[NewMusic] slusser's article

[Jon Raskin]

What I think the collecting that the new storage mediums allow (which started with vinyl) allows is a facile way to create music by assembly and this process isn't also in the art world as well.  You mentioned the sweat of craft in the first email reply and that concept has really changed in terms of the what craft entails.  Music seems more prone to the acknowledge sources of the music.  It's amusing to think of someone who sings of the river running by that is the source of how life is lived to the creating of ___- hop/reggae, rai, tuvan, cambodian dance music with a touch of \bollywood.  The nouns become adjectives the river is the information age.
 
As for collaborating, I completely agree and finding people that have something interesting going on keeps it fresh and vital.  I'm not familiar with sound art audience you mention but if the art world is giving up on country music than that is a good sign.  What sound artists are you referring to?  There is group in Vienna I heard about yesterday that does what sounds like punk improv/sound and did a double bill with a string quartet doing Mozart through twentieth century works and at once point was naked with close pins stuck on their asses.  I'm assuming they were under 30.  Fifty year asses would be way to radical.  The group name had "Fuck" in it but the second part escapees me at the moment and a public computer doesn't allow for a web search.


 
Jon Raskin 


----- Original Message ----
From: George Cremaschi <gcremaschi at hotmail.com>
To: Bay Area New Music Discussion Group <newmusic at music.mills.edu>
Sent: Saturday, October 6, 2007 10:34:21 PM
Subject: Re: [NewMusic] slusser's article


Mr Raskin wrote:

>The sea of information...has obscured the sharp lines
>that were passionately felt in the 60's

And the difference with the atmosphere of today, where most
people don't believe in much more than themselves, if even that,
is monumental. Carrying around a Little Red Book may have been
pathetic in retrospect, but underneath the current apolitical hipster
snarkiness lies.....a great big nothing.


>The "specialist" also seems connected to the High and Low art dialog,
>or is it distortion, which confuses the different function and roles that
>music plays.

I've become mostly interested in interdisciplinary work (dance, installation, etc)
the last few years as I've become increasingly aware that my perspective
is much more in line with contemporary art, as opposed to music, traditions.
And the idea of just getting up on stage and playing some sounds that
I like for 45 minutes at a stretch has become increasingly, well, boring.
I've lately been far more interested in the 'noise' scene than the 'improv' scene
for these reasons - noise musicians tend to look at their work from an
artist's perspective, thinking conceptually and theatrically, where improvisers
tend to take the traditional music presentation ideas as a given, focusing
all of their attention to delivering the sound itself, but zero attention to the
form in which it's delivered. And there's nothing wrong with that, but I suspect
that presenting something non-traditional in a traditional format might have
something to do with the no-audience problem. I'm no longer confused as
to why 'sound art' is currently far more 'successful' than improv - it knows
what it's target audience is: the art world, not music fans.


>Collecting is simplified by improvements in storage capacity.

Owning the complete collected works of
means nothing, aside from the fact that you own the complete collected
works of .


-George
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