Starting Over

In the West, we have an educational model that is about closure, renewal, and development. That is the structure of courses and curriculum. Education is a critical facet of a civilization that must constantly renew itself as its makers die and new contributors are born as "empty tablets" which receive a cultural imprint and then add something new.

In a way every generation is starting over, hoping to attain the achievements of the past while adding new ones for the future. Technology has always played a role in retaining the achievements of civilization (whether on tablets, scrolls, in books, and now in new media), and the advancement of civilization has been spurred on by technological breakthroughs. The invention of the printing press with movable type resulted in an information explosion because knowledge could now be shared and advanced by the all people. This development was a dramatic leap for humanity in the cause of freedom. Movable type was a leap to equality, to form over content. Block prints emphasized the individual content of the work, while type became a holder of content that could change over and over. Type introduced the concept of uniformity that had the power to change content with the same basic materials: typeface, ink, and paper.

Now computers are widespread and store information on a dynamic basis, constantly in flux, and changing from moment to moment. Even this Blog represents a new level and privilege of freedom of expression. New technology makes it possible to share and create knowledge instantly. Technology seems to be transforming who we are. As we change computers (upgrade), we can now migrate the contents of the old computer so that we retain the previous information. It appears that it is now possible to create a digital interface with the human brain that may completely change how we think about knowledge, as well as how we acquire it. Such technology raises fundamental questions about human beings, the relationship of the brain to consciousness, and spiritual identity. Do you think that the destiny of the species is to disappear while it leaves a legacy of knowledge and awareness as a permanent presence in the universe? Wasn't this the premise of Steven Spielberg's AI?

In AI eventually humanity becomes extinct, but knowledge in the universe is retained and advanced by the robots who now perpetuate knowledge and awareness. The robot "David" was found by robots in the debris of the destruction of the human world. He was valued because he was the only robot surviving who had actual contact with humans and was made to look human. He was part of the chain that linked robots to their human makers. In this clip he goes in search of human life (his mother) and finds a Coney Island theme park at the bottom of the ocean with the blue fairy that he hopes can make him "real."

In The Face of New Technology

Music has always been in the forefront of technology. The extension of the human voice to reeds, tubes, strings, and membranes has involved advancing the range of our creative expression. Lewis Mumford in his insightful book Art and Technics (he chose to modernize the spelling of our antiquated techniques), notes the ascendancy of practices in art as our skills brought about more control over existing rubrics and the creation of new devices that require and support new and advancing "technics."

Marshall McLuhan in Understanding Media anticipated the impact of digital technology on culture and provided a means for analyzing media, creating a new field of research: media ecology. The first seven chapters are freely available on-line. However, the medium is the message (a phrase that McLuhan invented), and Understanding Media was published to be read as a conventional book that electrifies its audience as it breaks through the format of print to help us understand hot and cool media. Through McLuhan's cataclysmic vision, our awareness of the world includes the transforming power of media evolving new realities.

These artists and poets of culture help us understand the world around us through a new lens and with new ears. Mumford was a visual artist who emerged as the poet philosopher of the city, which he described as humanity's greatest artistic achievement. McLuhan was the poet scholar of media who anticipated where we were headed at least 60 years before we arrived.

Poetics of Tech Musicing

Stravinsky published Poetics of Music in 1956, presented at Harvard's Charles Eliot Norton Lectures "in the form of six lessons." The spirit of his discussion was the thought that poetics came from the Greek word poiein meaning "to do or to make."

The poetics of the classical philosophers did not consist of lyrical dissertations about natural talent and about the essence of beauty. For the the single word techné embraced both the fine arts and the useful arts and was applied to the knowledge and study of the certain and inevitable rules of the craft. That is why Aristotle's Poetics constantly suggest ideas regarding personal work, arrangements of materials, and structure. The poetics of music is exactly what I am going to talk to you about; that is to say, I shall talk about making in the field of music. (Igor Stravinsky. Poetics of Music. p4)

Musicing is a word that was used in the distant past and recently revived by NYU's David J. Elliott, retrieving our field description from an inanimate noun condition and restoring music to the verb status like dancing, acting, painting... hence musicing.

So I will explore musicing through the lens of technology (techné) as an extension of the ways we music, our making or doing of music. I am inspired to work on this by a class of composers, musicers, and educators, all engaged in exploring techné as an extension of musicing.