From Zenon M. Feszczak Sent Thu, Jun 4th 1998, 15:48
From Zenon M. Feszczak Sent Thu, Jun 4th 1998, 15:48
At 8:32 PM -0500 6/3/98, you wrote: >If you have to blatantly define what you're doing over 6 panels of >liner, you're a liar and a fraud. Thaemlitz just made a bunch of noise and >added in this supposed meaning in subsequence. > >... Thaemlitz had to actually explain the song's >construction to support the invented meaning! This is piteously phony. Not necessarily. Considering that music may be understood as a form of symbolic language, it's not surprising that one would have to define new words or expressions of the language before the listener can understand their intent. Consider extensions to HTML: if your Web browser has not been updated to understand those extensions, a page will load as garbage. This situation, however, does not necessarily imply that the original source material was garbage. The problem was one of failed interpretation. Similarly, in music, the need for educating the listener is as old as Plato. One can not begin to appreciate an opera without some understanding of the narrative, the language used, the various symbolic conventions used, a certain amount of music and composition theory (at least in terms of structure, themes, motifs, and so on). To just go in blind from a completely different musical background, one would be, at best, lost, and at worst, bored to tears. Avant-garde and experimental music, as with all contemporary art, is deeply intellectualized. One may fairly level a criticism at art being purely intellectual, and therefore generating no emotional response even when the audience has the requisite intellectual background. This all brings us back to the pressing aesthetic question of questions, epitomized by Duchamp's signed urinal: What is Art? (which necessarily brings in social and political power concerns: Who is to decide? The artist? The audience? God? Some objective scientific criterion? No one?) (Caveat emptor: these question have been hotly debated for several thousand years, so don't be surprised if you'll hear a stunning multiplicity of equally passionate and seemingly convincing answers). Back to TT, I doubt he's being hoaxful. The fact that his work requires intellectual exertion from the listener may turn some people off, but that's no necessary condemnation of his work. I've heard people say the same thing about jazz and classical: "If it's so much effort to appreciate it, why bother?" 3