undercurrent

glueboot now added to my blogroll ---- which is good because it's been a thin time for new blogs recently.

Technorati is absolutely essential; not only for ego reasons, and more for network production than network reinforcement ---- it's the only way certain blogs can be brought into the network....

Kill Bill- think you have to be of the mp3 generation to enjoy that. (Miaow)

when i saw the name of this entry "Glue" I thought you were going to write about the the strange case of the BM client who always spelt the word "clue" as "glue" in his emails. At first, it seemed like a on off typing error, but it happened every time. In person, he spoke the word "clue" perfectly normally.

I thought you might be using the power of the blog to find out what it could mean, and maybe even get the man himself to answer - it being easier to put it to him in a format like this, for him to stumble upon on day, than to ask him directly.

sadly, I think he was just illiterate.

Never heard of a guy who used 'glue' instead of 'clue' in his emails. I think though, that if I got an email from a guy full of the word 'glue' I probably love it. It's such a good word.

As for Kill Bill, well, it may be the "most inept and indulgent movies ever to achieve mass distribution," but I never expected much more than a load of over the top bloodshed that we 'mp3 generation' enjoy so much. Anyone who expected more from Tarantino was disappointed, but then he made the movie because he could. It's just what happens when an iconographic director gets leeway to do what they want. i.e. George Lucas and Mel Gibson....

Anyway, yeah, draw partial objects.. it's great fun.

>Never heard of a guy who used 'glue' instead
>of 'clue' in his emails.

this was someone ruth and I had to deal with at work : at first we thought it was a typing error, but it gradually became clear that he actually thought 'glue' and 'clue' were the same word. Basically, he hadn't got a glue.

>As for Kill Bill

I haven't seen it, don't really want to, so I don't have an opinion...I doubt whether tarantino will hav any lasting effect on anything though, ultimately people will look back on him as a mere novelty act not an innovative/important filmmaker.

>we 'mp3 generation'

didn't mean this as a perjorative term. Being of either the vinyl or the mp3 generation is probably better than my sad fate of being of the CD generation.

I know you weren't meaning to be pejorative. The MP3 generation is great. What could possibly be better than the ability to download everything? I think my CD collection is testimony to that… a sad pile of scratched CDs that no one can play anymore.

I was planning a rant on this actually. Aren't CDs one of the most dysfunctional, ugliest, and most culturally-damaging technologies in the history of sound reproduction? - at least one thing MP3 has going for it is that you don't have to have shelves full of discoloured, scratched, broken-cased, pieces of ugly plastic. It may be just my lack of care that always reduces them to that state, but I have >30 yr old vinyl that's in more usable condition than 1 yr old CDs.

I totally agree, my CD's are frequently stood on and kicked about and never, ever listened too. I don't even have a CD player these days. Much more preferable is a file on my computer labeled 'Music' with pretty much everything I want to listen to. Hopefully in a few years the CD will join the 8-track in a graveyard of obselete audio devices.

also, i read in a survey somewhere that women don't buy CDs - they don't really buy things for their entertainment much at all. This appies to me, i have about 2 CDs to Robin's 100. I think that MP3s are the answer to this. You can own them and collect them without having to use up storage space for the collection, and the collection is not on show. + there's no guilt about spending too much on them either. (the survey found women felt guilty about spending money on themselves in pursuit of a hobby)

I think there is something weird about CDs, though, because I used to love buying records before CDs came out. Even before I knew anything about them, I was determined never to have a CD player...

Need I mention the notorious episode of Tomorrow's World where they threw a CD on the floor, jumped up and down on it and rubbed it against a brick (or something) to show how totally indestructible they were and how they were unscratchable. Liars.

I find this thread a little dispiriting.

Think what Ruth's talking about is similar to what I remember about girls at school --- they wouldn't buy records, they'd have boxes full of cassettes (usually unlabelled as I recall). Think it's about what ppl fetishise; women fetishise different things to men -----

Kill Bill is indefensible --- more for the CGI generation than mp3 gen methinx... I found it utterly lacking in tension (as boring and unengaging as the Matrix tediofests) ---- but I don't like fight scenes when it's obvious who's gonna win -----

what's dispiriting about this thread? I'm intrigued

yeah, surely no more dispiriting than mourning the decline of TV since the "Golden 70s" :)

Or the state of the British film industry......

