Think Globally, Deejay Locally

Amelia Martin

Dr. Sandy Baldwin

English 693

Final Paper

May 8, 2009

Think Globally, Deejay Locally:

Dj Spooky and the Ecological Metaphor

Introduction

Does music have a spatial element? Paul D. Miller, aka Dj Spooky that subliminal kid, seems to think so since, to him, music has a connection to nature, and thus the environment. Throughout Rhythm Science and the article within Sound Unbound entitled “In Through the Out Door: Sampling and the Creative Act,” Dj Spooky uses a metaphor of environmental awareness and nature in order to relate to music, and, more specifically, his deejaying. This metaphor weaves throughout these works, especially the article, so much that it is quite difficult for a sustainability advocate and WVU Office of Sustainability intern, such as myself, to ignore. Briefly, sustainability means acting so that current needs are met without compromising those of future generations; the term links to the ecological metaphor so common throughout Dj Spooky’s work because of its inherent positive relationship with nature. In this paper, I will explore the significance of this ecological metaphor that helps to describe Dj Spooky’s take within his own work and other such musical endeavors.

The Metaphor

Toward the beginning of Rhythm Science, Dj Spooky states that “Music is always a metaphor” (20); now the question is “A metaphor for what?” For Dj Spooky, it’s a metaphor for the technological world that surrounds him and the ways in which he interprets that world. The key is that everyone sees the world differently, so no two interpretations can be identical, like how no two remixes can be identical if they are, indeed, remixes. Similarly, he says that “all of these images, sounds, other people…were extensions of myself, just as I was an extension of them” (Rhythm 21). Therefore, he means that the pieces that make up the whole are connected. This idea helps him to interpret the music so that he can deejay since the parts that make up a piece of music are all connected, as well.

 

Throughout Dj Spooky’s work “In Through the Out Door: Sampling and the Creative Act” and Rhythm Science, there is an underlying link to nature. He often discusses how humans try to separate themselves from nature (“In Through” 7). And he is correct—even with the act of recording sounds, we are trying to further separate ourselves from animals and other living organisms. We try to separate ourselves from animals by taking part in activities like living in houses and defying the sun and by creating other such odd objects. Making and recording music is just one more way in which humans try to separate themselves from those beings that are unable to make music or at least to record that purposeful sound; this is an extension of the well-known idea that humans are the only beings on Earth capable of logic. The ability to make and especially record music further sets humans apart from all other organisms on the planet, which leads to an even heftier superiority complex for humans.

 

It seems that one of Dj Spooky’s objectives with this book, or “pamphlet” as it is referred to within itself, is to show how connected everyone is to not only everyone but everything else. “People really don’t think about the absolute wonders that surround us and make this life livable and our way of thinking sustainable” (Rhythm 20). He’s trying to convey this interconnectedness of the world with all forms of sampling and possible other forms of music and media communication. Not only is everyone connected to each other, but everything as well. Of course we anthropocentric people would like to be able to separate ourselves from nature, but, as Spooky implies, it is a difficult task since we are all a part of nature regardless as to whether we try to separate ourselves from it or if we fully accept it. The aforementioned quote also plants the seed for Dj Spooky’s seeming disapproval of people’s general anthropocentrism.

 

When Spooky says “to look for anything to stay the same really is to be caught in a time warp of another era, another place when things stood still and didn’t change so much” (18), he means that things change and nothing can be done about it, much like what occurs in nature. Also, everything in nature is connected to everything else just like how deejaying and sampling is all related. He complicates the metaphor of nature intertwined with deejaying because he often implies that it’s negative that we try to separate ourselves from nature, and yet other times, he implies that it’s fun to play deejay and separate yourself/the deejay from nature and put yourself/the deejay in control of the music at that point in time; this control also allows for power over what could be interpreted as more natural and original. For instance, on page 61, he stated that “Identity is about creating an environment where you can make the world act as your own reflection” (Rhythm). However, even though he notes that we distance ourselves from nature, he distances deejays from nature and from other non-deejays. He’s telling readers that deejays can create their own microcosm, which goes against the idea that we are all one with nature if each deejay can become their own god, in control of all that is present in a space, even if that space is only inhabited by music.

