Disintegration Loops Documentary

[Alcofribas]

17 minutes ago, beerwolf said:

Alcofribas in full attack mode

i'm just pushing back at 3 pages of people whinging about billy baz.

[psn]

Just now, Alcofribas said:

billy baz.

/thread

[xox]

1 minute ago, Alcofribas said:

i'm just pushing back at 3 pages of people whinging about billy baz.

whoz billy baz?

[Alcofribas]

1 minute ago, eassae said:

I don't think it's so weird. I don't think it's always reliable either. I had a professor in grad school that would ofter have someone put up 3 or more paintings and ask the group to anonymously vote by paper ballot on which was the best one. The results were more than often close to, if not unanimous. I would say there were usually at least 3 to 5 different cultures represented in a given class. This was just a simple measure of quality, but all the little details go into a persons assessment of quality, so in some way this simple test inadvertently covers most objective measures of the physical object at least. 

there is nothing wrong with this but i would describe it as a consensus, not a verification of the objective value of a work of art. grad school students agreeing on which artwork their professor shows them is the best one isn't exactly an air tight measurement of objectivity imo. even when you say it's a "measure of quality," - this would disqualify any work of art that deliberately undermined such conventions. 

[Alcofribas]

1 minute ago, eassae said:

They were judging their own art work, not what the professor provided, but either way I would disagree with you. I don't think it's perfect but I do think it demonstrates a least a modicum of objectivity of an art works value to the majority. It's true that grad students may be a bit flawed of control group, but most in this can recognize art that "undermines" conventions of quality and still judge the most successful work. We could get in a whole messy discussion of the difference between objectivity and consensus. At least I think it would be sticky and can see why you would choose that language.

yeah idk man. now days in order to be a “serious writer” you basically have to go to a writers workshop and i am not at all willing to say this has lead to an increase in objectively better writing out there. you can get people together and have them discuss their work and form agreements about what they think are the best qualities and stuff but I’m just not sure this has anything to do with “objective value” or whatever. 

[psn]

9/11 is a very powerful example of the subjective/objective dichotomy. We all globally watched it live in real time on the TV and have a shared experience. And we all remember our own experience of that day vividly - where we were, with whom, etc. We all have our own story of that day. 

And this is where I think there's a flaw in Disintegration Tapes, in that Basinki's attachment of his music to that day is just as random and subjective as all the other insignificant things 6 billion of us did that day. All these auxiliary events don't hold any real claim to an elevated, shared significance. 

[psn]

Billyam Bazinski

[xox]

42 minutes ago, eassae said:

I don't think it's so weird. I don't think it's always reliable either. I had a professor in grad school that would ofter have someone put up 3 or more paintings and ask the group to anonymously vote by paper ballot on which was the best one. The results were more than often close to, if not unanimous. I would say there were usually at least 3 to 5 different cultures represented in a given class. This was just a simple measure of quality, but all the little details go into a persons assessment of quality, so in some way this simple test inadvertently covers most objective measures of the physical object at least. 

so, the 'consensus' on watmm is that the loops are shit, right? only a few lost souls likes it, right?

[Alcofribas]

1 minute ago, psn said:

9/11 is a very powerful example of the subjective/objective dichotomy. We all globally watched it live in real time on the TV and have a shared experience. And we all remember our own experience of that day vividly - where we were, with whom, etc. We all have our own story of that day. 

And this is where I think there's a flaw in Disintegration Tapes, in that Basinki's attachment of his music to that day is just as random and subjective as all the other insignificant things 6 billion of us did that day. All these auxiliary events don't hold any real claim to an elevated, shared significance. 

i guess i don't see this as a flaw, he's just sharing his experience. what else can he do? it's definitely random and subjective but i don't think that in any way means that it has no meaning for other people. i don't know that it's meant to be "elevated," it just is what it is, and many people seem to identify with it in some way. 

it seems like if we follow your idea here it would lead into total nihilism, never sharing anything with others bc everything is meaningless and entirely subjective. 

idk, i think if someone writes a book or an essay about 9/11 we all take this as totally normal. this is their opinion about what took place, this is their account of what it was like for them or why they think it happened. no one really bats an eye at this, there's nothing weird about an individual describing this event that 6 billion other people experienced. indeed, best-selling books have done exactly this and many people even find comfort and meaning in seeing something they experienced described by someone else.

but for some reason some random electronic musician released 4 cds of loops and wrote two paragraphs making a kind of impressionistic connection between his life/art and 9/11 and people seem to feel this is really inappropriate, a gimmick, a flaw, fake, etc. idk, it's not hard for me to just take it with a grain of salt, it's just not that weird to me. that being said, i've talked to basinski a lot over the years and have even spent time with him at his "nyc loft" and it's quite possible my trust in his honesty is informed by this personal experience.

