a futile plea to producers

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bassnation

the abyss
tyranny said:
on the other hand i find it odd that people insist that functional dance music should aspire to being art...

craft could be defined as the creation of a practical artefact marrying form and function (hello photek!) - if you think of basket weaving for example you will see that the best baskets woven by master weavers are utterly practical and are beautiful objects. there tends to be a serious tradeoff between making something "pretty" and making something "useful" and someone who truly skilled in the craft has the best results. there are thousands of people worldwide making baskets with near identical functions but strikingly different forms using strikingly varied techniques.

why should we insist on upholding standards of "art" to a process that resembles "craft"?
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the dividing line between craft and art is blurred, true. art transcends the process of making something (people always get hung up on conceptual artists - they didn't put the work in!), and frees it from having a purely utilitarian use.

i am computer programmer and i find perfectly engineered elegant algorithms beautiful but that does not make them art.

but rave was not purely functional in the same way that a record engineered simply to fit into some bland minimal yawn-fest is. as regards rave - the passion, the intensity, the mind-boggling distortion of time and space. this is art. the producers might not have felt that way, but intentions aside, it was as far from purely utilitarian as you can get. it speaks to my soul. i might admire a weaved basket, and sure there's a kind of zen beauty about it but its just not the same.

i used to buy shitty filler house records i knew would mix well. in the end i sold them all and made a resolution never, ever, to buy anything for purely functional reasons.

and in fact the production process for music is a craft - but its become so easy that its mundane to even focus on it - the only people who ask musicians about it are journos from kit magazines. it is the conceptual design, the art, that matters.
 
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B

bassnation

the abyss
tyranny said:
there tends to be a serious tradeoff between making something "pretty" and making something "useful" and someone who truly skilled in the craft has the best results.
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interesting parallel on the usefulness to beauty ratio - reminds me of all those idm pisstakers when they started to parody jungle. the ratio for those motherfuckers was all wrong. it might have been art, but it had lost the funk-tional aspect that kept jungle as simultaneously proper dance music AND avant garde art of the highest calibre.
 
U

UFO over easy

online mahjong
thank you for the mix doom, im enjoying it as well

think everyone in this thread has interesting things to say. im less inclined to listen to some of them though, cos the delivery rubs me up so far the wrong way.
 
G

gremino

Moster Sirphine
bassnation said:
the funk-tional aspect that kept jungle as simultaneously proper dance music AND avant garde art of the highest calibre.
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I think that functionality could be also called as groove; a function which makes you dance.

That kind of ratio between art/function is the best, and alot of dance music listeners doesn't seem to understand, or appreacite it. Reason why this stuff is more rare, is simply because only a few knows how to make it. It takes real skills.
 
T

tyranny

Well-known member
bassnation said:
the dividing line between craft and art is blurred, true. art transcends the process of making something (people always get hung up on conceptual artists - they didn't put the work in!), and frees it from having a purely utilitarian use.

i am computer programmer and i find perfectly engineered elegant algorithms beautiful but that does not make them art.

but rave was not purely functional in the same way that a record engineered simply to fit into some bland minimal yawn-fest is. as regards rave - the passion, the intensity, the mind-boggling distortion of time and space. this is art. the producers might not have felt that way, but intentions aside, it was as far from purely utilitarian as you can get. it speaks to my soul. i might admire a weaved basket, and sure there's a kind of zen beauty about it but its just not the same.

i used to buy shitty filler house records i knew would mix well. in the end i sold them all and made a resolution never, ever, to buy anything for purely functional reasons.

and in fact the production process for music is a craft - but its become so easy that its mundane to even focus on it - the only people who ask musicians about it are journos from kit magazines. it is the conceptual design, the art, that matters.
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well i suppose i should clarify that i meant "functional" in a broader sense than "made to be mixed with" - "functional" in that there was a social context in which the music was to be played and a feedback loop of audience reaction inspiring music to be made to be fed to that audience, if that's the right way to put it...
 
D

doom

Public Housing
minikomi said:
or tokyo and you can crash at my place sometime :)

long time no see eh!
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yyyyoooooo!!!! Hope you are cool man! :D

Thats the problem with Adelaide, anyone with any taste leaves! I keep getting out only to be dragged back in! :mad: I'm tryna do some shit with the Fringe this year, we'll see.


Zhao said:
dood come to berlin we can school some minimal clones
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I wish mnml was as big here as 'Fluro House' I could try the 'its mnml w/ congas mmmaaaannnn' angle :rolleyes:
 
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