ISP Blogpost — Journal #3
In this week’s journal I will be discussing my thoughts towards internet communities of musicians and fans in response to Music in Technoculture and my perception of the field upon finishing the book. This will include much self-reflection of my epistemological understanding and outlining some of the ideas that I feel are unresolved or need further clarification.
One thing that has stuck with me is the slow nature of the field of music studies. Although Music in Technoculture was published in 2003 many of the ideas discussed throughout the text seemed to me initially obvious, even outside of academic articulation. This slow nature has been discussed in another class I am doing this semester, in particular reference to musicology — it is in a constant state of flux and contested definition. Work canonised in the discipline has a strong attachment to history and where we have been rather than where we are going (in understanding musical meaning).
Recently brought up in a tutorial I held, one student mentioned that “of course fast music makes you want to move faster” and that it is kind of frustrating that to move forward we need to articulate every stage of understanding along the way. I believe this is quite a hindrance, but I’m not sure if it is fully the case. In chapter twelve of Music in Technoculture from Kai Fikentscher, he discusses how deejay culture operates through interactive musicianship (such as song selection for a crowd’s mood). This seemed exceedingly implicit to me, and his discussion of the technical side of DJ culture alongside the social context felt as though it was treated too much as binaries. I believe there is something more going on, and am not sure if enough has been written about technoculture and music to offer a current understanding.
I have often felt (as I have outlined in journals of the past) that music in media space such as the internet has an indeterminate, metaphysical, but real ‘abstract social and semantic veil’ as the internet cannot exist within a tangible space, i.e a ‘real’ being produced outside of a ‘real-life’, which can be part of the novelty of operating in an internet community. I have long struggled to articulate this point and how it functions. Chapter 11 from Thomas G. Porcello discussing ‘print-through’ on recorded magnetic tapes expanded on some of the ideas I have been seeking to discuss, particularly through his discussion on temporal relations of the social world. Porcello’s writing on these temporal relations make sense to my understanding of this ‘veil’, discussing the interplay of shared, but individuated moments. There are levels to the temporal dimension of music, such as within the internal structure of the music itself and within the flow of temporal epistemologies of the social world “in which music is performed, listened to, remembered, or experienced otherwise”. Important here is that temporal space for each listener/musician differs and it is here that I feel this abstract ‘veil’ may exist. As Porcello writes, “social knowledge brought to such encounters constitutes merely a ground against which participation and communication via the musical encounter are figured” thus different social knowledge in different social communities operate in different ways with different meanings — placing a strong importance on the social context as much as the musical meaning.
Music in Technoculture has a recurrent theme of trying to get away from the idea of previous scholars stating that new media technologies alienate the individual (as they mostly consume information privately). For example Tong Song Lee argues that this technology actually democratises listeners, as technology gives more options to operate under self-influence. Perhaps, ‘alienation’ is not the best way in looking at it. Within the idea of technology enhancing a shared space forming individual experiences, perhaps it is better to understand the individual experience as ‘personalised’ rather than ‘alienated’. Ideas are shared in an open technological space, but interpreted and digested mostly personally. This is where I’d argue the ‘veil’ would come in — as people understand they are working with others, but are also deeply controlling the information they get and how it’s understood (almost as a form of confirmation bias). People feel connected to ideas and music, but digest it personally to identify and meet the ends that they seek. The contested space in which meaning is shared and interpreted differently is the ‘veil’ of understanding, in a realm of power dynamics that take place out of the real world, but are deeply tied to our real world understanding.
This opens a lot of doors by showing the extent into which we need to understand music and technology, and shows how we have only scratched the surface. For example the musical artist has a new role and thus needs to be interpreted alongside these other new interpretations. Charity Marsh and Melissa West’s chapter The Nature/Technology Binary Opposition Dismantled discussing Madonna and Bjork include Donna Haraway’s ‘Cyborg Theory’ which I think is directly applicable to artists being understood through this ‘veil’. Haraway is quoted as describing Cyborg Theory as a ‘theoretical ideology that contains no gender’ and as a ‘cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction’. If this veil means new understanding of artists, we need to look at them in a new context. As meaning in these technological spaces are contested and personalized, the artist can be interpreted as thus. Therefore the artist becomes as much a ‘machine’ as an ‘organism’ as well as a ‘social reality’ and ‘creature of fiction’. It is this understanding of musicians being filtered and understood through technological meaning that I am becoming further interested in. We need to understand how power and meaning works for musicians becoming further intertwined in technology.
Despite all of this, my own perception is still being formed. I feel sometimes as though I am trying to elaborate on an idea that has been in my head for sometime, potentially using a form of my own confirmation bias when reading these texts. The Afterword of Music in Technoculture offered a very sobering reminder in the wake of ethnomusicological research and looking at music in culture — “Naturally the term ‘global’ refers to mostly white people on the overdeveloped world”. How much do I really know, and how much am I looking to justify my own understanding?
Does every ethnomusicologist go through a form of existential crisis? I wouldn’t be surprised.
