quoted 9 lines On May 11, 2004, at 3:31 PM, chthonic wrote:>On May 11, 2004, at 3:31 PM, chthonic wrote:
>>yes, exactly. this is the case with a lot of genres that stick
>>around too long and
>>become complacent, as well as becoming a cottage industry in itself. more
>>"product" must be made to sell, so it self-perpetuates, long after
>>being artistically
>>valid.
>
>Please to be defining "artistically valid".
assuming this was a serious question and not a troll...
i believe art should attempt in some way to push the envelope of
whatever arena it exists in. at the same time, it needs to be
understandable on some level by persons other than the creator. i
also believe art should exist because it has to, because the creator
can't *not* do it.
a lot of music fails at these things. i'm not specifically talking
about IDM (frankly, i was more bitching about other genres); as i
said, this happens across the board.
the most obvious failure is the envelope-pushing. once genres have
become well-defined, many musicians adhere strictly to what has
become a blueprint, proudly proclaiming their allegiance to one
narrow form of music. there is something to be said for focus, but
as another person mentioned here, in this case it feeds on itself and
the results are clearly malnourished. one can certainly create music
firmly within a genre but still have influences from outside.
however, the music that fails to push the envelope is also usually
the music that fails to look outside itself, and ultimately fails to
be interesting.
the most academic art sometimes excels at this envelope-pushing, but
fails at the second part, which engages an audience in some way.
while personally i don't feel art should necessarily be made *for*
other people, a work not engaging an audience in some way becomes a
variation on the tree/forest question: if someone makes a work but
no one sees or understands it, is it still art? this may be the
least important of the three points i brought up, but i wanted to add
it lest anyone think i was arguing for pure academia or
envelope-pushing for its own sake. there needs to be a balance.
finally, the motivations behind creating art are often different than
those of commerce. once a genre of music becomes a commodity, the
motivation becomes corrupted. music is written to fill space and
time, to make money, to generate an excuse to tour, to perpetuate a
fashion to sell clothes, to have something to capture images of and
market books and DVDs. so a lot of people end up not creating out of
some internal need, but because they want to keep it all going. i'm
not saying everyone who sells music or ancillary items is corrupted.
but when a music becomes a lifestyle becomes an industry, some people
arise that are simply trading off of the assumption, even the hope,
that this is all now a permanent fixture in the world; unchanging,
self-perpetuating, revenue-generating. and music merely becomes the
excuse to make more stuff to make the money, live the life, and stop
the growth process that created the whole thing in the first place.
there are probably exceptions to each of these, but i'd say that
anything that fails at all 3 things is pretty worthless as a work of
art.
and however long or cranky the above rant may appear, it's to be
taken with a grain of salt.
d.
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