 

The idea of sustainability within nature is complicated again since Dj Spooky says, “Act global, think local,” which is the opposite of the old sustainability slogan “Think globally, act locally” (Rhythm 113). How can one person act globally unless s/he is famous and has the accessibility to such wide audiences? Perhaps he is just doing his own sampling and remixing of the slogan by mixing up the original to suit his own deejay needs. By thinking locally, it seems that he encourages deejays and other readers to use their own local resources in order to make global statements with their work. And yet, the sustainability metaphor still stands with his next comment: “This is what Dj-ing tells us in the era of the sample…you renew the cloth by repurposing the fabric. That’s recycling” in regards to remixing and sampling and never playing the exact same set of sounds for audiences (Rhythm 113). Sustainability surfaces again within the music realm probably because Dj Spooky is just familiar with it; he makes the connection between recycling and deejaying because he encounters that through his own life.

 

Spooky continues to focus on the metaphor of the natural concerning music because it makes for a better, according to him, end product. To illustrate, he says that “Hearing a mono signal in this era is about the same as wearing a scarlet letter in another” (Rhythm 49). Again, Dj Spooky constantly references nature in order to draw connections between the natural and the perceived not-so-natural human world. He is saying that the natural way, the way of multiple sounds, is significantly better than the unnatural, the singular sound. On a side note, the natural way, though, is often considered the original way, which is interesting because deejays often sample from the so-called originals (even though everything builds off of everything else); in a roundabout approach, he is inferring that the original is better because nature, the original/where humans originated, is, oftentimes for him, on this pedestal. He asks readers to think about what’s around them and what hasn’t come from civilization and says that it’s very strange that so much of people’s surroundings come from civilization, and says that it’s even stranger how much “we’ve not only accepted this artificially imposed situation, but have actually turned the process into a ‘perceived’ good—is the way we’ve made a fetish and religion (and science, for that matter, and business) of attempting to define ourselves as separate from—even in opposition to—the rest of nature” (“In Through” 7). By using the word “rest” in the phrase “rest of nature”, he implies that we are, indeed, still a part of nature even if we’re trying to break away from it through various methods in our so-called normal lives. Herein lies part of the negative tone toward anthropocentrism. Dj Spooky continues on this path of anthropocentric pessimism:

“The ‘nature versus nurture’ argument has been thrown out the metaphorical window, and on a planet put in parentheses by human-made objects in the sky, the songs we hear are stories we tell ourselves. Civilization isolates all of us, ideologically and physically, from the source of all life—nature. We don’t believe that trees have anything to say to us: not stars, not wolves, not cats, not even our dreams. We’ve been convinced that the world is silent save for civilized human beings and the information we generate.” (“In Through” 7)

Here Spooky’s not saying that people can’t hear nature, but perhaps that they don’t pay attention to or actually listen to nature. He is saying that people put too much emphasis and importance on our own sounds and thoughts and words and not enough on what exists outside of us. Dj Spooky epitomizes his pessimistic views toward those people who don’t believe in the oneness that humans share or should share with nature that have been underlying in much of his writing within Rhythm Science and “In Through the Out Door.”

 

In the endtroduction of Rhythm Science, the Editorial Director for the Mediawork Pamphlet Series, Peter Lunenfeld, implies that Dj Spooky is an artist “who imagine[s] a better world (Rhythm 125). So, I am not alone in my assumptions that Dj Spooky is at least trying to bring awareness to the topic of sustainability and to the connections we still make with nature even though we often try to separate the two; this is, however, a biased argument since a “better world” doesn’t necessarily refer to oneness with nature and more sustainable practices for everyone.

