"...the manifestation of talent where there was none."

The title of this week's entry is from Stop Player. Joke No. 4, William Gaddis's first stab at writing a cultural history of the United States and what he called "the false democratization of the arts" through exhaustive focus on the player piano. Aside from the material we're reading this week, Gaddis never made it past the research and note-taking stages; Agapē Agape, his last published work, voiced his own deep regrets (by way of a thinly-veiled fictional self) over this unfinished project in the months before his death.

Here's an excellent web resource on the player piano's history (along with technical descriptions and other miscellany), adding up to a much greater complexity than Gaddis cared to admit:

http://www.pianola.com/

Once the player piano had reached market saturation, one strategy adopted by certain manufacturers was to shift away from the instrument's populist appeal and toward the prestige of association with serious composers writing specifically for the instrument, such as Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Rachmaninov, and George Gershwin.

A recurring theme throughout the history of modern (and particularly, electronic) music was a belief that instruments as they currently existed were inadequate; again and again, composers doubled as inventors and programmers in the development of instruments, technologies, and interfaces for the realization of new sounds. Nicolas Collins's essay does a fine job of outlining some of the key issues and challenges that composers have faced; one his own innovations is demonstrated below:

Here's a short video about Reed Ghazala, whose circuit-bending work is based on the playful modification of cheap electronic instruments and toys; the popular/avant-garde distinction that we once thought was clear is no longer so:

And finally, the composer/inventor Trimpin and his Fire Organ:

Novel Mapping

Map from Franco Moretti's Atlas Of the European Novel, showing spatial interactions of the characters in Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens

Somewhere on my long lifetime to-do list is the task of verifying a story told by an old painting teacher of mine; Robert Carroll, an American artist who'd relocated to Rome, was invited in as a visiting professor during my final year of study in Cleveland.  Once, in support of his advice to follow through on my intuitions, he recalled having read Edgar Allan Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket.  This strange and singular book, Poe's only completed novel, takes the form of a diary kept by the stowaway character of the title.  As Carroll read it, he became convinced that its frequent mentions of navigational coordinates, appearing dozens of times throughout, had an added significance beyond realist plausibility, though he couldn't say what that might be.  This nagged at him to a point where he felt he had to investigate; obtaining a large scale map, he plotted each location with a pin; moving through this task, he was stunned to see the outline of a seagull taking shape.  Was this Poe's intent?

It couldn't be accidental, thought Carroll, especially since there appears toward the end of the novel a horrific image of a gull devouring the flesh of a dead man.  Excited by his discovery, he shared it with a couple of English professors, whose reactions were basically, "hmmm, that's curious...", and that was that.  Carroll was discouraged by their apathy, and never pursued it much further.

Maybe Carroll was just unfortunate in his timing; though there's no telling what the literary scholar Franco Moretti--whose maps appear in the Denis Wood chapter we're reading this week--might've made of the image symbolism of this avian contour, he might on some level feel vindicated by learning of Carroll's strange discovery.  Known for his pioneering use of mapping, data visualization, and quantitative analysis in the study of European literature, Moretti has come under fire from more traditional peers who feel his methods (often wildly mischaracterized) treat novels as nothing more than data sets to plug into Excel spreadsheets.  For those who take the trouble to actually read him, one quickly finds that Moretti is extremely skilled in his application of an entire range of traditional literary tools, along with ones derived from mathematics and science.  Here's a link to some thoughtful assessments of his work (there are many others too out there), so you can begin to decide for yourself:

http://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/franco-morettis-distant-reading-a-symposium/

John Cage and the Graphic Score

As we look at the graphic scores of post-war avant-garde composers this coming week, a series of questions inevitably arise, such as: is the score decipherable by itself, or might some assistance or further instruction be necessary?  Does the new graphic language contain ideas that are vexing to performers schooled in the customs and values embodied by traditional notation, and if so, how might those issues be addressed?  Is it possible to follow the rules laid out in a graphic score and still not "get it right"?  It's important to remember that in most cases these scores were performed by ensembles or soloists working closely--often in ongoing collaboration--with the composers themselves; in that way, the music had its best chance of being brought to life by a sympathetic performer.  But what happens in the more conventional context of a symphony orchestra, where performers are bound by contract to accept their musical director's choices?

