PDA

View Full Version : Sensory Dead



Jim Galli
12-Sep-2013, 07:55
...music is the sonic wallpaper of our lives...'Douglas Wilson (http://dougwils.com/s7-engaging-the-culture/treacle-dreck-and-schlock.html)'

Wilson makes the point that in 1000's of years we humans have gone from no music at all except in very special circumstances, times and places, to banal background noise that we largely...do not hear.

Music was for kings. Then it was for everybody. Then it was...just sort of...there.

My mind made the immediate and very easy leap to images.

First, they were for kings and whoever else could hire a painter. Then they were for everyone. Then we drowned in them. We no longer see the images, we no longer hear the music.

Mostly.

pierre506
12-Sep-2013, 08:05
We are old.

Struan Gray
12-Sep-2013, 08:29
There's always been a difference between talk and conversation. In the days when only kings had pictures, well, only kings had pictures. I'm not sure I'd like to go back.

All that's needed is a little backbone (to avoid the junk food) and self-assurance (to follow your own instinct).

Jac@stafford.net
12-Sep-2013, 09:19
We no longer see the images, we no longer hear the music.

By 'we', I am assuming you mean most of modern humans.

Ironically, I hear more music now that I am largely deaf than I did as a young man.

However, for photographs I find that among my elderly professional artist associates and friends, their skepticism of technology transfers to skepticism of the photographic image, and so many young people believe they 'could do that' if they adopted Photoshop or something like it. How often have you read, "How can I change my picture so it has (for example) Rembrandt-like lighting?"

I still look forward to more Galli & Gray.

gleaf
12-Sep-2013, 09:22
Once music was funding Beethoven, Mozart etc. to satisfy the richest peoples taste for Art.. The "See what I can have produced that you can not afford to have produced" form of monetary expression. Most current 'music' is funded by the children's taste of the elevator music generation. Make yourself happy, produce what is your taste. Its your Art.

Kirk Gittings
12-Sep-2013, 09:25
Seems like a rant that could come in some form from the aging of every age.

LF_rookie_to_be
12-Sep-2013, 10:01
Canadian filmmaker Sandra Eber told me, in a conversation we had recently, that "no one trusts the image any more". We were standing in front of this:

http://i39.tinypic.com/23hnon8.jpg

...the local museum of contemporary art. Her nine-screen film, a silent stop-motion experimental animation, was being shown on these large LED displays. She made the film with a Bolex camera on colour film using a pinhole and it ran in a loop for a couple of hours during the evening. This is a busy spot on a Saturday evening with a lot of people passing by and a jumble of sounds, including usual modern (non)tunes from a big shopping centre almost across the street, creating at times unbearable noise. She was very impressed and thought it made for a great presentation of her images and a great meeting of old and new technologies. It became its own music and overran the uniformed, faceless sound clutter around. Individualistic, unique, there and then and memorable.

But she still felt the image has largely lost its importance. Cagean "everything we hear is music" became "everything we see is an image and you can prove it with all the technology at hand today".

Jim Galli
12-Sep-2013, 11:12
Seems like a rant that could come in some form from the aging of every age.

Yes, and no. I do think a certain ranting about the young has probably been around for 6,000 years. That's part of the human condition. But my point is, for all the eon's that have come and gone, our generation both young and old are experiencing something totally unique from all the other ages before us. So much music you no longer hear it, so many pictures, you no longer see them. No previous generation ever had that phenomenon.

Not sure I'm even ranting. I didn't say that was either good or bad. Just different than ever before.

Struan Gray
12-Sep-2013, 11:52
I see two qualitative differences.

First, people used to make music rather than listen to it passively. From working mens' choirs and colliery bands to the parlour piano, people had access to a different sort of music, and, at least since the industrial revolution, consumed it avidly. I don't play anything myself, but put the effort in to see that my children have learned that music can be something you do, not just something you buy.