The Meaning

As previously stated, this natural metaphor referring to sound embedded throughout Dj Spooky’s work implies that music is spatial like the environment in which we live. In this idea that humans do try to separate themselves from nature, Spooky makes the assumption that all humans try to do this. I find it difficult to argue against it since most people live in shelters that often try to block out nature (like the wind, bugs, and precipitation); after all, there are few humans who live like the other animals in the kingdom, one with nature. He also assumes that most people do not want to get closer to nature, which could be true, but that ignores the fact that many people would like to get closer to nature, as signified by the multitudes who enjoy the outdoors and the various outdoor sports like kayaking and hiking.

 

Throughout these works I have studied in this paper, Dj Spooky carries this pessimistic tone. While discussing the “plagiarist’s club” that Dj Spooky would like to be a part of, he states, “In a world where there are several thousand satellites in the sky constantly beaming down at us information, cell phone relays, GPS signals, and weather patterns, even the idea of light pollution takes on a more than metaphorical value” (“In Through” 5). He has this negative tone embedded within the article directed toward the so-called newness and new technology that he and others are creating from what already exists. This tone shows his slight aversion to newness, which is, again, odd since he, too, creates newness from what already exists. He goes on to mention the “…networks of exchange that pervade our lives from every angle—from the sky, from the fiber optic cables embedded in the earth beneath our feet…” (“In Through” 6). The key term here is “pervade” since it connotes an intrusive relationship between the technologies that we’ve created that help to separate us (humans) from them (nature). The environment is an obvious concern for this deejay.

 

Dj Spooky’s use of the ecological metaphor illustrates the codependence on life in general that is inherent within music and deejaying. Like he and many others before him have stated, the old can be added to or, in the case of deejaying, sampled from, and made new.

Conclusion

As we have seen, Dj Spooky touches on sustainability and delves into the importance of oneness with nature. Dj Spooky’s work seems to be include concerns of sustainability and bits of the natural environment because he encounters these issues in his daily life, so it is natural for them to permeate his work, whether intentional or unintentional. He is basically saying that we humans are one with nature no matter how much we try to separate ourselves from it and that there is no shame if the music (or whatever) we create reflects that.

 

Through the countless times Dj Spooky implies the importance of nature and sustainability within his work, he assumes that readers agree with him and that he is preaching to the choir and that they at least already understand what he says. Perhaps he leaves many of these environmental statements open ended on purpose, though, so people like myself, who are searching his work for something in particular, can find it. Oddly, there is no real solution to alleviate Spooky’s pessimism other than to accept that we are all part of nature; thus, he encourages readers to work nature into their own work, as he does.

 

Both of the articles cited thus far seem to apply to the Terra Nova: Sinfonia Antarctica video located on Dj Spooky’s website. The five-minute-long video is an amalgamation of landscape shots of glacial Antarctica, the earth, shots of a small orchestra that appears to be playing throughout the video, Dj Spooky himself, and seemingly old video presumably out of Antarctica, with classical music forming most of the sound with bits of Dj Spooky speaking. He states during the video that the work is a “meditation about landscape” and that “music is information.” Perhaps most significant is his twice repeated statement that he “want[s] people to think outside of the box about what’s going on with the environment”. He seems to want people to see environmental issues in a different light and perhaps to see the connection between the self-separation of people from nature and the related detriment of the environment. The environmental metaphor serves a dual purpose: it makes the music or work more meaningful and perhaps more easily accessible and it at least attempts to gain conscious awareness for viewers of environmental concerns.

 

Works Cited

Miller, Paul D. “In Through the Out Door: Sampling and the Creative Act.” Sound

Unbound. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2008.

---. Rhythm Science. New York: COMA Amsterdam, 2004.

---. “Terra Nova: Sinfonia Antarctica.” 2007. 21 Apr. 2009.

<http://www.djspooky.com/>.

