nevermind.

busbus wrote:Hey Colonel, why waste the CPU cycles? It's the transitive property. You and I both learned it a while back in our respective grade schools.

Ah, yes... learning the transitive property, lunch in the school cafeteria, drinking chocolate milk and trying to make our classmates laugh until it gurgled out of their nostrils... those were the halcyon days!

Anyway, it appears some people never bothered to learn that transitive property, or even the rudiments of logic.

But yeah, sorry for the nitpicking but I guess I can be dorky like that sometimes. After I'd posted that, I realized it didn't look right. When simmo posted the transitive property I realized my error and felt I ought to correct it.

I just can't believe we're here entertaining this same stupid "What is Art?" debate that inevitably gets argued in the first week of every high school aesthetics course.

But just for shits & giggles: tocharian, you never adequately explained to us how you arrived at the conclusion that rock music is somehow not a form of art?

Please, consider your audience and do try to phrase it in regular unadorned speech so that your average middlebrow, cro-magnon rock fan can understand. No need for Sontag quotes or any of that. Just a plain, clear line of reasoning will suffice.

(Hint: Maybe you could begin with a concise definition of the word "Art")


...and BTW Ricky Bobby, way to take my statement completely out of context.

This discussion takes me back to the days of my liberal arts education, wherein my love of art and literature was persistently crushed by pretentious assholes who over-analyzed everything.

You know that adage, "those who can do, those who can't teach?"

In art, it goes, "those who can create, those who can't become art philosophers and write drab and bitter essays about how smart and insightful they are."




That having been stated, I think that Burial is definitely crap.

tocharian wrote:

simmo wrote:Rock is a form of music.

Music is a form of art.

Therefore, rock is a form of art.

x = y;

y = z;

->

x = z.

Lame. Still waiting.

In order to refute this argument, you need to deny either the predicate or the antecedent. If you wish to argue either that rock isn't music or music isn't art, be my guest - but it seems like a bit of a waste of breath to me.

As Cranius points out, the interesting question is not whether rock is art, but whether it is good art. The former is trivial.

Mandroid2.0 wrote:This discussion takes me back to the days of my liberal arts education, wherein my love of art and literature was persistently crushed by pretentious assholes who over-analyzed everything.

You know that adage, "those who can do, those who can't teach?"

In art, it goes, "those who can create, those who can't become art philosophers and write drab and bitter essays about how smart and insightful they are."




That having been stated, I think that Burial is definitely crap.

[that damned fly's squeaky giggle.]

simmo wrote:

tocharian wrote:

simmo wrote:Rock is a form of music.

Music is a form of art.

Therefore, rock is a form of art.

x = y;

y = z;

->

x = z.

Lame. Still waiting.

In order to refute this argument, you need to deny either the predicate or the antecedent. If you wish to argue either that rock isn't music or music isn't art, be my guest - but it seems like a bit of a waste of breath to me.

See, it is not the point. If I'm right, Tocharain comes from place where making the point is not the point, and arguments matter if they they're complicated, ambiguous and hard (or even impossible, as the often make little sense) to understand. So some people will categorize them as "interesting", while I'd say "bullshit". But for some people there is no dichotomy between "interesting" and "bullshit". Simple things are 'lame', mainly for the reason they don't leave enough space for masturbating with eloquence, no matter if they're right or wrong, sense full or not. It is the discussion that matters, not the conclusions, nor even the possibility of reaching them. Personally I absolutely despise this approach in everything, including philosophy (or faux-philosophy, or whatever includes modern essays about culture - which I spend quite a time reading during the course of my studies, so I'm not talking out of my ass here). Just read that Sontag piece, it could (and should) have take about two pages in length, but it is orbitarory to throw "interesting" pieces here and there, no matter if they actually bring anything to the main point (cause like I said, 'the point' became obsolete), like "intelligence is taste in ideas". Oooh, how smart.

warmowski wrote:

tocharian wrote:
No, there were no "problems with the score" at all -- at least for the non-orchestral people.

