N CASH wrote:
>Well, Marilyn Manson has "warranted" disscussion here. Are you saying he
>has proved his craft?
It is your own assursion that his art, "is a demonstration of how to attain fame in America (by simulating rock stardom)." He seems skilled in this "art", does he not?
>Then we could say that Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer
>proved their craft.
I don't believe that for either of them, it was `fame' itself which was their /raison d'etre/. For Bundy maybe a little, but most assuredly not for Dahmer. I heard and interview with an FBI profiler on NPR once who had done extensive interviews with Dahmer and found him to be a truly gentle, compassionate man, if highly disfunctional. This even comes through, oddly enough, when you hear the details of the ritual he employed when he ate the flesh of a former lover--something he actual only did in a couple of rare "special" cases. (He would set the table for two, prepare an extravagant meal using a small amount of meat from the leg muscle of his lover, then place a picture of the victim at the place across from him and dine toasting to their memory.)
And as for Bundy; after watching an series of interviews with him the day before his execution, I'm still surprised that a Cult of Ted hasn't sprung up in his wake, our culture being how it is.
>Maybe Manson himself poses the question: When did fame become an art?
A question which Andy Warhol himself answered, if not definitively, at least with large enough brush strokes as to ensure that no one after him could make a better claim as the first.
>So the serial killers and sex kittens which make
>Manson's identity didn't claim their lives were "all theater," or point
>to these obvious dichotomies, etc... But his "art" does not involve this
>inspiration/creation process. It is a demonstration of how to attain
>fame in America (by simulating rock stardom).
As I said, I'm glad to see music catching up with visual art. I've thought it interesting how historically, periods in musical always seems to follow precisely one movement behind those happening in the visual arts. (Think for instance: Baroque. In music it represents the rebirth which had been, to Art, its Renaissance. Or in another case, when was Minimalism explored in painting compared to when was it in music?) Does this give us a predicive power over understanding what trends in music are coming next?
>> But then, having shed a tear, I move on to the newer, still innovative
forms
>> of music all around these days.
>
>Care to cite any?
Hip-hop, experiment music, and Jazz have converged on the same point in musical space from three entirely different directions. Experimental music, which traces its roots back to Stockhausen and Cage and comes well pedigreed; a quite new musical form, Hip-hop (which loosely encompasses everything from Rap to Acid Jazz, Breakbeat to Ambient); and a small but noted faction within the Jazz community have found themselves arrived at the same party, at the same moment, and all wearing exactly the same dress.
Both Experimental and Hip-hop have, for different reasons, embraced technologies which allow them to restructure music in whole blocks. This has enabled them to build highly structured compositions out of previously existing fragments, much as Romans using the rubble from Greek temples to build their roads. Both are mastering the ability to engage the past and bring to bare all the loaded symbolism encrypted in these fragments of culture, while using this very same cultural lattice as an element in their compositions. Previously, Jazz, which had grown skilled at deconstructing its musical forms, had begun to recombining the left-over pieces in creative ways. And Miles early use of overdubing and post-production pointed a way ahead for some which would be on a collision course with where Experimental and Hip-hop where headed.
The wonderful thing that happens when several schools of thought converge on a single theme, from different angles, is that the exchange between the groups enables an exponential rate growth with in that field for a brief time. For instance, jazz musicians, seeing the structural potential of DJ scratching and samplers, have adapted that sound quality and translated its ethic into traditional instrumentation, taking a movement that had been moving away from the player as the artist, and turning it into a "John Henry" style battle to prove that man can beat machine at its own game.
This, is just one "for instance," off the top of my head.
>Well, it isn't obvious to me. So maybe you can stop holding back. And
>why should you bestow this social grace? Are you special or just
>especially nice?
I'm trying.
-Prof. Tim