Dematerialisation.

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baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Phenomenologically, looking at screens all day alters the way in which you see, casts a veil over immediate connection to reality. I find my eyes take longer and longer to adjust to outside light, the more I sink into that world of screens. The screens end up feeling realer than the outside world at a very visceral level, and I'm sure this is part of the addictive quality of the digital (along with everything else)

https://medium.com/s/i-o/the-many-faces-of-distracted-boyfriend-299836ba4c89 Was reading this the other day - I know it's clickbait journalism, but one part resonated with me - about how internet personas started off as distinct entities from one's real life persona, but that now there is no 'real life' to contrast our online presences with. The internet is where we express and create ourselves, the distinction between real life and online life has utterly collapsed. Online behaviour that once would have been derided as unbearably sad or geeky, is now the norm - computer games, online dating...

re the autotune/melodyne thing - interesting that it's often conspicuously absent from UK drill, whereas the first time I ever understood autotune properly as an aesthetic choice reflecting how reality is experienced, was when listening to stuff like Lil Durk
 
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baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
CrowleyHead said:
The pornography thing is essentially one of those weird spirals because supposedly the consumer is in fact by themselves, not doing any harm and when you get into the fantastic element of anime porn there's already a natural sort of inability to regard it as serious because it's so obviously not real. In that automatic immateriality, people tend to project excessively lurid fantasies of their subconscious but also actively base their desires and infatuations based on the sort of concepts you have to subliminally absorb from the culture of that fetishism. For a lot of people it can go into content that is harmful but you can mentally section it off with "Well one wouldn't do that in real life obviously".
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And the distinction between watching and doing collapses. The internet exacerbates a pre-existing problem that people had about recognising that they were capable of doing 'bad things', and instead projecting these negative qualities onto others (groups).
 
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baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
blissblogger said:
wasn't there some kind of study or research to do with how young men - after being exposed to so much online porn depicting impossibly athletic and theatricalized sex - found the real thing to be insufficiently arousing?
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Funny how completely the opposite relationship allegedly pertains when it comes to inscreen/real violence!
 
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william kent

Well-known member
luka said:
IN ITS MANIFESTATIONS. so not some stupid clunky theory cunt. actual events. actual popular records which are actually consumed. actual buildings on actual skylines. actual behaviours. etc. etc.
without too much interference from values, values limit perception. that is ideological values and aesthetic values. if we could bracket those then i think we can see more of the landscape and also get a clearer view of the road ahead.
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The last two Varg (not that one) albums were apparently made on an iPad whilst traveling between gigs, some of the titles explicitly reference rail networks he was on whilst making it, iPhones etc and he samples stuff like novelty gun apps. I think he started using ASMR in there too. They're albums that couldn't really exist at any other time given how tied in they are to stuff like wifi, tablets and the rest.
 
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thirdform

pass the sick bucket
i am just saying that the stereotypical facets of digitalisation, dreaminess, virtual space, blurring into one, etc are exagerrated at the expense of others.

again just tools. a smart phone (as a material object) in itself isn't reactionary, it's the role it occupies in a mode of production that is conservative and the generalisation of terror on the micro level.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
thirdform said:
i am just saying that the stereotypical facets of digitalisation, dreaminess, virtual space, blurring into one, etc are exagerrated at the expense of others.

again just tools. a smart phone (as a material object) in itself isn't reactionary, it's the role it occupies in a mode of production that is conservative and the generalisation of terror on the micro level.
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but why not just make poor, old, suffering luka happy and answer the question instead of inventing your own question to answer!
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
thirdform said:
whats a theory cunt? im pretty much self-taught in that regard.
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its not a person its a habit. it's avoiding the responsibility of the personal response in favour of reaching for an off-the-shelf explanation. it's the classic academic dodge. it's what makes people stupid. it also is the old appeal to authority routine.
 
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thirdform

pass the sick bucket
luka said:
but why not just make poor, old, suffering luka happy and answer the question instead of inventing your own question to answer!
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i did? glitch/microsound reflects the digital era best i think. it's very tense. and emotionally greyscale, but not in a drone techno way which is goth.
 
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thirdform

pass the sick bucket
brostep is interesting in that regard. it's essentially E-mego like avant-computer noise music gone mainstream, and on a worldwide level not like hardcore, or even jump up dnb. the basslines are very juttering, micro-edited, staccato, fold into themselves, and pixilated and bounce out of the speakers immediately. It's like watching high definition in audio form. where as the jump up bassline is usually a moronic unlayered seasaw 2 note pattern repeated for 5 minutes. some datsik stuff almost sounds like singing noise.

My main problems with brostep are 1) as @blissblogger says, cartoon darkside with no real room for tension which aligns it with more the nu metal scene which i am not into, and 2) that annoying plodding halfstep beat which was rinsed to death around 06/08 anyway.
 
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luka

luka

Well-known member
thirdform said:
i did? glitch/microsound reflects the digital era best i think. it's very tense. and emotionally greyscale, but not in a drone techno way which is goth.
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part of the reason i think topshop pop feels very modern is the kind of invidious and intrusive emotional manipulation the internet specialises in. i think that's something more cerebral forms can't capture.

that kind of perky, exhausting sassiness for instance.
 
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luka

luka

Well-known member
fair enough people have been selling us stuff with emotional (and sexual) manipulation since way before any of us were born but even so....
 
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thirdform

pass the sick bucket
luka said:
part of the reason i think topshop pop feels very modern is the kind of invidious and intrusive emotional manipulation the internet specialises in. i think that's something more cerebral forms can't capture.

that kind of perky, exhausting sassiness for instance.
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yeah but then it's a bit philistine innit. like i had mates who would write about pop like this and eventually i was like despairing hell I'm not really gonna talk to you about music cos you're putting up this pretence of believing in it when you're just as cynical, u just don't want to embrace disgust fully cos u are in a more socially privileged position. for pop to truely work u have to believe in it. once that belief is gone it can only be gratifying sonically as an academic interest.
 
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thirdform

pass the sick bucket
i really felt like i had to believe in the music i listen to after ironically being forced to listen to psytrance and psychedelic ambient. ironic cos in private i thought it was a bit naff but i was a very lonely person before uni and fell in with the first crowd that fell my way.
 
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william kent

Well-known member
thirdform said:
brostep is interesting in that regard. it's essentially E-mego like avant-computer noise music gone mainstream, and on a worldwide level not like hardcore, or even jump up dnb. the basslines are very juttering, micro-edited, staccato, fold into themselves, and pixilated and bounce out of the speakers immediately. It's like watching high definition in audio form. where as the jump up bassline is usually a moronic unlayered seasaw 2 note pattern repeated for 5 minutes. some datsik stuff almost sounds like singing noise.
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thirdform

pass the sick bucket
i think i stopped *believing* in pop in 2006.

i am still interested in things, travi$ Scott, Quavo, Young Thug, Future, etc but yeah it's a bit of a forced exercise now. i almost don't care what they're saying i'm only really interested n the technique. lyrically i can't connect to that lifestyle. not even in as much as idealising or yearning for it.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
yeah, but again im not talking about what music is good or what i find compelling.
im really just talking about places where i see the historical moment expressed in
its manifestations and products. it's precisely becasue i dont like that music
and in fact often feel a sense of dystopian doom and despair when i hear it that
i think it is so expressive of the times. it doesn't seem remotely 'real' but the
real is not something i associate with the 20tens
 
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