constant escape

winter withered, warm
And believe it or not, those trance-like dives can be integrated more or less smoothly into a wider psychic framework of unperturbedness. Imagine working to spend psychic restless energy in a way that was efficient and consolidational, rather than just leaking this energy here and popping that energy there, recklessly.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
@suspendedreason @beiser thx

obv he didn't "solve art" but you've elucidated the basis on which such a (presumably only half-serious) hyperbolic claim could be made

I had no idea he was such a key figure (it seems) in the shift from a modern to postmodern conception of art

you've convinced me to put Art of Experience on my reading list
 
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padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
Almost universally, people enjoy music when played forwards more than backwards
that line immediately me me think of playing things backwards as a studio or DJing technique

Macca's backwards guitar solo on "Tomorrow Never Knows"

the story about an off his face George Clinton improvising "Atomic Dog" over a rewinding tape so they just left it that way

Ron Hardy famously contriving techniques to play records backwards at the Muzic Box

I'm sure there are plenty of other examples

tho that's not really what beiser was talking about tbf
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
"so when the track come on it's backwards...I'm trying to play it off like I knew what the fuck was happening...so I start talking, this story of a famous dog"
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
know that I think about it, in re philosophy and funk

you could definitely link George Clinton's version of James Brown's "The One" to monism

James Brown=Socrates, Bootsy=Plato, George=Aristotle on hella drugs (not in terms of monism, just as originators of the philosophy of funk)
 

woops

is not like other people
well yeah there's obviously loads of songs that use backwards noises but they're always oddities aren't they. novelties


of course, there is one backwards track that transcends novelty to become one of the most ecstatic moments in music ever

 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
like I said that's not really what he was talking about

but one interesting thing is how backmasking was at the center of all that Tipper Gore/PMRC bullshit in the 80s

classic rock and metal bands with all their supposed backwards subliminal messages telling teens to worship Satan and/or kill themselves

in re "people enjoy music when played forwards more than backwards"
 

beiser

Well-known member
@beiser
What would you say, if you remember, were the primary iffy-zones of that translation of yours? The three points were all impactful for me.
I think the big part is that it just doesn't cover what's in the other 360 pages very much at all–processes by which art is made, the experience of perception, how one can have an experiences of understanding or working with an idea, and how works of art can function by inducing that, issues with other theories of art—and especially ones involving 'forms' that exist otherwise from experience, how art forms progress from lively to 'academic', the common roles of things like rhythm and symmetry, differences between mediums, the equatability of different instantiations of a particular emotion, interpretation, and so forth.
 

beiser

Well-known member
@suspendedreason @beiser thx

obv he didn't "solve art" but you've elucidated the basis on which such a (presumably only half-serious) hyperbolic claim could be made
What I mean is that he solved (an awful lot of) the mystery of what art is, and how it functions in humans, in the general case rather than for specific mediums—one of those things that perhaps should have happened earlier, but I don't think it ever did. You have many people in history trying to explain what art is by poetic analogy, or how it works in the similar way, and many drew from similar insights, but I think Dewey did better than everyone before him at breaking the thing open.
 

beiser

Well-known member
And believe it or not, those trance-like dives can be integrated more or less smoothly into a wider psychic framework of unperturbedness. Imagine working to spend psychic restless energy in a way that was efficient and consolidational, rather than just leaking this energy here and popping that energy there, recklessly.
you can tell he's peeked inside Dewey because everyone starts speaking like this immediately after. nearly incomprehensible, talking about consolidation of energy and "perturbations", relating everyday experience to the actions of the living creature in its environment.
 

constant escape

winter withered, warm
Do you think its possible to recognize/appreciate stuff like this, right off the bat, without being familiar?

(edit: familiar with the particular author, that is)

Not that that is what is happening with my case - I feel like perhaps I've picked up some techniques used/purveyed by those who were influenced by Dewey, such that I'd have a running start in interpreting him. But that sort of thing is rather common, I'd imagine.

That said, the particular post you quoted could've been from before I even looked at your Dewey post, the fact of which could be testament to the kind of influence he seemingly had on much of western aesthetic discourse.

Also wanna get to know Black Mountain College some more. Interesting potential connection point along the history of the geodesic dome, seeing as Gropius and Fuller were there at the same time, if I'm not mistaken.
 
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