quoted 7 lines very interesting thought, and related to my IDM complexity thread,
> > very interesting thought, and related to my IDM complexity thread,
> > maybe? Because that's what I though when I started that discussion:
> > Progressiveness for its own sake is sometimes just that - and gives you
> > nothing else.
>
>of course. ever heard of musique concrete? amazingly progressive stuff,
>but really, really dull.
""complexity" [...] when it moves or astounds us - we tend to find
other words for it. Having heard a piece, we don't say, "Heavens,
that was complex!" unless we were frankly puzzled by it. We are more
likely to say "that was beautiful," or "that was impressive," or
"astonishing," and so forth. In other words, the sensation of
successfully deployed complexity is aesthetically "transferred" to
some other mode of description.
"It is mainly this transference, I think, that gives "complexity" its
artistic prestige. Taken by itself it might not suggest much more
than Karl Kraus's sardonic comment on the "new music" of his day:
that it was like a young woman who compensates her lack of natural
attractions with a perfect mastery of Sanskrit. And to tell the
truth, a certain self-deceptive narcissism can all too easily reside
within the notion of "complexity." But that's its vice, not its
virtue - and I doubt whether there is any significant aesthetic
category that does not have scope for both."
from "On Complexity" by Richard Toop
http://www.muw.edu/frc/complexity.htm
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