When it comes to images, I think there is an extra effect which is that people have come to expect information to come at them in particular forms - to the extent that they distrust their own senses. I have now been in several museums where people - of all ages - are perpetually clustered around the information booths looking at pictures of artifacts and ignoring the real, three-dimensional objects right in front of them. I think that's sad too.

On the other hand, kids today (affluent, western ones) get to hear their favourite songs as many times as they like. I remember sitting and waiting by the radio hoping they'd play a song again so that I could hit the record button and tape it. I'd have given both kidneys for Spotify.
On a similar note, if you want to learn about art, good photography or anything else, the opportunities to do so are much greater. But you do have to make the effort.

Mark Sawyer
12-Sep-2013, 12:14
I'd say technology, old and new, has coalesced for an era of near-constant sensory overload, and every sense is barraged with entertainment. Music for our ears, images for our eyes. Spicy/salty/greasy foods, and drinks packed with sugar and caffeine to amuse your mouth. Perfumes for the gals, colognes for the guys, air fresheners for the cars... gotta keep those noses busy. We're living in the golden age of everything, all the time, all at once, and more of it.

Fortunately, most of it can be turned down or off, if you try.

Jac@stafford.net
12-Sep-2013, 14:16
Once music was funding Beethoven, Mozart etc. to satisfy the richest peoples taste for Art.

About half of Wolfgang Mozart's symphonies were for the public. Keep in mind that public demand for novel symphonies was terrific. After all, it's not like people could turn on a radio or CD.


Most current 'music' is funded by the children's taste of the elevator music generation

What age group would that be today?

Jac@stafford.net
12-Sep-2013, 14:23
Yes, and no. I do think a certain ranting about the young has probably been around for 6,000 years.

101789

@NYT

It is time for a revival.

Jac@stafford.net
12-Sep-2013, 14:31
I see two qualitative differences.

First, people used to make music rather than listen to it passively.

Not so much in the early years for two reasons: first, the people could not afford the instruments and second, they had a fierce demand for new, quality work.

Aside: Later, when the phonograph became popular, John Philip Sousa protested in front of US Congress that canned music was ruining the public's penchant for self performance. He lamented the loss to society of participating in live music either by attendance or by everyday self-performance. (He played an important in copyright legislation.) In photography today the situation is reversed - everyone is a photographer. :)

evan clarke
12-Sep-2013, 16:21
Now sucks..get a tattoo, get a dozen piercings and slobber until the bar opens..

Ari
12-Sep-2013, 18:22
Now sucks..get a tattoo, get a dozen piercings and slobber until the bar opens..

You forgot...then get your own TV show.

mdm
12-Sep-2013, 18:45
Thats what happens when you look at everything through a fuzzy lens. What you see no longer matters unless all the blokes on LFPF are enthused by it. Look at the world through your own eyes.

jp
12-Sep-2013, 19:28
Ummm. Fuzzy lenses are the road less traveled. Is your statement a metaphor that went over my head or did I miss a punchline?

Jim Galli
12-Sep-2013, 19:56
Thats what happens when you look at everything through a fuzzy lens. What you see no longer matters unless all the blokes on LFPF are enthused by it. Look at the world through your own eyes.

Another brilliant post by mdm! How do you do it man. Such consistency. I bow to you.

John Kasaian
12-Sep-2013, 21:52
That's a very interesting article.
I think we are over stimulated in many ways, which lead to a lack of appreciation when it comes to things of greater value but no sensory overload. Most all the motion pictures I've seen are like that---pounding music and over the top special affects but little or no plot (or even originality) But I disagree with the good pastor about music and visual art. The lowly cave dwelling hunter had pictures. Public art was common enough in ancient civilizations like Greece and Rome and nearly everyone with a voice had music---how many children over the course of history were lullabied to sleep? Before literacy became common place, History was passed on in epic poems because the lengthily poems could be better memorized in song.
But getting back to over stimulation---yeah, that's the white noise. It's sensory death. Not to say there isn't good music or good art or good film today, but that's not the norm. there is, OTOH, very bad television and that has become the "norm"

Struan Gray
13-Sep-2013, 00:07
Not so much in the early years for two reasons: first, the people could not afford the instruments and second, they had a fierce demand for new, quality work.

