Digital Media Theory articles

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nomadologist

Guest
And music does matter because....? Maybe 300,000 copies of a record were sold to an equally rarified audience of nu-folk fans? How is the pursuit of theory as an exercise in humans sublimating excess creative energy (libido) less "important", relevant, or more ethically dubious than music as an exercise in sublimation?
 
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nomadologist

Guest
Eh? "Music is a feeling." I think music is a lot more complicated than that, as is any work of "art." Often theory tries to make a more direct bid at political/social relevance because the academy is the last stronghold of the left in the West anymore. I don't think that it is more politically or socially relevant than music, but it definitely has a function in a post-Enlightenment culture.

Critical theory was preceded by millennia of philosophy and religious thought. "Critical theory" is what we call philosophy now.
 
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nomadologist

Guest
Music is a set of highly charged and culturally codified abstractions, just like visual art is, just like literature is, just like any product of human energy that is made in leisure time is. Music is no less of a leisure activity than is critical theory, love.
 
HMGovt’s Glorious Return!

HMGovt’s Glorious Return!

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You've got it! You have to buy into a whole raft of precepts to get anything out of 'theory'.

You have to be stone dead or stone deaf not to get anything out of music. That's all that needs to be said about the fundamental psychological reality of music.
 
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nomadologist

Guest
I write music, I've been a classical pianist and violinist since I was 5. You always already hear music with a set of ears that are influenced heavily by the culture you were born into, raised in, etc. Music does not exist in some sort of vacuum, while critical theory alone is weighed down by human history.

What's your point?

Remember Stephen Daedalus: "History is the nightmare from which I'm trying to awake."
 
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gek-opel

entered apprentice
Thats incorrect about music y'know... anyway, its unfair to compare theory, which is a branch of philosophy to the WHOLE of music. This is quite a silly argument--most peoples' time is expended on utterly irrelevant things, far worse than any academic pursuing knowledge or its own sake.
 
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nomadologist

Guest
thanks. i thought this was going to be a supplemental scholastic thread that would make me do my work, too. now it's all bogged down in weirdness. oh well.
 
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Numbers

Well-known member
HMGovt said:
Hey, I am interested. I downloaded a bunch of this stuff - I've been looking for the Vannevar Bush paper since time. And I find Manuel Delanda's books, his materialist take on it all, fascinating and stimulating. But it's just context-setting, none of it matters.
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Sharpen up your german and go reading this article. Maybe you can learn a thing or two about theory. Good luck!
 
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nomadologist

Guest
m99188868 said:
Sharpen up your german and go reading this article. Maybe you can learn a thing or two about theory. Good luck!
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I need to sharpen my German like whoa, so I'm reading this...I may ask for help...

Gek: looks like I struck a nerve. Do you think it was the part about "damsels in distress"? Heh.
 
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nomadologist

Guest
No, you didn't strike any nerve, HMGovt. You were way off base and have yet to make a coherent point about the qualitative difference between critical theory and music in terms of cultural relevance or significance.
 
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Dunninger

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nomadologist said:
(Was bedeutet "Nutzlosigkeit"? ...)
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uselessness

For the german speaking crew, there was an article with a similar topic in the same paper recently:
http://www.zeit.de/2007/05/Geisteswiss-Welzer?page=all

The author's argument basically is, that the humanities are important because they actually create value (don't know if that's the correct financial expression in english). Which is a double-edged sword because validating science mainly by its usefulness for the marketplace is kind of wrong.
 
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nomadologist

Guest
ach so. danke sehr. :D

links to articles are always good...
 
M

mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
HMGovt said:
I'm sorry, I get the strong impression, and it has been touched on in this thread, that all these earnest, well-meaning theorists are CERTAIN that the Internet and meshworks and hierarchies are REALLY, REALLY significant, but lacking the knowledge or skills to make a material contribution, all they can do is write portentous but epistemologically featherweight papers about how REALLY, REALLY significant this stuff is and will be. Which is why this stuff is only significant to other theorists who depend on the debate for their pay cheques. It's a nice racket, but Jesus, don't expect anyone to give it any wider respect.
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In one way you're right HM, in the first and second waves of writings about digital technologies, - this is all really new, right? - there was a vast thread of utopianism within the writing - the horrific platitudes of the Krokers are just one embarassing example - which have now been (partially) replaced by a much more rationalist and even dystopian vision of analysis of the systems which have been put in place. You can look at Donna Harrraway and her replacement Patricia MacCormack or the work of Andy Gofey, John Monk and Lisa Blackman for examples. Theories are the myths of our day ( copyright Vincent Deary ) and as such serve a similar function.

Increasingly you find cross-platform disciplines, where artists and theorists work hand in hand with programmers to find solutions to life etc. Each person has a valid contribution to make in trying to get the human race to a point where it doesn't extinct, or can exist in another place, or in another realm. I personally think that's a really crap thing to do, and that we should just annihilate the human race now, but I come from the dark side of Digital Theory.

oh and nomad this is really generous of you, thank you.
 
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tht

akstavrh
I think he's angry about you lightly critiquing his latest musical wank fantasy
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the thing i like so much is the lacuna between the subject and the interpellated (theory)

like someone you haven't seen since you were nine years old tracking you down and complaining about the time you said you fucked their mum (nontheory)
 
HMGovt’s Glorious Return!

HMGovt’s Glorious Return!

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Well I see this thread has become flypaper for assholes...

I happened to read the newsom thread a few minutes before reading the theory thread. It struck me as funny in a pot calling kettle way.
 
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