Re: virus: Nothing to do with: Scientists and Philosophers

Tim Rhodes (proftim@speakeasy.org)
Fri, 12 Feb 1999 10:46:06 -0800

Wade wrote:

>Now- in what way will my appreciation of
>the music be more fulfilling by seeing a live performance? And I am not
>unwilling to have you say that the 'theatricality' of it is a necessary
>and sufficient condition for this experience- I am aware, totally, of the
>2D'ness of recorded performances.

Well, yes, being able to actually watch as the interpersonal relations of the players get translated into music was part of what I was talking about. Can you tell on the CD when they were making jokes back and forth; when the hat slid off the guerilla players head, making him no longer a guerilla and he had to follow the rules agian; can you see when the "conductor" thought one player had been offering too many instructions and so he just started ignoring her? Of course, all that is lost if you just listen to a recording.

But what I really was getting at was that these are spontainously created interplays, like conversations. They are chaotic enterprises and no two are ever the same. Improv, remember. Let me try to explain it this way:

If you gave someone a days worth of posts to this list and had them read it, would you think they were correct if afterwards they said, "I now have a complete understanding and appreciation of what Churh of Virus is all about." How about if you gave them a second days worth, from some months later, could they make that statement then? How may instances would it take?

Now consider that in the above example the reader is getting 100% of the information availible. Compare that to the information loss that is inevitable has listening to a 2-D recording of a live preformance. Now do you see what I mean?

These COBRA performances really are conversations. Conversations using musical language, in a dialect and setting created by Zorn.

>But, ain't it kind of interesting how many people here know Zorn? I think
>it is....

Yes, it's great! It shows both how renowned John Zorn has become and how well informed and saavy a bunch we all are here.

-Prof. Tim