Final Paper Mini Reflection

This paper turned out not exactly as expected since there was actually much more to work with than I anticipated. Both Sandy and Lindsey’s comments on my abstract proved very useful once I started writing because they gave me various places in which to focus. There were also many remnants of our earlier class discussions that found themselves into the paper. I also reiterate the main points rather often, but I feel that this is acceptable since it is, after all, a conference presentation. As to conferences, there’s a sustainability conference in Montreal in the winter that could be a possibility as well as the one for the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts.

Abstract

Hello. Until I figure out Google Docs, my abstract will be here on my blog. Please see below.

Think Globally, Deejay Locally

Throughout the book, Sound Unbound, I kept running into environmental ideas. I noticed some first in Rhythm Science. For instance, on page 61, he stated that “Identity is about creating an environment where you can make the world act as your own reflection.” He also brings the sustainability saying “Think Globally, Act Locally” into deejaying. I interpreted the saying to extend beyond deejaying.

Dj Spooky is incorporating many of the ideas concerning sustainability on purpose. Specifically, in his paper within Sound Unbound entitled “In Through the Out Door: Sampling and the Creative Act”, he talks about how humans try to separate themselves from nature (7). Even with the act of recording sounds, we are trying to further separate ourselves from animals and other natural beings? We try to separate ourselves from animals by taking part in activities like living in houses and defying the sun and by creating other such truly odd objects. I will argue in this paper that DJ Spooky’s work implies the basis of sustainability to deejaying and to the world.

For instance, when he says “to look for anything to stay the same really is to be caught in a time warp of another era, another place when things stood still and didn’t change so much” (18), does he mean that things change and nothing can be done about it, much like what occurs in nature? His Terra Nova video on his website indicates that he is indeed interested in these ideas and that he may have included those references to sustainability on purpose. Also, everything in nature is connected to everything else just like how with deejaying and sampling, it is all related.




*For reviewers: I am open to any and all suggestions. Thank you!

Humans Aren't Animals

Throughout the book, Sound Unbound, I kept running into environmental ideas (probably because I was looking for them). I noticed some first in Rhythm Science. For instance, on page 61, he stated that “Identity is about creating an environment where you can make the world act as your own reflection.” I interpreted this to extend beyond djing. Was Dj Spooky doing that on purpose or did it just come out like that? Specifically, in his paper within Sound Unbound entitled “In Through the Out Door: Sampling and the Creative Act”, he talks about how humans try to separate themselves from nature (7). Even with the act of recording sounds, are we trying to further separate ourselves from animals and other natural beings? It seems to me that we are and that DJ Spooky is saying the very same thing. Much of what we do seems to be to try to separate ourselves from them including living in houses and defying the sun and by creating other such truly odd objects.

When he says “to look for anything to stay the same really is to be caught in a time warp of another era, another place when things stood still and didn’t change so much” (18), does he mean that things change and nothing can be done about it?

His Terra Nova video on his website indicates that he is interested in these ideas and that he may have included those references on purpose. Would an analysis of the Terra Nova video with references to texts he wrote concerning sounds work somehow for a final paper? I think that I’d like to do my final paper concerning this topic, but I’m not sure if it’s really there, or if I’m thinking wishfully. Comments? Suggestions?

March 23 and Soundscape

“There is no difference in dimension and reality between the original sound and the recorded and reproduced sound as there is between real objects and photographic images” said Balasz (Silverman 42). So is this the case? I don’t think that it is. I believe that the prerecorded sound within cinema takes up fake space. Apparently, film theorists say that there’s no difference between recorded and prerecorded sounds (Silverman 42). To answer one of my previous questions from a blog post, this is incorrect. Of course there’s a difference—that’s why one can often tell if they’re listening to a recording or the real thing. Similarly, the real image that was photographed also has depth in a way that a photographic image can never have since when you move to look around the object in an image, you can’t see the other side. Also, a nonrecorded sound may be less scripted, especially in a movie, because it is not meant to be played in exactly that same way again. A recorded sound, however, can be played over and over again at the whim of the “author”, so to speak, of the recording.

