gtaylor@astroatc.UUCP (One Cointreau, please. On ice.) (02/04/88)
In article <1630@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> tom@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Thomas C Hajdu) writes: >and on top of that Holst with Mozart and Beethoven!!! What a joke! It shouldn't be much of a surprise to anyone that when net posters decide on proper music, they're merely engaging in a little projection, imagining themselves as big, bad cyberweenies. Harmless enough, but one could rather as easily have simply posted "What's your favorite music, oh persons who read cyberpunk?" or "What subset of what you listen to could you imagine as soundtrack music for the movie?" Heck, only the little interchange about the relationship between media control and the music of the cyber punk future was even close to the real issue [that is, take a fictional world on its own *internal* terms and extrapolate the detritus of a popular culture from it], and even that was tainted by a hint of optimism on the part of the perfectable reader who talked about the explosion of interesting music rather than the increased *volume* of work without a kind of cultural screen or grid that the current homogenous marketplace provides...it was a kind of argument about music in *this* modern world and how nice one feels about it rather than what's on the radio-if one exists-in Chibatown. For my money, it'd be disposable and not really there at all in any sense but that of a virtual construct. Not owned, not credited, and ever present as a way to delineate the tiny warrens where noodle vendor engages in audio war with the artillery rental next door. No one gives a shit who makes it, and it's unlikely that anyone ever asks unless it functions as a kind of initiation or currency. Why are we so quick to assume that the future is a hybrid of Stanley Kubrick/Max Headroom/Tron/Diety knows who else instead of something derived from the text? Because we really invented this newsgroup to project our weeniedreaming out into the aethers? Or because we were looking at a kind of writing and the ideas that stand behind and in front of it? -- the reach of the arm. Gregory Taylor Astronautics the sweep of the eye. 5800 Cottage Grove Rd. Madison the stones thrown at the darkness WI 53704 608-221-9001,x232a outside the fire's circle of light. ...uwvax!astroatc!gtaylor
mthome@polaris.bbn.com (Mike Thome) (02/05/88)
In article <799@astroatc.UUCP> gtaylor@astroatc.UUCP (One Cointreau, please. On ice.) writes: >In article <1630@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> tom@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Thomas C Hajdu) writes: >>and on top of that Holst with Mozart and Beethoven!!! What a joke! > >It shouldn't be much of a surprise to anyone that when net posters decide >on proper music, they're merely engaging in a little projection, ... > Ah! Thank you - someone's doing some thinking... Now, attempting to stay in generalities, some thoughts: Cyber(ahem!)punks are people (more or less) just like (more or less) us - some "jocks" would find music irrelavent, and would rather just listen to whatever is coming over the wire (pick a wire, any wire!) than bother about selection. Use your imagination! Real-time synthesised music as a form of bio-feedback... Eccentric hackers who listen to nothing except Barry Manilow (or Country-western or steel-guitar or E Power Biggs or Led Zep or The Dead Kennedies or whatever)... Gurus who will listen to nothing but white noise... Real Fanatics who use all their senses for information input... The technology available ought to be able to support such gadgets as radio-tuners that know your taste in music... and will make certain that you dont ever have to listen to anything you consider junk (A good "hack" would be to reprogram someone's tuner... :-) of course, this sortof thing would probably either be new, illegal, or useless since radio-stations wouldn't be able to make a living from ads... subscriber (heh heh) "only" radio? "Current" cyberpunk music should be mostly electronic (but no need to *blantantly* electronic - that went "out" in the early 80's... besides, when a Steinway Grand is nothing but a bootleg bio-chip only slightly more expensive than the plastic it's encased in...). How about a quantum leap in virtuousity of the good musicians - with direct links, The Best wouldn't be limited by physical elements like reach or muscle tone (a drummer with MS?) - you'll have to train your brain, not your fingers! If cyberspace "objects" have unique shapes and colors, they'd probably also have unique sounds associated with them - a trip through cyberspace would be like spinning the dial on a multi-dimensional radio tuner. Finally, one of the trademarks of cyberpunk societies is extreme variety and mixtures - the "current" music would be the same: odd combinations of styles and instruments (Bach on electric guitar and wind chimes, The Dead Milkmen on harpsichord and string quartet with Pavarotti on lead vocal, Kiss played by a symphony orchestra... ok! ok! maybe I'm getting a *little* silly!! :-) :-) ;-) On the other hand, there'll always be extremes... even popular extremes. More merging of different schools of music - western music has already borrowed heavily from African, now mix in some far east (but not TOO far) and some classical islander... maybe some different scales? Chords that sound strange... again, no end to the possibilities. -mike thome (mthome @ bbn.com)
tom@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Thomas C Hajdu) (02/05/88)
I think its a little more complicated than the way you described it.
The context of a piece of music is pretty important. The Requiem
deals with (apart from the human condition) the problems of living
in Europe centuries ago: when a man could be killed for thinking
of being encased in a large chunk and hurling through the air at
a velocity twice the speed of sound.
Tom
Music Dept
Princeton UniversityDeadHead@cup.portal.com (02/06/88)
What I dont understand is why there has to be a DEFINITIVE type of music. I thought this cyberpunk movement was an underground subculture; otherwise it should not have been placed in ALT.cyberpunk. And for any non-main-stream movement, it's popularity lies in its diversity, not its uniformity. By the way, does anybody want to make different designes of cyberpunk t-shirts? Maybe we should tie-dye them, too! DeadHead Department of Electrical Engineering San Jose State University UUCP: DeadHead@cup.portal.com || ...sun!aeras!grinch!iko-iko!bruce