[Ian] There are the specific associations between tunes heard in previous life situations, and the emotional connections with those situations, as well as the direct relationships between a tune and it's context and an isolated single experience of that.
[Arlo] No doubt, and like ever increasing circles, context sweeps out and in. When I hear blues now, no matter where, the "context" for me is always inclusive of memories of the Kingston Mines, of late-night whiskey, glimpses into the lives of others so close and yet so far. I flip-flopped two of your points, because the above is so important, and yet you said previously... [Ian] Interesting, being swept away / caught up is an important part of the experience - participation I think I said. [Arlo] Yes, a singularly important point: Art is participatory, including active participation not just from an isolated subject and an isolated object, but a contextually bound "dance". A related passage from Granger's book. "Reflection does not occur in a plainly demarcated cognitive foreground of experience nor exclusively within that enclosed space we call the head. Nor does a simple two-dimensional linear progression from problem to solution adequately capture the process. This would mean falling back into the reductive dualisms of subject-object metaphysics. Like the rest of experience, reflection is innately a function of situations, of complex fields of action in which subjects and objects jointly participate. ... The crucial point here is that reflection occurs in and with this ensemble of natural and sociocultural components. It is truly a participatory rather than an arm-chair event." (Granger, pp 36-37) I should not that this is not, as is seen in the context of this quote in the book, a description of an "art experience" as somehow functionally different from "everyday experience". Our "experience" with a Cezanne follows the same "participatory" trajectory as an experience with a squirrel, riding the subway or reading a book on metaphysics. Allen Kaprow writes about this in a short essay called "Art Which Can't Be Art" (http://readingbetween.org/artwhichcantbeart.pdf). He is said to have been inspired by Dewey, so this may be referenced in Granger's book, which I do not have in front of me to check. The point is again, not to make everything "art", but to realize that "art experience" is a generative, participatory process, deeply contextualized by not only the immediate surround, but the personal and cultural histories of those involved... and as such is not relegated to some remote "object" (any more than it is the whimsical individual fantasy of an isolated "subject"). And speaking of which, I think I am off to imbibe in a bit of static-loosening with my favorite brew, Trois Pistoles. There is an "art" to brewing that Unibroue seems to have mastered, and I cherish my participation in the experience. :-) 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/
