individual music development within communities

[jkudler]

In his opinion (Lash 1994: 144), to have a better access to 'community', 'it may be necessary to break with such abstract subjectivity'. The understanding of the 'we' of the unifying factors of a community is impossible under the 'star' of aesthetic reflexivity, under the star of such mimetic critique of the concept' mainly because of the underlying aesthetic subjectivity. Within this aesthetic approach there is no way to come to terms with the shared meanings which, in fact, first constitute the facility of a community.

clearly not envisioning a heterogeneous/large "community" trying to read/understand his work. . .

[jkudler]

how do i get that code to work???

i think it auto-parses URL's as links:
http://tinyurl.com/cpnyoy

[RFKorp]

html doesn't work. BBCode is needed.

Code: Select all

[url=http://tinyurl.com/cpnyoy]More...[/url]

results in:

More...


edit: and jesse's right too.

[Nim Chimpsky]

whatever baggage we may have around the word community, it does not fundamentally change it's actual meaning.

The baggage we have around a word is a fundamental part of its actual meaning.

[jkudler]

In his opinion (Lash 1994: 144), to have a better access to 'community', 'it may be necessary to break with such abstract subjectivity'. The understanding of the 'we' of the unifying factors of a community is impossible under the 'star' of aesthetic reflexivity, under the star of such mimetic critique of the concept' mainly because of the underlying aesthetic subjectivity. Within this aesthetic approach there is no way to come to terms with the shared meanings which, in fact, first constitute the facility of a community.

clearly not envisioning a heterogeneous/large "community" trying to read/understand his work. . .

this actually makes much much more sense with the preceding paragraph. unfortunately, i can't figure out how to copy and paste it, but it's at the link. the next line is a corker, though:
"Not surprisingly, the remedy offered by Lash to this conceptual fallacy is an old one: hermeneutics"

-Jesse, not surprised

[jon abbey]

I think this problem is essentially what jon is talking about, but i would offer that the same problem is true of a global community if the frequency of interaction is equal.

well, this is a hypothetical point within the context we're discussing, as it could never actually happen, but I'm not sure it's true anyway. if the worldwide community could magically be sorted into where people most wanted to be based solely on their music (and ignoring all other aspects of their life), I believe much more compelling music would result than it does out of local communities now.

[howsthatsound]

whatever baggage we may have around the word community, it does not fundamentally change it's actual meaning.

The baggage we have around a word is a fundamental part of its actual meaning.

maybe, if the baggage is shared across the culture and accepted as a norm, but what jon was expressing is hardly that (as this thread is evidence).

[jon abbey]

the role of the Internet is also crucial to what I'm talking about with the global community: as Keith has said in the past, a project like MIMEO couldn't exist without e-mail, to name one of numerous examples, and that's a pan-European project, not even an intercontinental one. so I don't think discussions of 'community' that aren't able to take that into account (because of when they were written), or choose not to, are especially relevant here.

[howsthatsound]

if the worldwide community could magically be sorted into where people most wanted to be based solely on their music (and ignoring all other aspects of their life), I believe much more compelling music would result than it does out of local communities now.

eh, i'd imagine you may get higher quality initially, but that would taper into homogeneity as the forces of cohesion took hold. but this is all besides the point. the point is:

more individual_______________________________________[shades of gray]_______________________________________ more a part of the community

we all sit somewhere on that line. i'm more of a leftist i think.

[howsthatsound]

the role of the Internet is also crucial to what I'm talking about with the global community: as Keith has said in the past, a project like MIMEO couldn't exist without e-mail, to name one of numerous examples, and that's a pan-European project, not even an intercontinental one. so I don't think discussions of 'community' that aren't able to take that into account (because of when they were written), or choose not to, are especially relevant here.

annnnnnnd STRAWMAN!.

lets not resort to obfuscation as a debate stratagem please.

the more interaction the more pressure to conform, the more conformity the weaker the individual voice. interaction within a community is interaction, internet or otherwise.

