quoted 8 lines Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 14:31:38 -0400 (EDT)
> Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 14:31:38 -0400 (EDT)
> From: damek@earthling.net
>
>..Well, the medical profession has degrees and memberships, etc., but
>that's different. As far as artistic fields like music, sculpture,
>theatre, painting, lighting designer - the true recognition of the
>quality of the artist seems to simply be the recogntion and
>measurement of one's peers, which can change over time.
you'd be shocked. getting published (the nearest equivalent to a
"musical performance") in established journals in medicine (medical
research, that is) is based on a process more subjective and
political than you'd think, despite science being thought as an
objective endeavor.
scientists are very protective about their pet ideas and set
conceptions about How The World Works, and when they become editors
at these mags -- like any situation where someone is in a situation
to make big decisions -- you'll find that a lot of high-level science
articles that don't make the cut often conflict with the editor's
perspective ("the data here are inconclusive, doesn't support this
claim, etc.") -- and without publication, funding and tenure for the
renegade scientist can get dropped (no "MTV-level exposure").
likewise you see people at music magazines, people with big mouths
like me, who shoot down musical ideas because they don't like them,
but they're in an excellent position to voice and distribute their
opinions, whereas Real Independent Musicians are generally pretty
busy touring or focused on the business of Making Music, and Fuck The
Critics. i suppose one solution is to make and review your own work
in the big publications -- holding down a couple of legal names if
necessary -- if you're looking to maximize your exposure.
if a scientific idea is truly earth-shattering in proportion, it will
be recognized, given enough patience, just like in music -- look how
long it took sun ra to get some play time on NPR, after all. i think
it might have been niels bohr who said something to the effect that
you have to wait for the old guard to die before they listen to you.
either that or you die first and then become respectable.
i suppose one larger question to this list is, in the purest creative
sense, if you make music, what is it about others' opinions -- what
is it about the performance aspect of standing in front of a crowd
that validates the music?
i go to some of these electronic music shows and the social aspect of
this stuff simply can't be swept under the rug. i wonder if people go
to these shows because we're monkeys and we want to be in
"experimental artsy elitist electronic music tribes" or "trance
techno rave tribes" or "banjo, fiddle and jug tribes". i wonder if
the music is really there to validate or reinforce this primal
behavior, and not the other way around. maybe we're looking in the
wrong direction.
-a.
--
Alex Reynolds Biology LSP / SAS Computing
15 Mudd Building
http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~reynolda/
Department of Biology mailto:reynolda@sas.upenn.edu
University of Pennsylvania V +1 215 573.2818
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6228 USA F +1 215 898.8780
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"It is retrograde to clone -- there are other ways of making people
identical. We can put them through the same schools and subject
them to eight hours of TV every day. That works a lot better. Why
do you think Americans are buying SUVs?" -S. Willadsen, Wired, 2/01
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