Silverman implies that “’she’ here refers not to ‘natural’ but to ‘artificial’—or what I would prefer to call ‘constructed’—femininity (193); my question from this is isn’t all femininity socially constructed, whether dealing with feminine voice or the feminine persona?



Soundscape posting:

“The Office: Sound Only”

Layla, Mary, and I collaborated on a soundscape that focused on sounds of the office (specifically, Colson Hall room 332) on any given day. There were multiple versions, but you the one available is the final (and best) version. We recorded this with Layla’s iPhone application, where, to my understanding, you can set it and listen to the sounds going on around you while wearing headphones in an interesting way: it remixes (a bit) and adds to as well as echoes the sounds actually being made. You can probably guess which ones we made and which ones were made by the iPhone application since human made sounds are generally louder and clearer.

The pair of heels heard in the beginning and the key opening the door and the unzipping zipper all indicate someone walking to the office and entering, as do the noises of the coffee being poured and the satisfied “ah” after drinking it. The “oh crap” (my favorite part) begins one of the most interesting sections where we hear human voices for the first time; the human voice embedded in the office clatter may have startled some because it was unexpected, while it echoes the frustrations we sometimes (to put it mildly) feel in our offices as does the loud bang of the overhead drawer closing and the crumpling of paper. The second batch of voices reflects the real office—you never know when someone will pop their head into the office to say “hello” unannounced and ask you how you’re doing. The radio and bouncing ping pong ball indicate the boredom that may come during office hours, and the fade away of the noises implies dozing off to sleep (sounds like that coffee did not work).

The technology of the iPhone played a large roll in our soundscape since it added the layers of sound. Each sound’s echo fades into the next and into each other just like the real world—it’s not always one sound on its own but multiple sounds going on at once (even if at first you don’t hear much, if anything). The iPhone application may have complicated the question as to who is the author of this piece—the three of us who made the sounds happen, the device that altered their natural state, or even the process of recording the iPhone soundscape onto a computer using a free download of a program.

Recycling Materials

Dj Spooky mentions in his book an old adage that he thinks about when he writes: “Make the people think that they think, and they love you. Actually make them think, and they hate you” (116). Does his cd make people think or make people think that they think? What about the book itself? Is he saying that audience members want information just fed to them? What would a book or cd that made someone think be like? Would the book ask questions and not answer or explain them? Or just ask unanswerable or rhetorical questions?

It seems to me that Dj Spooky believes that, at least concerning djing when it first came out and some current djing, people must think more to understand newer and different forms (“People can become so unreflective in their usual media-habits that any kind of systemic renewal takes a long time to succeed” (57)). For example, if a new genre of music comes out, it’s often not in the mainstream; if it ever gets to the mainstream, it’s mimicked and the heart and soul or the original message seems to be lost.

* * * * * *
This second section revolves around copyright and recycled material.

The second link below is a remixed clip from The Colbert Report featuring the host with Lawrence Lessig ironically discussing his new book, Remix (about outdated copyright laws). The real/original interview can be seen here: http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/215454/january-08-2009/lawrence-lessig). Lessig is the quoted promoter and remixing expert on the back of Rhythm Science.

Colbert stated during the original interview that no one had the right to remix their original interview to a dance beat (even though Lessig noted that they both are joint copyright owners of the interview, and he was okay with it), which of course is what people did and what the following link shows, illustrated by the many more remixes on youtube (I liked this one because it allows the audience to understand the main premise of the original interview in only about one minute): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_w1FR67AXs

The Remix website states the following about its book:
“For more than a decade, we’ve been waging a war on our kids in the name of the 20th Century’s model of “copyright law.” In this, the last of his books about copyright, Lawrence Lessig maps both a way back to the 19th century, and to the promise of the 21st. Our past teaches us about the value in “remix.” We need to relearn the lesson. The present teaches us about the potential in a new “hybrid economy” — one where commercial entities leverage value from sharing economies. That future will benefit both commerce and community. If the lawyers could get out of the way, it could be a future we could celebrate.”
This book obviously echoes parts of Rhythm Science.

