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eMuse (TM) by Jeff Talman
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'You Say You Want a Revolution...'

<< Continued from page 2

The emergence of pop as a cultural vanguard in the West (and increasingly compellingly so in the East) has led to succeeding generations possessing a higher integration of pop influences among other tastes. From this it becomes apparent that the confluence of new creative-possible technologies with cultures pre-disposed to mass proliferation by technical means will surely lead to the creation of new content/forms. These, in turn, will be dependent on new and upcoming means of proliferation. (Note that this confluence does not necessarily deny more traditional means of defining form, rather it makes others available. None of this predicates a lowering of standards of quality in content or form. But quality must be re-defined by way of a reinterpretation of past concepts of quality in light of the new paradigms, whatever they may be.)

These and other compelling issues gleaned from the intersection of technology and the arts, always from an analytic and creative viewpoint, will be the chief stuff of Music & Vision's new feature: eMuse. Also expect web visits, interviews and Q & A's with digital artists, engineers and programmers, people intimately involved every day with audio technology. From these luminaries we can expect personal interpretations of recent technical developments and upcoming innovations. In February we'll speak with Joshua Fried, a New York City-based composer whose performer/feedback and controlled random access systems have landed him quite a bit of notice. We'll also spend time soon with Douglas Scott, a composer and the principle 3-D audio programmer for Silicon Graphics, Inc.

The Digital Age is a revolution of astounding proportions the beginnings of which we are only starting to understand. The energy of artistic vision and the Digital Revolution are to find their most meaningful integration in work as yet to be created. Future formats will continue to create increasingly better, fantastic documentations of a Beethoven symphony. We can also expect work, new, exciting and specifically created for formats reproducible in your home. Speaker and acoustic design issues, format wars, 3-D audio, sonic art esthetics and the digital media, digital artist commentary, new sonic wonders... mapping these terrains fortnightly, eMuse will cover the multiplicity of possibilities that technology promises, but always with reflections on the art that it serves.

Le rivoluzione siamo noi (We Are The Revolution) by Joseph Beuys is a 1972 lithograph in which the essential feature is that of Beuys as everyman-artist, ironically a German, marching forward. People create a revolution, and people are swept up in and redefined by it, as are the constructs about them. Understandings about the world and the forms of individual contact within the greater society are re-invented. Mapping the initiative for human/artistic revolt the Beuys litho is a strange, down-to-earth, yet visionary work, following John Lennon's equally ironic Revolution by only about 4 years. Of course Lennon, the former art student, had already helped to create a very distinct revolution in popular culture, so to him then, though world-weary, and especially to us now with the range of startling but enticing newness before us, clearly, 'Don't you know it's gonna be... all right.'

 

Copyright © 1 January 2000 by Jeff Talman, Saratoga Springs, NY, USA

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eMuse is published by Music & Vision on alternate Saturdays.

Next, on 15 January 1999, The Negative Spaces of Technology

A complete list of features is held on Jeff Talman's eMuse homepage


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