Bob Snyder: Music and Memory: An Introduction (2001)
Filed under book | Tags: · cognition, memory, music, sound recording
This far-ranging book shows how human memory influences the organization of music. The book is divided into two parts. The first part presents basic ideas about memory and perception from cognitive psychology and, to some extent, cognitive linguistics. Topics include auditory processing, perception, and recognition. The second part describes in detail how the concepts from the first part are exemplified in music. The presentation is based on three levels of musical experience: event fusion (the formation of single musical events from acoustical vibrations in the air, on a time scale too small to exhibit rhythm), melody and rhythm, and form. The focus in the latter is on the psychological conditions necessary for making large-scale—that is, formal—boundaries clear in music rather than on traditional musical forms. The book also discusses the idea that much of the language used to describe musical structures and processes is metaphorical. It encourages readers to consider the possibility that the process of musical composition can be “a metaphorical transformation of their own experience into sound.”
The book also touches on unresolved debates about psychological musical universals, information theory, and the operation of neurons. It requires no formal musical training and contains a glossary and an appendix of listening examples.
Publisher MIT Press, 2001
ISBN 0262692376, 9780262692373
313 pages
Gerald Emanuel Stearn (ed.): McLuhan: Hot & Cool: A Primer for the Understanding of & a Critical Symposium with a Rebuttal by McLuhan (1967)
Filed under book | Tags: · global village, information, literacy, mass media, media theory, photography, print, radio, semiotics, speech, technology, television, text, writing
“A brilliant amalgam of articles, discussions, essays and interviews with and about the Pop Oracle himself, The Complete McLuhan: the most controversial thinker of the electronic age.” (from the back cover)
With essays by Howard Luck Gossage, Tom Wolfe, John Culkin, SJ., Dean Walker, Kenneth E. Boulding, George P. Elliott, Rudolph E. Morris, Walter Ong, SJ., Ammunition (C.I.O.), William Blissett, Harley Parker, Robert Shafer, John Freund, Patrick D. Hazard, Dell Hymes, Frank Kermode, A. Alvarez, Dan M. Davin, Raymond Williams, Harold Rosenberg, Dwight Macdonald, Christopher Ricks, Jack Behar, Ben Lieberman, John M. Johansen, George Steiner, Jonathan Miller, Andrew Forge, Benjamin DeMott, Susan Sontag; responses by Marshall McLuhan; and an interview by Gerald E. Stearn with McLuhan.
Publisher The Dial Press, New York, 1967
Signet Non-Fiction series, Q3739
312 pages
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Comment (1)John F Cline: Permanent Underground: Radical Sounds and Social Formations in 20th Century American Musicking (2012)
Filed under thesis | Tags: · 1960s, history of music, music, music theory, musicking, noise
Musical labor entered a new phase of alienation following the advent of recording technology in the late 19th century. Whereas prior to recording musicians had a relatively direct relationship with their audience—the sum of the two groups constituting “musicking”—sound reproduction created a spatial and temporal dislocation between them. Most narratives of American popular music trace out a particular genre formation, and relate it to the culture from whence it emerged. By contrast, this dissertation begins from the point where musicking began to disengage from commodification, both at the level of social formation and of the creation of sound itself. Drawing on anthropologist Pierre Clastres’ notion of “Anti-State” modes of organization and cultural critic Ivan Illich’s concept of “conviviality,” or a human-centered rather than mass productionoriented use of tools—in this case musical instruments both handmade and modified—each chapter of this project tackles a different dimension of the quest for autonomous musicking, or a “permanent underground.” Chapter 1 examines the organizational principles that have run in parallel to the bureaucratic, capitalist manifestation of a “music industry” in the 20th century. Beginning with a critique of either/or fallacy of the opposition posited between “modernism” and “nostalgia,” the reminder of the chapter demonstrates the reconciliation between these two aesthetic and political positions; topics include the seizure of public space by itinerant blues musicians in the rural-industrial prewar South, the self-released recordings of gospel artists after WWII, the formation of experimental jazz collectives in the 1960s, and the relationship between psychedelic music and cults/communes in the 1960s. Chapter 2 critiques the function of genre in musicking as means to a reproducible sonic commodity, and argues for “noise” as an aesthetic intervention that disrupts the saleable nature of music—a political act in itself. Chapter 3 suggests several strategies for achieving “noise.” These include the repurposing of industrial machines as musical instruments, the incorporation of foreign musical traditions, and the use of collage as a formal principle. The final chapter profiles six collectives that have emerged since the late 1960s that adhere to the aesthetic and political values established throughout this dissertation.
