tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4426831525923973260.post7370209009810537027..comments2022-09-18T19:08:37.669-11:00Comments on Field Stations and Outposts of Anaphoria Island: Some stray Micro-rantsKraig Gradyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04234783065045199904noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4426831525923973260.post-35438893333385393732009-03-07T20:30:00.000-11:002009-03-07T20:30:00.000-11:00What I see as a very big problem is that art has b...What I see as a very big problem is that art has been rendered safely ineffective by its practitioners, because that which is attractive, in an old-fashioned sense, is deemed the property of consumer culture. <BR/><BR/>This is not actually a matter of disdain by the artists for these kinds of ideals and characteristics, but of worship and subservience of the simulations thereof as proffered by mass media. <BR/><BR/>In the "art" world, it is permitted to make Pop and to call it art, and it is permitted to make obscure, inbred and ineffective things and call it art, but it is NOT permitted to make those things which "the master", big business, "owns", such<BR/>as the romantic, the sensual, the grandiose or noble, or the superbly crafted.<BR/><BR/>Of course, big business doesn't actually "own" these things, but it needs to maintain the illusion that it does. And of course the illusion of ownership is easily maintained with promises of "riches and bitches" and so on. <BR/><BR/>This has really hit home for me recently, as I deliberately make music which will please my five year old son as well as myself. Although it is in some ways actually the most avant-garde stuff I've ever done, and deeply full of strict and non-mainstream stuff that would tickle an (honest) academic musician pink, it doesn't sound, superficially, like "avant-garde" music is "permitted" to sound: it sounds, quite likely, like "mainstream" music is pretending to sound (but rarely ever can, as the mainstream has been too much a collection of relics in a hall of infinite mirrors for so long). <BR/><BR/>Of course these are really just observations, not complaints, because if a person is driven to create something, they can't really do anything but create it, and let the chips fall where they may.Cameron Bobrohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16098831781647657227noreply@blogger.com