[Ian] it's the cultural context of the "performance", whatever peoples actual "tastes" for a given musical genre.
[Arlo] Yeah, spot on, Ian. I think you actually read into my post something I wish I had said, or meant to say, so thanks. There was a book on art I read a while back (can't recall the title, will ponder on it) that lamented the "traditional" view of the art-experience as "isolated" between a subject and the particular object. But "art" takes into account a whole host on contextual cues that surround both the traditional "viewer" and "object". Case in point, the hustle and bustle of the subway. What this points at is an "art-experience" that includes the subject and object but also the "ground" onto which the experience occurs. A painting hanging in a museum is not a simple "art object" suspended in isolation awaiting an unsuspecting subject. The museum itself provides a whole host of contextual cues, from Khaled's pointing out of "validation" (if its hanging in a museum, it MUST be good), to the anticipation and expectation of the experience carried through echoey wooden floors, and quiet hushed talk to spotlighting and museum guards. A symphony, or a rock concert, also provides a rich context (or I should say "meaning-laden" context) with which the experience unfolds; from subjective expectation to lighting to accoustic-amplification to the very dress and manners of the people around you (sitting, dancing, moving, formal, informal, etc). For example, if I were in a room with a swing-band playing, and no one was dancing, I'd likely be cued to see the experience (and hence the music) as "low quality". The context defies my expectations for the value of swing. But place that same band in a room of zoot-suite wearing wolves and dolled-up foxes, and the music takes on a whole new persona. In short, we should strive to see "art" as an experience not just between some object and a subject, but as an experience "in context"... and importantly "in motion". Have you ever been in a pub and heard a song and thought "Brilliant!!", and then got home and played the song and it just wasn't the same? Part of it Pirsig describes as the movement from Dynamic to static quality, but I think part of it too has to do with a shift in the context the experience was imbedded within. I've been to the symphony and the music (ahh... "experience"!) transcended anything I have ever felt listening to the same songs on CD, even with Bose surround speakers. Education (learning new "languages") can make us more appreciative of new and different symbol systems, as you correctly point out. But you are right again in saying that this exposure is not about "what's good and what's not", but about increasing our range of high-quality/DQ-filled experiences. Don't teach which painting is "good" and which is "bad", but teach me about the language of painting, so that I can listen to paintings on my own in the hopes that one will take me outside of this static world. "And what is written well and what is written badly...need we ask Lysias or any other poet or orator who ever wrote or will write either a political or other work, in meter or out of meter, poet or prose writer, to teach us this?" (ZMM) And what is good, Phaedrus, and what is not good...need we ask anyone to tell us these things? moq_discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
