from John Cage’s sliced tapes, to CD mixing, to real-time digital synthesis). A turntablist actively working with the vinyl is very different from someone using a “reverse-LP” effect, and just because someone can add that preset flavor to a track doesn’t mean they really can cook. (I’m a big fan of Paul’s Boutique, too — the 20th anniversary just came out. The Dust Brothers are an incredible team, and I prize my MP3s of the instrumental versions of those tracks; they’re eminently listenable to in their rap-less form.)<\/p>\n
I agree that Lessig doesn’t focus on those implications. I think, in
\nthe end, he’s really talking about “popular” culture in its myriad
\nforms, and most specifically popular culture (1) as a product and (2)
\nas an activity. When it comes to popular music as a product, my sense
\nis he isn’t — and probably needn’t be — concerned with the manner in
\nwhich it is produced, because that would fall into his “professional”
\nbucket, which is mediated by legal systems of creative attribution and
\npublishing agreements and so forth. <\/p>\n
It’s popular culture as an activity that’s really where he’s doing his
\nthinking. (That is, popular culture as it’s consumed, and especially as
\nthat consumption becomes a form of creativity — the “W” in “RW.”)
\nThat’s the realm where digital literacy is key, both as an
\ninteractive-creativity opportunity for a new generation (and old ones,
\nif they wanna play along), and as a necessity in education. I think the
\nclosest he gets to this is in his discussion of that video literacy
\nprogram in Houston.<\/p>\n
When it comes to less-popular music (I’m kind of avoiding the term
\n“art,” or at least I was trying to and have now failed), me, I’m not
\nparticularly concerned that some percentage of kids who might have
\npicked up a violin will now fiddle, instead, in digital synthesis
\nsoftware. I do get the concern — the atrophy of physical production of
\nmusic as computerized tools make realization of musical ideas a more
\nfluid and easily accessible opportunity. I’d be hard put to see the
\nresult as anything but positive. But as for the atrophy part, I guess
\nI’m not expecting that to happen. I mean, I saw the Pixar movie Wall-E,
\nyeah, but I don’t think we’ll all be floating around on hovercraft
\nsynthesizers, and shooting each other our casual remixes via Bluetooth
\nas we slowly lose the ability to walk or even move our previously
\nnimble fingers. (Sorry to overstate it. It was just kinda fun to run
\nwith the image.)<\/p>\n
When I fear the future, I look to the past for precedent. (Yeah, not
\nalways with comforting results, but it’s a good reality check.) A
\nhundred-plus years after the rise of photography, painting is still in
\nfull force. I have never walked into a gallery and seen a photo of a
\ntree and bemoaned the artist’s loss of necessity to have used a paint
\nbrush to realize it — no more than I think any less of impressionist
\npainters who had the benefit of train tracks to get them to those
\nlovely natural seaside scenes they so loved to paint.<\/p>\n
I also take pleasure in the reverse — transporting the past into the
\npresent: imagining what my cultural heroes of the distant past would do
\ntoday. Would Bart\u00c3\u00b3k appropriate folk songs as raw field recordings
\n(and be something of a rival to Steve Reich and Scott Johnson)? Would
\nTallis compose motets for near-infinite voices, and work with producers
\nManfred Eicher or Brian Eno? Would Bach have a day job at Google, and
\nspend his time working on advanced algorithms that perpetrate wild
\nvarieties of melodic and rhythmic transformations? <\/p>\n
In each case, I think the answer is yes. But those individuals today
\njust as likely might, despite the tools available to us that they
\ndidn’t have, take comfort in the more traditional materials,
\ntechniques, and technologies. Again, the art gallery is a good reality
\ncheck. Today, handcrafted art is everywhere. Galleries are full of soft
\nsculptures, and drawing is taken seriously as an art unto itself (a
\npeer to painting, rather than a step in the process) as it’s never been
\nbefore — in part as a reaction to the rise in digital technology, but
\nalso because despite the availability of 3D modeling and Photoshop and
\nso forth, yarn and pencil are the tools these artists have found speak
\nto them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Marc Weidenbaum Matthew’s previous post got me thinking about a lot of different things, starting with the possible illusion that remix-based music production is inherently simple to accomplish. While the effect of a turntable can be approximated with a mouse click, to equate the two is to miss the qualities inherent in vinyl manipulation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-112","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-bookclub","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}