(Art as) Communication vs. Expression

luka

Well-known member
you can't just tell them they have to listen to the old music we used to dance to when we were young. That's not going to help. We need to harvest their energy and use it in a constructive way.
 

luka

Well-known member
Can't have a forum full of people going, do you like that man, yeah I like it man, it's cool.
 

kumar

Well-known member
my vague reaction is that the terms arent so solid, any attempt at communication failed or successful is expressing lots of information and any distilled expression mundane or divine is going to communicate a lot.

i suppose you are talking particularly about writing, so for the arguments sake we can skirt over the problems of talking about Art let alone Great Art as though they refer to a continuous and distinct set of experiences. The last thing i remember reading and really getting into were a couple of books by ann quin last year. a part which stuck with me was where a character is running about a 1950s seaside town in a murderous frenzy and looks up at the hillside in the distance and then perceives the same sensation glancing at the wrinkles on the back of their hand. its this alarming recognition of the way their environment is replicating their extreme mental state and vice versa. you get this sense from drugs sometimes, the porosity between you and your surroundings and the fear that can induce. the way its written in the book you have these two images colliding with each other, but she really nails the voices that capture the mundane grubby seediness of that place at that time.

So altogether its this sort of structural symmetry, the prose and the sense of the surrounding voices vividly mirroring the experience of that hilltop/hand epiphany, which itself is a realisation of that same mirroring process. so rather than expression/communication i think a lot of the things that have really done it for me have that sort of structural symmetry, for want of a better term.

the standard is less is this communicating to anyone, is this expressing something worthwhile but more are the affective levels of the writing reinforcing and intensifying the other effects of reading.
 

kumar

Well-known member
one good example of that would be pirate radio music probably grime most of all where the entire structure of the thing is superhumanly designed to maximise the effects of each component.
 
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luka

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For Americans art doesn't justify itself. The experience doesn't justify its production. The experience doesn't explain its production. It's not the rational act of a self interested agent trying to maximise his economic advantage. It's the atavistic behaviour of a primitive tribe. A troubling and opaque code like the Vonyich Manuscript
 

luka

Well-known member
This is why I would argue that Americans are machines and not human beings. And why I would go on to say that this is why it's so important we find a way to make these machines function in a socially useful way. I'm in no way anti machine. I don't want to have to go down to the river to wash my clothes
 

luka

Well-known member
Americans will sit in a room trying to work out basic mechanism of humour and then try and use that scientific formula to make up jokes. They won't sit there thinking up funny things to make one another laugh. They'll try and solve comedy with science

It's partly to do with capitalism, or capitalism is to do with that mindset, one or the other. Standardisation. Mass production.

Once you identify a forumula a you can start to churn out product eg Gucci Mane tweaking it slightly each time.
 

entertainment

Well-known member
I'm planning on reading Peter Osbornes theory about contemporary art that all art since the conceptual turn around the 60's is doomed to a state of reflexive communication/information primacy.

Basically the consummation of this conceptual turn performed an ontological mutation of art through culture and technology and there's no way back.

Art is now post-aesthetic and is both created and experienced through a fundamentally different cognitive lens than before.

Maybe it's not the best description since I haven't read it yet only the book description but it's called Anywhere or Not at All if you're interested.
 

sus

Well-known member
I'm planning on reading Peter Osbornes theory about contemporary art that all art since the conceptual turn around the 60's is doomed to a state of reflexive communication/information primacy.

Basically the consummation of this conceptual turn performed an ontological mutation of art through culture and technology and there's no way back.

Art is now post-aesthetic and is both created and experienced through a fundamentally different cognitive lens than before.

Seems right and kinda lines up with what @kumar advocated, which seems more Old World—is it just that people's appetites changed? Or are they gonna be perpetually hungry for the old art, and "shit's hard"?
 
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sus

Well-known member
This is why I would argue that Americans are machines and not human beings.

Yeah There are like 3 kinds of threads on this forum: There are politics threads, where I'm told to go fuck myself; there are music threads, where I'm told to go fuck myself; and there are threads like Revealing The Map or Garden of Forking Paths where I get thumbs once 'n awhile and no one tells me to go fuck myself. I'm not complaining about being persistently told I'm the worst in the other 2 types, I just wanted to make one of the 3rd kinds to balance the ratio—but maybe this is just about "me" I'm not sure what other lessons to draw from the last page of luka comments
 

sus

Well-known member
You know Luka the great thing about the "socialization/training" mechanic you've been on about is it works by its own, it doesn't require constant degradation—people just avoid things they don't like, and those threads disappear off the home page, and op learns that kinda post doesn't interest people
 

Leo

Well-known member
c'mon, Gus, everyone gets told to go fuck themselves on here from time to time.
 

sus

Well-known member
It's a young/old thing too I think—Leo's as old as Biden and looks it, just completely decrepit, skin falling off his face, I saw a picture. Luka's losing all his hair and it gives him panic attacks, Craner's popping ED medications before trying to pick up some poor slavic girl in a karaoke bar

Whereas we really glow, we have the fresh face of youth, rosy cheeks, and they're very envious—that's what all this "not human" business is about, pure projection
 
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