Week 7 & 8


 * Why has there been such a close tie between religion and music throughout human history? I suspect that it has to do with the influential power of music to… persuade… or interpolate. (Then we lead to class, to economy, to culture.)


 * Do sounds have an intrinsic meaning? Apparently black holes have a frequency of ~ B flat. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3096776.stm) - And Tesla experimented with resonant frequencies, claiming to be able to bring down entire buildings using roughly the same principles that allow a sound wave to shatter a wine glass. What do we make of this?


 * Can art survive capitalism? Or is it dead already?


 * Was it ever alive?


 * RE: Sterling – is English really that ugly? Or are we just nostalgic about other languages? Romantic? English is beautiful in its own right… or has it had its time?


 * RE: Hebridge: Is the prevelance of “boredom” among our youth the result of over-exposure to media and technology? The opposite, perhaps? Perhaps our youth are suffering from a lack of exposure to meaningful media so they are going mad like parrots in a cage.
 * RE: Lethem, who writes “We’re surrounded by signs; our imperative is to ignore none of them,” : don’t we HAVE to have a filter these days? We can’t keep up with everything that’s new. There’s too much out there.


 * Oliveros writes “Musicianship escalates with the aid of technology.” (121) – What happens when technology interferes with musicianship?


 * Or, like Ong named writing a technology… is music a technology? A technology that structures thought? Sure…


 * I have a problem with this: “As DJ Spooky has suggested, folk music no longer comes from an acoustic guitar, but rather from a hard drive.” (254) – The majority of humans do not have access to the Internet. But then again, early musicians were seen as divine poets, they were given some class status to sing their songs… to entertain....
 * s the Internet democratic? What is the relationship to politics and music? (One can purchase YouTube views now…)


 * Is media theory tainted by nostalgia? Do the ghosts of Ataris and arcade consoles and Segas effect our clarity of the contemporary situation?


 * RE: Lanier – What role does infrastructure play in the tension between music and capitalism? For example, if there were enough record labels to promote the music of all these starving artists, would the world be a better place? Would our music be any more creative?
 * Should general education pedagogy (in other words state education policy) be informed by Oliveros's nice idea about incorporating more original thought and creativity in a curriculum? Obviously I think yes, but... what are the dangers, here? Newtonian physics still hold true. Euclid's geometry is still solid.


 * Finally, where do fact, fiction, and philosophy meet?Dj-solitaire.jpg