>
> Do we feel excited that live coding has its own category? Or offended
> that it appears to be a joke category, that our approach needs
> defending, that what we are doing has been pre-judged as not daring?
> What happens if a live coder submits to another category, will they
> get pushed back into this joke category? I wonder if this category is
> made not to further live coding but to contain it. What's the point
> of a Computer Music conference that marginalises and makes a joke
> about the people who are engaging with computation?
>
>
I wonder whether it's not a attempt at defence, instead of a attack at us.
I think you could say that a lot of institutions like universities and
conservatories get (some of) their authority from the idea that coding for
music is hard and that you can only learn to do it through them. In fact
some people allegedly believe that the only "real" electronic/computer music
is made at such institutions and that only people affiliated with them can
properly appreciate it.
Of course there is some merit to parts of those ideas; a lot of it simply
*is* quite hard and does indeed benefit from education, but I'd say some of
that authority is being undermined here. I'm in favour of that as it strikes
me that it's exactly the less desirable parts of the authority that are
(accidentally) being questioned, but I can understand some of the
knee-jerking.
The collapse of the recording studio as a fundamental part of the music
industry has eventually widely been hailed as a good thing yet that didn't
go without some initial scepticism. Maybe we are seeing a similar collapse
of the "computer music lab" now. Good riddance, I say.
As a somewhat related note; just days ago I heard a representative of
a academic institution lament how hard it is to "get electronic music to the
people"... and that's in NL where rave was the single most popular musical
genre on radio and TV about 2 decades ago. These things leave me baffled.
Fsck research, let's dance ;¬).
Kas.
Received on Thu Feb 17 2011 - 11:47:03 GMT