I felt the problem was that we were there to record music being played, but the orchestra people instead of playing music turned in a kind of artless, earless, disengaged notation-staring exercise that resulted in only pitches and tones.

I'm not gonna say anymore after this because I seem to disagree with just about everyone here about talking about art... which is fine.

Just this is a terrible and utterly alien description of classical musicians. It's like someone asked you to describe a humming bird and you describe a chicken. As far as improvising goes... of course it's easier to improvise in rock music. Continuing a circle of fifths or some pattern of chords is much easier than building on a highly inventive melodic idea requiring a high degree of technical skill to execute.

So let's just say rock music is the apex of culture, David Yow is as great a musician as János Starker and be done with it.

tocharian wrote:Construction workers don't improvise when there are problems with the blueprint...

This is a joke, right?

emmanuelle cunt wrote:space for masturbating with eloquence

Would consider seeing.

tocharian wrote:

warmowski wrote:
No, there were no "problems with the score" at all -- at least for the non-orchestral people.

I felt the problem was that we were there to record music being played, but the orchestra people instead of playing music turned in a kind of artless, earless, disengaged notation-staring exercise that resulted in only pitches and tones.

Just this is a terrible and utterly alien description of classical musicians.

No, it's not. One of my first engineering jobs was for a jingle producer and I had similar experiences to what warmowski describes. Since then I have recorded many different styles of music with many different types of musicians and have continued to encounter it.

tocharian wrote:It's like someone asked you to describe a humming bird and you describe a chicken.

No, it's not. He is describing birds. You can't say a humming bird is a bird but a chicken is not. They are both birds. Just as you can't say classical music is art but rock music is not. They are both music. Music is art.

You could say you prefer humming birds over chickens and classical music over rock music. You would be right about that because it would be your subjective opinion.

tocharian wrote:As far as improvising goes... of course it's easier to improvise in rock music. Continuing a circle of fifths or some pattern of chords is much easier than building on a highly inventive melodic idea requiring a high degree of technical skill to execute.

I have listened to and created highly inventive melodic ideas that required a high degree of technical skill to execute, and all within the rock idiom. There are only 12 notes both for rock and for western classical music. Melody, complexity and highly polished technical skills are not the exclusive domain of the classical idiom. Just as simplicity is not the exclusive domain of rock. "Ode To Joy"? How much simpler can a melody be? How much more full of shit can you be?

Your argument was that rock is not art but camp because you read it in an essay once. What everyone here has demonstrated to you again and again is that rock is art. Serious intent and artistic expression are not excluded from rock music. We have all agreed that some rock has a campy intent just as other artistic expressions have campy intent. Have you ever heard of PDQ Bach? Is that art or is it camp? All I know for sure is that it's classical.

I have said and what I believe warmowski is saying is that technical skill and performing complex patterns have nothing to do with creative art. When he or I have asked classically trained musicians to be spontaneous and creative they were incapable of doing so. Couldn't even improv along any of the hundreds of complex scale patterns they knew.

We differ from you in acknowledging that there are exceptions to what we have generally experienced. That's how maturity and humility fits in with us. I hope you can find them for yourself someday.

tocharian wrote:So let's just say rock music is the apex of culture, David Yow is as great a musician as János Starker and be done with it.

We could say that, and that would be a subjective opinion. Unfortunately what you have been saying is objectively wrong.

tocharian wrote:I'm not gonna say anymore after this because I seem to disagree with just about everyone here about talking about art... which is fine.

It's not just a simple disagreement over taste, it is that you are demonstrably incorrect about an entire genre and adhere to your position even when shown how and why you are incorrect. Perhaps when you grow up a little bit and suffer some humility in the real world that exists outside your childish bubble of academia you will be able to come back and have a reasonable discussion. Until then, we will hold you to your word of withdrawing from this conversation and wish you good luck.

Go Class of 2008!