On 10 Jan 2007, at 14:57, Fredrik Olofsson wrote:
> thor - it sounds to me like you have a romantic ideal about
> 'feeling' the music. like [jazz]musicians closing their eyes and
> lets the music/inspiration/vibe take over. that stinks i think ;-)
He he. Yes and be intoxicated with drugs and all that....
But I have to object to this Fredrik. I'm not thinking about the
performance as some
kind of oblivious state where everything disappears into some magical
moment and
the performer is one with the music. It's nice to think like that,
it's romantic, I agree,
but it might stink : )
What I'm interested in here is the phenomenological experience of how
we relate
to the tools we are using. I'm thinking of Heidegger here, who made a
distinction between
tools being ready-at-hand or present-at-hand. He took the example of
a carpenter who
used his hammer without being aware of it (ready-at-hand) until the
head the hammer fell off
and then suddenly the hammer appears as an object in it's own right
(present-at-hand)...
it changed a phenomenological mode so to say.
What I'm getting at, is that using the computer, a meta-machine, is
very much an oscillation
between those phenomenological states of ready and present-at-hand as
the interface and the
things that we do with the computer are so complex and "meta" that it
will never be as
simple as using a hammer or playing a clarinet.
> personally i never enjoy music nearly as much while performing as
> when i'm in the audience. this also implies if i'm in the back
> just doing the visuals for some random act - can't remember
> afterwards how it sounded. just vaguely what i did and if i had
> fun or not. very similar to losing track of time while programming.
> i'm certain musicians and live coders are the like in this
> respect. ie the result can't be fully appreciated while being
> created.
Perhaps Nick can check this as well when he does the brain scan tests
on live-coders : )
Received on Wed Jan 10 2007 - 16:04:07 GMT