On 25/02/2008, LowNorth <lownorth_at_gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
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> perhaps, but the danger in taking that stance is that it might deter
> people from accepting it as a topic for discussion. Something which really
> puts me off when reading papers is when the author hides behind a kind of
> "yeah, but of course this is all just my personal view so you can't
> criticize me" defense.
>
Yes, I understand and agree. I don't think it would need to be that way
though because there are some things we do know. You did, for example,
observe that the attention of some section of the audience waned some time
into the performance and then you speculated about the reason. You also know
for a fact what Nick just told you about his own experience there
(particularly him trying to deal with audience expectations that weren't
clear up front, something your own events improve on), etc. From this
combination of facts (which I think should be presented as such, with notes)
and hunches (which I think should be presented for what they are as well)
you arrive at -what amounts to- a practical experiment. From that experiment
more conclusions can be drawn, for example from factors that were
problematic in the Barcelona event and worked well in your events.
In my opinion (which may be criticized!) it's dangerous to mix fact and
opinion in research yet it's perfectly fin to go with a mixture of facts and
hunches, do a few experiments and then evaluate the hunches and be up-front
about this. Of course people will criticize opinions, a opinion like
"competition leads to benefits" will be a good target for that but that's no
big deal; "right wing" or not you can point at having run a series of nights
with packed rooms of mostly lay-men paying close attention to livecoding,
you can point at musicians trying things they otherwise wouldn't have and
perhaps a incident or two where the pressure of the situations had negative
effects.
Perfectly fine results, me thinks.
I wouldn't draw doubt to those by so clearly mixing opinion and fact.
> ah, I see. But what I believe Timuçin was referring to is that playing
> with Owen is not at all like being part of a duet. They're more like
> sparring partners in a kickboxing gym.
>
I would say though that the typical "call-response" nature of duets, both
composed and improvised, does tend to have a "bidding war" kind of
character. When you are playing at the same time you are (hopefully) adding
to each other, instead of the "zero sum" situation of making the other lose
in order for you to win. You seem to imply that no matter who wins or loses
in competition both win in the long term by striving to improve, which may
be true, but I would argue that improvised duets with some elements of
challenging each other have many of the same long-term benefits.
> I use the snail example as evidence that competition in general can have a
> positive effect on fitness and survivability of individual entities. Humans
> are also part of nature and are prone to the same basic physical and
> evolutionary forces, no? I'm not comparing humans to snails, but drawing a
> parallel between competition as an evolutionary force in nature and in human
> endeavors.
>
Yes, I know. I have no issue with that. My issue was with the snails being a
very specific way of illustrating a very general thing. This does lead to a
light-hearted feel but distracts from the overall plot.
To return to the political sub-plot of this topic; social co-operative
behaviour can be a extremely strong evolutionary force as well. Homo Sapiens
is really quite success-full as are the ants and bees (who are hyper-social
and stand a good chance of taking over if/when when blow ourselves up).
With sufficiently specific examples I could "prove" the opposite as well. I
might call Powerbooks Unplugged "hyper-social livecoding" and compared them
to naked mole-rats (the only truly hyper-social mamal, as far as I know).
That would be fun, particularly if we could insert pictures of the naked
mole-rat ;¬).
It might even be interesting to wonder if users of products that compete in
the commercial market-place, like MAX does, relate to this matter
differently then users of open/free (collaboratively build) systems like SC
and CK, if we wanted to go that far (I don't but the thought is amusing).
> here I can fall back on the jazz paradigm: on a bad day even the best jazz
> improvisor will fall back on licks he's played before. It's the pressure of
> knowing that the audience will see through this charade that encourages him
> not to do that too often. A sharp live coding audience should see through
> that as well. And in my experience it's true that when the pressure's on you
> fall back on things you know. But I'm not sure that's a bad thing; however
> memorizing an exact sequence of coding and reproducing it verbatim onstage
> would not be desirable (even though it could be a good exercise).
>
I fully agree. Still, I would be quite interested in competing in a
environment designed to force one to adapt (or "fit" if you want to talk
Darwin), I'd also be interested in collaborating to design such a
environment.
Cheers,
Kas.
Received on Mon Feb 25 2008 - 18:17:46 GMT