Lessig and Dj Spooky seem to be saying similar things, especially when Dj Spooky says, “You can always squeeze something out of the past and make it become new” (56). He does not see anything wrong with it and neither does Lessig. As Lessig points out during the real interview, The Colbert Report uses similar tactics as peer-to-peer file sharing networks (and to what a dj does): using already existing material to make it new.

This also reminds me of “one of the first recorded copyright disputes in Western history” that Dj Spooky mentions concerning St. Columba making a copy from a borrowed manuscript from the Latin Psalter and St. Columba eventually winning the copy by literally going to war for it (73), except that the copied manuscript was probably not altered all that much for the exception of different handwriting.

Likewise, Dj Spooky remixes a taped recording of the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Kr3yGZR70M&feature=related
Around 6:22, there’s another remix in which former President George W. Bush’s words are reordered to say something that he did not originally say. Dj Spooky says in the clip that remixing is often about “playing with the familiar”, which leads me to my second main question: Are these two remixes original? They seem to be “texts that absorb other texts” (Miller 8), but is that original?

Dj Spooky also says that “For the most part, creativity rests in how you recontextualize the previous expression of others” (33); so, can ANYTHING be completely new? He seems to think so when he says, “You can always squeeze something out of the past and make it become new” (56). But the question still remains as to whether one actually “renew[s] the cloth by repurposing the fabric” (113). Does recycling make it new? It’s easier for me to answer this question in environmental terms: yes, by recycling plastic bottles, fleece can be created as well as a plastic bottle Christmas tree, with the bottles themselves as the branches. It all depends upon personal opinion and how much a text is altered.

Format Issues

How can Whitman’s quote, “The artist carries the least cultural baggage” be true (Funcke 8)? Well, I do not see it as true simply because if the author’s work seems to be far from culturally normal, then it’s still influenced by it—it’s just different from it. Also, it would have to carry baggage from some culture. Even “early in his career Whitman had pondered the issue of ‘the blurring of art and life’” (Funcke 10) which is a paradox to his quote. Life can’t be avoided in art and vice versa; the two are indistinguishable in this type of format. I feel that if the artist’s work does not reflect the artist’s immediate culture, then it must reflect another, separate culture. (My mom’s a wood/stone/other hard things carver/artist, so I have some background with this topic.)

Why does Burroughs’ piece contain so many grammatical errors and ones dealing with punctuation? Does it serve a purpose, or is it a mistake related to the document being online and having fewer mandatory editors?

My final question is about Beckett’s “Krapp’s Last Tape.” I don’t understand quite a few things about the document. It reads sort of like a play but in a different format, like a self-interpreted performance piece. Why are sections of the piece word for word repeated within it? This is a nuisance to me because I feel as if I am a great listener/reader since I pay attention the first time I listen or read a piece—I don’t like to feel as though I’m backtracking. Is the author trying to recreate a real life feel with this method?

Differences Between Hearing and Listening & Television and Voice

What does Gitelman mean when she states, “it was to the sheets of tinfoil that the language of print culture adhered most freely” (165)? I don’t understand how print culture can resemble the sounds on the tinfoil. Does a sound resemble another sound that is similar to it on the tinfoil? Is the answer merely that each sound has a certain look just as they conformed the alphabetical letters to match each other in print culture? Maybe I missed something from both readings, but we had writing long before this. So, what does Gitelman mean by this statement—I can’t wrap my mind around it, unless she’s speaking figuratively? Also, the term “adhered most freely” sounds paradoxical.

Sterne does not make it clear to me what the difference is between hearing and listening—since I thought the difference was what he said it was not exactly, “hearing as passive and listening as active” (98).