I agree, but there has always been singing where instruments were too expensive, or impractical - the tradition of working songs as a mainstream activity only died out relatively recently.

I think the quality point is key. People were perhaps surrounded by music and visual art (folk art, or pre-classicist building decoration), but a lot of it was *bad* music and visual art. The difference today is that whatever your taste, or lack of it, you can have the world's best practitioners performing in your home for pennies.

But there are still folk traditions, whether consciously or unconsciously maintained. Of the two places I know well, Swedes burst into song at social gatherings with very little provocation, and the Celtic fringe of Britain maintains a tradition of self-made ad-hoc music. It's not seen as competition to mainstream pop, but a complement. Similarly, I suspect most people don't regard their Facebook and Instagram picture sharing as - scare quotes - "Photography".

MDR
13-Sep-2013, 01:21
Whistling a tune is music as well and even the first caveman were able to do that. The difference between whistling a tune and violin music is a difference of quality but both can produce disgusting things or wonderful things. Just like everyone was able to draw okay some did stick figures in the sand and some used silverpens but the basics were available to anybody. Enter photography hugely expensive for the normal worker, extremely difficult at the begining and only available to a few with money about a 150 years later some small form of democratisation meaning that most people in the developed world can afford set in. The reaction of pro photographers/art market make it big or better huge with some exceptions that is. And why go huge to mimic the paintings made for kings that a normal person could not afford and most artists couldn't afford to do as well. Those huge prints sold in the art markets are a way to block the access to the market only artists that can afford certain materials are welcome (with exceptions). Those already making money by beeing part of the market understandably are against a democratisation of the medium as they have a lot to lose.

John Kasaian
13-Sep-2013, 06:44
I think one detriment is that there is a distinct lack of owning music today. No patrons sing in taverns anymore, at least in my neck of the woods. They'd be cut off and ejected. No one sings doing manual labor, either. Someone would probably call the cops. That wasn't so 100 years ago. Music has become a spectator sport.

Jac@stafford.net
13-Sep-2013, 07:14
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=XkFD0UYuF4A#t=44

Mark Sawyer
13-Sep-2013, 10:02
I think one detriment is that there is a distinct lack of owning music today. No patrons sing in taverns anymore, at least in my neck of the woods. They'd be cut off and ejected...

No karaoke bars in your neck of the woods?

goamules
13-Sep-2013, 10:49
Or open mike bars? Or churches? Besides singing and playing instruments with my family, I get to hear plenty of public people singing there.

ShawnHoke
13-Sep-2013, 17:25
On the other hand, kids today (affluent, western ones) get to hear their favourite songs as many times as they like. I remember sitting and waiting by the radio hoping they'd play a song again so that I could hit the record button and tape it. I'd have given both kidneys for Spotify.
On a similar note, if you want to learn about art, good photography or anything else, the opportunities to do so are much greater. But you do have to make the effort.

This cracks me up, because I used to do just that to record my favorite song on the radio. And then the songs I wanted to hear were not ever played on the radio. Sporify would have been amazing back in the day!

Yeah, there's a lot to hear and see now, but the opportunities to do so are amazing. I would take the overwhelming mediocrity flooding the airwaves and the internet to have the instant access to the sublime.

John Kasaian
13-Sep-2013, 17:38
No karaoke bars in your neck of the woods?

Not around here anymore. Karaoke was around for awhile but became uncool. Besides, karaoke depends on outside stimulus in the form of gadgetry and electricity. A good tavern song requires only beer.

Mark Sawyer
13-Sep-2013, 23:45
Karaoke was around for awhile but became uncool...