The New York Philharmonic's 1964 performance of John Cage's Atlas Eclipticalis gives us a particularly vivid example of all that can go wrong.  Originally premiered in 1961 and using an astronomical star chart as its template, the piece was Cage's most ambitious large ensemble effort up to that point.  At the time--and it's not so different now--major orchestras were criticized for ignoring the work of living composers and enforcing their obscurity; however difficult the music might be for the average Mozart devotee, the refusal of orchestras to engage on some level with serious music of the present, critics claimed, would doom them to be nothing more than a cultural mausoleum.

Detail of score for John Cage's Atlas Eclipticalis

But Cage's piece was dead on arrival; the piece was only granted two brief rehearsals, barely enough time for even proper instruction on how to read the score, much less play it (Benjamin Piekut gives a very thorough account of the concert, along with considerable insight into the piece itself, here). Conductor Leonard Bernstein, otherwise lauded for the tirelessness of his educational outreach--working with TV, radio, and his ongoing series of Young People's Concerts--reveals his blind spots here, unable (or unwilling) to distinguish between the various places Cage courted chance in composition or performance; at certain moments in his spoken introduction above, he seems to have bent over backwards to undermine the presentation of the piece and any possibility that the Philharmonic audience might make up its own mind about it.  The orchestra's commitment to honoring Cage's intentions, grudging at best, was questioned later by the composer, who referred to the musicians as "gangsters."

Cartoon by Ad Reinhardt from PM Magazine, late 1940s

Beg, Borrow, or Steal (miscellany)

Craig Baldwin is an important filmmaker, writer, programmer, and raconteur, and one of today's foremost advocates of moving image appropriation; this YouTube interview is a nice supplement to the material we'll be discussing this week and next.

Ethan Hein has written an excellent blog post about the many ways in which elements of Miles Davis' So What have been incorporated into jazz, pop, and hip-hop contexts, uncovering many mutations of its distinctive bassline (and other elements too):

http://www.ethanhein.com/wp/2011/so-what/

Andy Baio's brilliant 8-bit tribute to Miles Davis's Kind of Blue is available here in its entirety:

http://kindofbloop.com/

Despite getting legal clearance for the music itself, Baio neglected to do the same for the cover art. Here's his account of the problems that ensued:

http://waxy.org/2011/06/kind_of_screwed/

And finally, here's a lengthy blog post by Terry Hart arguing that Baio got what he deserved:

http://www.copyhype.com/2011/07/kind-of-bamboozled-why-kind-of-bloop-is-not-a-fair-use/

The Memex (and more)

Herman Hollerith's Tabulator, first used in the 1890 U.S. Census

A few miscellaneous items related to this past week's readings and other things we discussed in class:

A few years back, an article appeared in the NY Times about a new national ID system in India that will use iris scans and fingerprints to build the world's largest biometric database; it serves as an interesting point of comparison between the Hollerith Tabulator and today's technology. A fascinating subject, even if the article provides little support for its assertions that the new system alone can address the nation's bureaucratic inefficiencies; you can read about it here.

Here are some images of Vannevar Bush's Memex:

Drawing of Vannevar Bush's Memex (Life, September 1945)

Memex microfilm screens (Life, September 1945)

The camera as prosthesis: not quite Google Glass, though its ugliness is perhaps better justified:

Memex camera (Life, September 1945)



And here's a typical example of the ads that appeared in post-war issues of Popular Mechanics; it gives nicely illustrates the ready availability and apparent demand for electronics parts (and other materials) produced during WWII and the Korean War.  These diodes, transistors, and other sundry components  could be had for pennies, supplying hobbyists and small business startups:

Ad from Popular Mechanics magazine, circa 1954