Also, last night while I heard a man’s voice emitted from a television from the guy’s apartment upstairs, I wondered how I could tell that it was not a real person’s voice. It’s pretty obvious from the older instruments since there could be static or it just sounds old and extra creepy (like the Lord Tennyson on wax cylinders), but how do we tell with the current technologies? Perhaps I missed something from The Audible Past or haven’t gotten there yet. Does it have anything to do with using the human ear (cadavers—really interesting) as a model? The newer technology just isn’t perfect yet since our ears hear the difference between the two.

"Are you talking to yourself?" *Mouths to self* "Weird."

It seems accepted that there is a “dominance of eye over ear in mainstream Western poetics” (Tedlock 195) since the main focus of poetry is on the page and not in the performance. Is this due to society trying to break away from the perception that more primitive cultures focus on oral traditions? There is this focus on the individual within our own capitalistic society, which is indeed reflected by this focus on the written word and the ideas that “The spoken word forms human beings into close-knit groups” whereas “Writing and print isolate” (Ong 73). Curling up on the couch by the fire and reading the words is quite different from sitting Indian style around a story teller, perhaps with several others around you, interpreting the orator’s body language and listening.

Often, while riding in the car, I’ll catch my pops mumbling to himself, sometimes even moving his hands a bit while they’re on the steering wheel. When I ask what he’s doing, he says he’s having an intellectual conversation with himself (I’ve been slightly insulted by this response but to my credit, it’s often said while I’m reading). Even though I obviously know and love him, I perceive it as quite odd that he talks to himself but would not see it as odd if he were writing in a journal. Why is that?

Ong states that “Sound exists only when it is going out of existence” (70); I suppose this makes sense to a certain degree, but it also depends on the relation of the sounds. You could say the same of anything living: a dog lives but is nearing death more and more every moment.

Ong also believes that “You can immerse yourself in hearing, in sound” but that “There is no way to immerse yourself similarly in sight” (71). Are we not always immersed in both of these (unless the person is of course deaf and/or blind) already? Previous readings discussed the completely silent room where the person inside of it only hears his/her own body. Therefore, we’re always immersed in sound just as we’re always immersed in sight. However, sight cannot be louder (but could be more visually stimulating or more eye-catching, sight’s equivalent to loud sounds) just as some sounds are more ear-catching.

Ong says that primary oral culture does not focus on preserving skills (43), in which case, it makes me wonder how these people would pass along the skills they had learned without writing or telling. Were these oral tradition people better problem solvers or just better at mimicking what they’d seen once out of necessity?

I would be lost without a dictionary and the CMS (Chicago Manual of Style for the non PWE people) because I love the rules just as I love to look them up (and because my major depends on these rules). But even in primary oral cultures, there must be rules—they’re just not able to be looked up in writing but looked up, so to speak, in the minds of many or agreed upon.

Wouldn't It be Funny If My Blog for Today was Blank?

A blank blog would certainly be appropriate and brilliant.

Was Henry Flynt trying to merely promote creativity by including the following on his Fluxus score: “The instructions for this piece are on the other side of this sheet” with the other side being blank (Dworkin 1)? Was it purposely a very open prompt just to get people thinking deeply (even though I’m not sure how inspired I’d be after an obvious lack of direction)? This is my only possible explanation at this point; what else could it be? It couldn't possibly be that he thought he was being creative, could it? The instructions seem similar to some of the answers I sometimes have given my students when they ask me how long a document should be (“however long you think it should be” often being my answer). I wonder if they’re as frustrated with me as I would be with Flynt had he left me the blank instructions.

I don’t understand how Cage’s publisher could have possibly sued Mike Batt for copyright infringement (Dworkin 3) “One Minute Of Silence” because, after watching both of them, I could not see any resemblance (other than a general lack of noise even though the pictures were different). Even if there were, if Mike Batt was just poking fun of Cage’s 4’33”, then that’s permitted because Batt was sort of parodying (allowed under Intellectual Property Law) Cage’s (which is allowed: think of Weird Al Yankovich’s work—he’s allowed to do what he does/did). How could Cage’s publisher sue Batt for using a bit of Cage’s SILENT piece in his own parody; how could the publisher even tell that it was in fact Cage’s?