Trust me John, Karaoke was never cool...

John Kasaian
14-Sep-2013, 08:15
I'm painting with a mighty big brush here, but from what I observe, generally, in California anyway, we prefer technology to provide us with music and visual arts, rather than do anything like that for ourselves.
One of the most refreshing things I've experienced in quite while was driving my 15 year old daughter and here friends on a field trip and they were singing without the radio for most of the trip!
I also enjoy street buskers (good ones) and I can almost always find a buck to put in a good busker's hat or case.
Another exception might be scrap booking---that's kind of popular, what do you think?

John Kasaian
14-Sep-2013, 08:49
Getting back to content of the link that Mr. Galli offered in the OP.
There is a very good point that has yet to be discussed that has a lot to do with the appreciation of Art, but dances on the edges of the forbidden topic of religion, so I'll make my comments obscure and brief and won't expect to see them here next time I log on.
The reformation songs being recorded are obviously meaningful for the good pastor and were at one time very popular in the protestant world, but laments they generally have become "lost" to modern audiences, hence the new recording. The qualities of these songs bind followers together in a social order (a secular version would be "God Bless America"" My Country Tis Of Thee" "Yankee Doodle" "Mine Eyes Have seen The Glory" for US citizens) Comforting old tunes. I haven't heard enough Reformation Day songs to know if they would be considered sacred like hymns are sacred, but at any rate, they're close to that.
An important value to these songs is that they bind a group with their past. That also provides continuity. A rare and valuable commodity in my opinion. A precious commodity that exists outside modern political and social realities. That, from what I get from the pastor's essay, is worthy of rediscovery.
Golden Oldie channels on my Serius radio only go back as far as the 1950's AFAIK, while the reformation day songs go back hundreds of years.
To parallel photography I think a comparison drawn between straight Pictorialism with fuzzy lens and extreme Photoshop might be a good one. The historic continuity rests with Pictorialism
Now I'll descend into my bomb shelter and wait for the all clear signal.

John Kasaian
14-Sep-2013, 15:26
Trust me John, Karaoke was never cool...
We're slow (to catch on) in Fresno.

Jim Galli
15-Sep-2013, 08:35
Yesterday I had two high school buddies here in the AM and when they left about noon, my bride of 37 years and a friend of hers asked if I'd like to accompany them to Keough's Hot Springs (125 miles one way) for some swimming and then a plate of ribs at Whiskey creek. I climbed in the back seat so the ladies could chatter in the front seat.

So my wife gets the Ipad and fiddles with it until a 'book on tape', some sort of romance novel is playing rather loud in the rear speakers and then the 2 ladies babble on with each other non-stop with the "white noise" going on the whole time. :confused::confused: Drives me nuts.

OK, that was a rant.

John, I think you're safe. Nearly 24 hours have passed.

Ari
15-Sep-2013, 09:10
My dad, now 72, got interested in non-stop noise when he invested in computers and associated gear.

Now everything has to be on constantly (Skype, email alerts, mobile phone), volume turned to 11, and he's quite distracted when he's not "plugged in".

Why can't he just put on a nice Johnny Mathis record and mellow out? It's got worse with age, I tells ya.

That's my rant about the older generation.

John Kasaian
17-Sep-2013, 22:41
I think too much stimulus numbs the senses, especially in regards to the intellect. How does one process all the information that comes from electronic media which seems to be everywhere? I see people text going at a mile a minute but I've yet to see anything that passes for literature. Songs and other entertainment broadcast with no chance for the audience to discern "is this really any good?" Yes we can turn off the box, but we hardly know exactly what it is we're turning off. News isn't news anymore but opinions passing as news.
There was a great episode of The Twilight Zone with Buster Keaton---does anyone here remember it? A character from silent films (Keaton) discovers a time machine and travels to current (1950-60) times and is appalled by all the noise!
That's my rant, anyway.