 

Just now, eassae said:

I hope so! Or I joined the wrong forum 

 

[psn]

9 minutes ago, Alcofribas said:

idk, i think if someone writes a book or an essay about 9/11 we all take this as totally normal.

This would be a topical/thematic/whatever treatment of the subject. Reflection and time has been invested after the fact of the event, as with the Guernica and Trains examples you mentioned earlier. The book/art itself contains elements/themes that refer to the subject.

Edit: It would be interesting to see an art history survey of famous works that were attributed to some historic event that happened after their creation. There are probably loads.

Edited March 28, 2021 by psn

[xox]

3 minutes ago, Alcofribas said:

but for some reason some random electronic musician released 4 cds of loops and wrote two paragraphs making a kind of impressionistic connection between his life/art and 9/11 and people seem to feel this is really inappropriate, a gimmick, a flaw, fake, etc.

hey, it's his art and he can do what ever he wants, you're missing the point all this time! the point is that everybody else is free to call his art shit, subjectively speaking if you want! 

my opinion is that music alone is mediocre (at best) but after he opportunistically connected the music to the 9/11 it became pure shit as a whole, he degraded the music with that act and if someone doesn't understand why it'd be impossible to explain, impossible! same as you can't explain why that wasn't a shitty move 

[jaderpansen]

15 minutes ago, Alcofribas said:

idk, i think if someone writes a book or an essay about 9/11 we all take this as totally normal

i think psn's point is, that the loops actually weren't "about" 9/11, they just happened to be finished on that day. so the 9/11 theme could be seen as merely tacked on to embellish the piece with gravitas that wasn't originally intended. personally i haven't seen the doc or even listened to the piece, so i wouldn't know better, but tbh that's a plausible angle in my book...

also so far i haven't read anything in your arguments that goes far beyond "but others do it, too", which naturally opens discourse about elitism (genius/artisitic value etc.). not hating here, just an observation. i think i get what you're on about tho, it's cool to vent personal / social rl tragedy into artistic products... and i tend to agree in general.

Edited March 28, 2021 by jaderpansen

[xox]

7 minutes ago, psn said:

This would be a topical/thematic/whatever treatment of the subject. Reflection and time has been invested after the fact of the event, as with the Guernica and Trains examples you mentioned earlier. The book/art itself contains elements/themes that refer to the subject.

Edit: It would be interesting to see an art history survey of famous works that were attributed to some historic event that happened after their creation. There are probably loads.

also.

''Picasso was commissioned by the Spanish Republican government to create a large mural for the Spanish pavilion at the 1937 Paris World's Fair.''

''Picasso worked somewhat dispassionately from January until late April on the project's initial sketches, which depicted his perennial theme of an artist's studio. Then, immediately upon hearing reports of the 26 April bombing of Guernica, poet Juan Larrea visited Picasso's home to urge him to make the bombing his subject.''

[ignatius]

sort of like how SIGN is emotionally resonant because the context of the pandemic? but only by accident. 

will future people tie the context of history to the release or will they just listen to it? probably just listen to it. 

 

[xox]

1 minute ago, ignatius said:

sort of like how SIGN is emotionally resonant because the context of the pandemic? but only by accident. 

will future people tie the context of history to the release or will they just listen to it? probably just listen to it. 

 

imagine if ae brothers themselves decide post factum, as billy did, to tie sign to the pandemic! ok, their art but that'd be very disappointing imo and i can't imagine them doing that tbh

[jaderpansen]

6 minutes ago, ignatius said:

sort of like how SIGN is emotionally resonant because the context of the pandemic? but only by accident. 

will future people tie the context of history to the release or will they just listen to it? probably just listen to it.

well to make these cases commensurable SIGN would have to look something like this imo:

[Berk]

Im glad I didn't know about the 911 story attached to it when I first discovered the loops.

Most of them are really strong imho. You can't discern the individual instruments at play. It sounds like nature's music or something. 

