Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Monday, September 04, 2006
Nature and Culture: Nobody's Listening
(an excerpt)
In Nature every creature listens. They listen to each other; they listen for prey and predators. No being would dare make a sound without listening first. Their lives depend on it; their ears are an antenna for the world.
In Culture no one listens. Everyone shuts out the sounds they don't want to hear. We put on headphones, close the door, change the channel or just tune out. Our antennae are down.
And since no one is listening to the sounds around us, they become uglier, more harsh, and unnatural. Then Culture listens even less. This is why we have a growing legion of people who mindlessly follow--never listening as they rustle the leaves, never finding their prey, and never sensing their predators. This is a very dangerous thing.
- Bunita Marcus
(an excerpt)
In Nature every creature listens. They listen to each other; they listen for prey and predators. No being would dare make a sound without listening first. Their lives depend on it; their ears are an antenna for the world.
In Culture no one listens. Everyone shuts out the sounds they don't want to hear. We put on headphones, close the door, change the channel or just tune out. Our antennae are down.
And since no one is listening to the sounds around us, they become uglier, more harsh, and unnatural. Then Culture listens even less. This is why we have a growing legion of people who mindlessly follow--never listening as they rustle the leaves, never finding their prey, and never sensing their predators. This is a very dangerous thing.
- Bunita Marcus
Sunday, August 20, 2006
"For me music must be something, not necessarily a musical thing. Experience through music, and that is music. We don't have to reach it. If we have something to reach, we have a limitation."
- Taku Sugimoto, interview in The Wire (Issue 237)
- Taku Sugimoto, interview in The Wire (Issue 237)
Saturday, August 19, 2006
"Art creates new forms of experience that never existed before—experiences that cleanse our souls, destroy our clichés, show us new ways of thinking and feeling, give us new perceptual and emotional powers. Art does that by inventing new forms of expression—forms that break away from “conventions,” that de-familiarize “normal” reality, that challenge “ordinary” vision and thought, that make us see and feel differently. At least that's what real art does. It rewires your brain. It gives you new capacities of perception, new forms of understanding. It doesn't merely re-cycle or embody known cultural norms and values. It makes new life, makes new experience, makes new interest. It doesn't just reproduce something we already have, something already out there."
- Ray Carney
- Ray Carney
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