[jon abbey]

I find bringing in dictionary definitions and academic texts obfuscatory, to be honest, when we're clearly talking about a very specific world that we all have more specific knowledge of than any outsiders. I know that's the exact opposite of your purpose, but to me it just confuses things with semantics.

also, just to be clear, while historical stories about how collectives and communities have worked and not worked are very interesting and sometimes relevant, my main concern is with right now, and how things can keep developing going forward.

[jon abbey]

honestly, the last thing I'm trying to be is obfuscatory, it's just a very complex and confusing topic. it'd be complicated enough if we were talking about writers or painters (individual artists), but we're talking about a collaborative art form in large part, which makes it all much more complicated.

[howsthatsound]

i see your point in a way, but if we can't agree on a semantic framework, and we ignore social norms, how are we to have a cohesive discussion? without boundaries and a shared system of terms and definitions, 'communication' will be dodgy at best.

i think these footholds can make the conversation more interesting and more useful. for instance. keith does not see himself as being part of a community. while i believe that he certainly is, he may have that impression due to the fact that his individual is strong enough that it has not succumbed to the temptation to conform to that community. something that i think could serve as inspiration to younger players within this scene. you can accept some of the benefits of the community and do great work within it, without losing your individual.

the information designer in me wants to graph this, but i'll resist.

[vegetable mind]

[howsthatsound]

LOL

[negative potential]

Where does the concept of "scene" exist on the "community/collective" spectrum? Is "scene" a subcategory of community, does it contain elements of both community and collectivity, or is scene a mixture of both?

Case in point: the Berlin improv scene has more a "jazz" component represented by the Jazzwerkstatt series of concerts, and a more free improv/"eai" component grouped around certain venues. Many players (Axel Doerner, Clayton Thomas, Michael Thieke, Tony Buck, Magda Mayas, and many more I'm probably leaving out) seem to shift between both, whereas other players tend to stay more or less firmly on the jazz side of the spectrum (for example, Rudi Mahall) or on the free improv side (for example, Lucio Capece). Websites like Echtzeitmusik collate as many concert listings for both tastes. Is this a case of a single scene, or single "community", containing many collectivities?

No, I'm not trying to play semantics. I'm curious as to how other people apply these concepts in a concrete case.

[jon abbey]

"scene" to me is pretty equivalent to "community" in this context, at least the way I've been using it here.

and you didn't ask really, Alex, but Berlin is a special case IMO (in that there was an established free improv scene, yet an EAI scene was still able to emerge), and I'd like to hear someone who was around then chime in with some of the history and details. I know Robin Hayward was pretty influential, certainly on the rest of Phosphor, but what I'd really like to know is the degree of interaction/connection between the FMP-area crew and the newer musicians in those formative years. my guess would be that there wasn't much interaction or connection, the one exception I can think of is the Neumann/Dörner/Sven-Ake Johansson 'Barcelona Series' disc from 1999, but I don't really know for sure.

[negative potential]

Dörner, Bussmann, Hotz, Rupp, and Michael Griener are all on that Butch Morris "Berlin Skyscraper" disc on FMP, which was recorded in '95.

At the first Total Music Meeting after Jost Gebers stopped running things (Gebers seems to have wrested control of FMP back from Helma Schleif recently, though), in 2000, there was actually a trio of Fennesz, Gert-Jan Prins, and Peter van Bergen.

The subsequent Total Music Meetings under Schleif and Fuchs seemed to always have some tentative nods towards newer improv.

[jon abbey]

At the first Total Music Meeting after Jost Gebers stopped running things (Gebers seems to have wrested control of FMP back from Helma Schleif recently, though), in 2000, there was actually a trio of Fennesz, Gert-Jan Prins, and Peter van Bergen.

yep, Grob put this out on CD:

http://www.efi.group.shef.ac.uk/labels/ ... ob427.html

I'm talking more about the formative time of the EAI scene there, when musicians like Andrea Neumann and Annette Krebs and Burkhard Beins first emerged, so we're probably talking about something like 1996-1998, at a guess?

I know that Axel came from Cologne originally, and much like Toshi, he's always been a scene of one, happy to play in an extremely wide range of contexts and not really too influenced by anyone around him. I believe he studied in Cologne under Johannes Fritsch (one of Stockhausen's primary assistants in the sixties), as did Marcus Schmickler.

[b e]

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