[scumtron]

Alcofribas really nails it. I will never understand the need some forum members have to join a topic they don't care about, just to tell that they don't care in multiple posts. There's always the funny pictures thread, you guys.

[xox]

4 minutes ago, scumtron said:

 I will never understand the need some forum members have to join a topic they don't care about, just to tell that they don't care in multiple posts. There's always the funny pictures thread, you guys.

agree

Spoiler

 

Edited March 28, 2021 by xox

[Alcofribas]

17 minutes ago, jaderpansen said:

i think psn's point is, that the loops actually weren't "about" 9/11, they just happened to be finished on that day. so the 9/11 theme could be seen as merely tacked on to give the piece gravitas that wasn't originally intended. personally i haven't seen the doc or even listened to the piece, so i wouldn't know better, but tbh that's a plausible angle in my book...

also so far i haven't read anything in your arguments that goes far beyond "but others do it, too", which naturally opens discourse about elitism (genius/artisitic value etc.). not hating here, just an observation. i think i get what you're on about tho, it's cool to vent personal / social rl tragedy into artistic products... and i tend to agree in general.

i'm trying to keep my comments tethered to the context of the thread. to go "far beyond" the but-others-do-it approach would be to completely ignore the caliber of the discussion outside of what psn is providing. i'd like for other people to explain why they always single out the 9/11 thing when in itself it's not unusual behavior. i don't personally need to make the distinction bc i don't see the prob. with this.

but this is an interesting distinction you/psn are making: if the work is "about" the topic, if there is critical distance, we can accept it. it's respectable. but if someone more naively just shares a personal experience we think it's "tacky." i think there's a kind of highbrow/lowbrow distinction being made, which i reject. i think basinski made some candid commentary about a personal tragedy (his decades of work literally crumbling to dust) and how that tragedy transforming into something he eventually found beautiful was a kind of hope he had for the way people could cope with da 9/11. it's a personal thing and he hopes others can find meaning in it.

i'm reminded a bit of the kerfuffle about knausgaard writing all this personal information about his family in his book. people were saying you just don't do this, it's exploitative and he's using this highly personal stuff to get famous or whatever. i think i just always find myself in the camp that there are no taboo topics really. and i think a lot of the more touchy ones will be problematic simply bc there's touchiness and boundaries being pushed and it's hard to evaluate in that kind of environment. i can definitely see how people are put off by the 9/11 component but i also think a lot of that is just a personal bias and they're projecting this malevolence and horribleness into basinski who was basically just trying to make some gushing romantic gesture about loss.

 

3 minutes ago, xox said:

agree

  Reveal hidden contents

 

you definitely have a weird issue posting images of people's bodies as a kind of "own" and it's cringe as fuck

[Alcofribas]

15 minutes ago, Berk said:

Im glad I didn't know about the 911 story attached to it when I first discovered the loops.

Most of them are really strong imho. You can't discern the individual instruments at play. It sounds like nature's music or something. 

dude yes. the way they unravel is truly fascinating to listen to imo. the tones kind of stretch and fall apart in ways that are very hard to describe imo. in the right context it's very moving.

[Alcofribas]

33 minutes ago, ignatius said:

 

will future people tie the context of history to the release or will they just listen to it? probably just listen to it. 

 

without getting into speculation about the staying power of these, i think your comment is totally right. the imagery surrounding them will fade, probably even has faded quite a bit already. especially in the context of people just streaming music or discovering things on youtube or something, i can imagine there are younger people who become fans without ever even knowing about the 9/11 thing

[cloud capture]

I remember buying this limited cdr from Jake Mandell called kodama01-healing.  It was just a loop, but listening to it really put me in a good mind set.  I wonder where it is.

[xox]

15 minutes ago, Alcofribas said:

you definitely have a weird issue posting images of people's bodies as a kind of "own" and it's cringe as fuck

is your 'objective' opinion? bc i still think that basinski is waaay more cringe, especially with the 9/11 opportunistic shit (edit): and that was my point with the pic

Edited March 28, 2021 by xox

[Alcofribas]

Just now, cloud capture said:

I remember buying this limited cdr from Jake Mandell called kodama01-healing.  It was just a loop, but listening to it really put me in a good mind set.  I wonder where it is.

it's kind of interesting bc there is a lot of electronic drone/loop-based stuff that is all about healing. like, the whole new age movement is tethered to this primary notion. i basically lump basinski in with this, only his "spin" is that it's directly related to tragedy and loss rather than "celestial healing" or something.