The Language Removal Excerpts sound creepy and often sexual. The “60 Second Anthology of American Poetry” nearly made me gag from all of the repulsive licking of lips. Gross!

White Space as Noise

Similar to many questions asked last week, here is my first question (but, don't worry, I'll try to answer it): Is there a distinction to be made between whether a performance is good or bad and whether or not someone likes it? Similarly, is there a sort of rubric to a reading (that the expert reading audience members may adhere to) where audience members can somewhat objectively gauge a reading?

Concerning my first question, I believe that whether one thinks that a reading is good or not is, as Tony said, subjective. I mean, Quartermain believes that a very theatrical reading is awful, but, from what he said, I thought it sounded much more engaging than some of the older recorded readings we listened to last week (perhaps one reason is because I enjoy theatre and used to do it in high school) (219). Then again, I didn’t witness the reading, so I could also see how that type of performance has the potential to be annoying. But also, it could be widely accepted that one reading is good if the majority of the elitist reading attendees think it’s good, akin to the literature canon, right?

Also, going back to last week, we discussed noise and sound. I agree that noise is more of a “ruckus” as Dr. Baldwin stated. Just like how too much white space in a document can be distracting (or the opposite with not enough white space), it seems that the same goes for readings: too much of a pause could be considered a problem due to a lack of noise (I’m using the word noise because it would be considered annoying), or, again, too much going on can also be distracting just like how I imagine that Mac Low’s “The Young Turtle Assymetries” would distract me because there are so many voices going on at once, like at a party (if you knew me or had me as an instructor, you’d know that I am easily distracted anyway). This ties into the seeming subjectivity as to whether a performance is good or bad because, as I believe someone mentioned in class last week, noise (ruckus) to one person could be just sounds to another person (while some of the performances we listened to for tomorrow’s class may be considered noise to some and mere appealing sounds to another). I hope that this serves as a partial answer to the first question I asked today.

Dakota and the Screaming Letters

Young-Hae Chang’s “Dakota” interested me precisely because it was different from most of the other listenings we heard because it wasn’t just an audio, but a visual as well. Without visuals, the piece would lose much of its meaning, but the same goes for sound: they each complement each other. Mackey, in “Cante Moro”, reminded me of “Dakota” when he wrote in reference to a piece of music that “the two lines of articulation are wrestling with one another, that they are somehow one another’s contagion or contamination” (10) in that the music/noise and the words seem to compete with each other for the attention, since they are both visually or audibly loud, the former because of the black all capitalized (denotes yelling) letters and the latter because of loud drums and symbols. Then again, they could also be seen as complementary like a dancer to music.

This leads me to my first question: Is Young-Hae Chang’s “Dakota” a performance or a text? To answer my own very thought-provoking question (think now, before you read the spoiler answer below), the piece is a text because it is in a fixed state (although not as fixed as an edition of a book) and because there is not a live audience to give immediate feedback. It is an odd text, though, since the readers of it cannot pause it or slow it down like they can with a book. The audience does not have as much power over the text, except to start or end it, as they would with a traditional text. In addition, the performed word seems to be just people reading their poetry. In order for this piece to be a performance, Young-Hae Chang (or anyone else) could perform the music/noise within the current “Dakota” and show the words on a screen behind him. It seems that the reason why the piece cannot be a performance is because, again, there is not a live audience, even though there’s not a live audience for films, either. It’s almost the difference between a live play and a pre-recorded film in the movie theatre.

Now that I’ve managed to complicate my own answer, I will leave you with my second question: How does performance poetry, as opposed to the written form, inhibit an audience’s interpretation or does the performance aspect merely add to the piece’s ability to speak (haha) to an audience?