Dissertation
Faculty of the Graduate School, The University of Texas at Austin, May 2012
Supervisor: Mark C. Smith
520 pages
Mark Rose: Authors and Owners: The Invention of Copyright (1993)
Filed under book | Tags: · copyright, intellectual property, united kingdom
The notion of the author as the creator and therefore the first owner of a work is deeply rooted both in our economic system and in our concept of the individual. But this concept of authorship is modern. Mark Rose traces the formation of copyright in eighteenth-century Britain—and in the process highlights still current issues of intellectual property. Authors and Owners is at once a fascinating look at an important episode in legal history and a significant contribution to literary and cultural history.
Publisher Harvard University Press, 1993
ISBN 0674053095, 9780674053090
176 pages
Vladimir Mayakovsky: My Discovery of America (1926/2005) [Russian/English]
Filed under book | Tags: · 1920s, capitalism, futurism, poetry, russia, technology, united states
Touring the United States in 1925, the Russian Futurist poet and propagandist Vladimir Mayakovsky observed at first hand what he considered to be the model for Soviet technological development. Writing in his typical declamatory style, he found much to celebrate in the modernised, industrialised America of the 1920s – creativity and advancement, a ‘primitive futurism’. But he also decried the social injustices of uncaring capitalism, losing no opportunity to propound his own political beliefs.
Presented here in full for the first time in the English language, My Discovery of America forms a series of humorous sketches, thoughts, jottings and poems, the significance of which resounds from the early twentieth century through to our own times.
First published as Мое открытие Америки in Russian in 1926
With an introduction and translated by Neil Cornwell
Foreword by Colum McCann
Publisher Hesperus Press, 2005
Modern Voices series
ISBN 1843914085, 9781843914082
138 pages
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Joseph Tainter: The Collapse of Complex Societies (1988)
Filed under book | Tags: · archaeology, economy, prehistory, society
Any explanation of political collapse carries lessons not just for the study of ancient societies, but for the members of all complex societies in both the present and future. Dr Tainter describes nearly two dozen cases of collapse and reviews more than 2000 years of explanations. He then develops a new and far-reaching theory that accounts for collapse among diverse kinds of societies, evaluating his model and clarifying the processes of disintegration by detailed studies of the Roman, Mayan and Chacoan collapses.
Publisher Cambridge University Press, 1988
New Studies in Archaeology series
ISBN 0521340926
260 pages
Detlev S. Schlichter: Paper Money Collapse: The Folly of Elastic Money and the Coming Monetary Breakdown (2011)
Filed under book | Tags: · banking, economics, economy, finance, money
The case for the inevitable failure of a paper money economy and what that means for the future
All paper money systems in history have ended in failure. Either they collapsed in chaos, or society returned to commodity money before that could happen. Drawing upon novel new research, Paper Money Collapse conclusively illustrates why paper money systems—those based on an elastic and constantly expanding supply of money as opposed to a system of commodity money of essentially fixed supply—are inherently unstable and why they must lead to economic disintegration.
These highly controversial conclusions clash with the present consensus, which holds that elastic state money is superior to inflexible commodity money (such as a gold standard), and that expanding money is harmless or even beneficial for as long as inflation stays low. Contradicting this, Paper Money Collapse shows that:
- The present crisis is the unavoidable result of continuously expanding fiat money
- The current policy of accelerated money production to “stimulate” the economy is counterproductive and could lead to a complete collapse of the monetary system
- Why many in financial markets, in media, and in the policy establishment are unable (and often unwilling) to fully appreciate the underlying problems with elastic money.
This compelling new book looks at the breakdown of modern economic theory and the fallacy of mathematical models. It is an analysis of the current financial crisis and shows in very stark terms that the solutions presented by paper money-enthusiasts around the world are misguided and inherently flawed.
Foreword by Addison Wiggin
Publisher John Wiley & Sons, 2011
ISBN 1118095751, 9781118095751
240 pages
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