Or that site Reza Negarestani likes: http://www.channel83.co.uk/xmbp/viewthread.php?tid=60

oh, I thought that this
http://www.urbanomic.com/MT/sphaleotas/archives/000081.html
was Reza's favourite destination.

There’s much innocent fun to be had reading his essays in Andy Kaufman’s Latka voice.

What's dispriting is the thought of all this etherealized music... the possibility of downloading everything... instant availability zero cultural events--- everything i've been moaning about on k-p re: mp3s really.

as regards TV since the 70s and the British film industry, they ARE dispiriting.... And the 70s really was golden, not 'golden' --- as my latest post on Brimstone and Treacle attempts to establish, eh sphal?

btw why can't your comments box remember who I am? Every time I come here, I tick 'yes' on 'remember personal information' but the very fact I have to keep doing it implies that it is not able to remember!

just to clarify, it's not what ppl are SAYING here that is dispiriting; it's that what they're describing is HAPPENING, that's what's dispiriting. But it's pretty clear that my anti-mp3 stance is, to coin a phrase, like 'pissing into a hurricane.'

>>>There’s much innocent fun to be had reading his essays in Andy Kaufman’s Latka voice.

That’s really an honor; Thanks god, I’m not (in)famous for personal vengeance and being a pathological case of western intellectual mafia ;) ... don’t forget the latest email I sent you, 'dear friend'.

See what I mean?

to mark - ah, i see what you mean. I thought you really liked CDs for some strange reason! & I hadn't thought properly about the MP3 revolution ANTI-VIRACY before. I agree with you. The constraints that artists of all kinds are put under currently are already bad; without the record industry for musicians, life may simply become impossible. It's clear that MP3s are revolutionary, and a real treat to the industry. I like to think that people who are driven to produce (musicians, artists, writers...) will not / cannot give up producing (life wouldn't be worth living), but I know how difficult it is once time is taken up just surviving - making money, in other words. God, you have to work hard enough in this world if you aren't supported by rich parents.

Artists have galleries, writers have publishers, musicians have record companies and live performance. It's a struggle for most before they get the chance to become professional, but without a record industry, musicians may not even have the chance to become professional at all.

I think "society" will have to work out a way of supporting musicians. People will have to get together and say, if we want to continue to have new music, we will have to organise a new system to support it. It's unlikely I suppose, given the current levels of support for artists. There are millions of pounds worth of funding here in Cornwall, for instance, but the things produced from the funding are INVARIABLY crap. The systems of handing out funding is INDISCRIMINATE. The beauraucracy involved is offputting. The human beings involved in processing the funding scemes might as well be computers, since they seem to make no value judgements whatsoever, and we have found disinterest and total lack of support from official bodies through all our endeavours. We have utterly given up on the idea of getting any public funding, and fund ourselves completely.

Anyway, it amazes me that, yet again, I haven't even noticed that I hadn't thought something through until someone else told me about it. I had thought no further than MP3s are new, exciting and inevitably good, and that you can't argue about the reality of them, and that things will work themselves out for the best one way or another. Having said all this this, I don't have an ipod and don't download MP3s (have only ever copied them off CDs). But I definitely find the idea of getting rid of the CD collection on to an ipod appealing.

A few confused thoughts (I haven't tried to reply to the mammoth viracy post cos I haven't really got my mind in order about this yet)
The legal issue seems most akin to patents : a piece of music regarded as an invention, a machine that produces certain desirable effects. Problem being, it's possible for virtually anyone to reproduce that machine.

Patented machines, techniques (and I believe software algorithms also) are protected (for a certain amount of time) from copying in recognition of the producers' rights _and_ importantly, to provide motivation for future innovators. Then just imagine, Pete Waterman would have to prove that each of his singles represented a palpable advance on previous technologies in order to secure future profits.

Whatever way you conceptualise it, though, it doesn't help you to protect against infringement - it's just a losing battle. We need to come up with ideas of how to deal with it, and in that way it might prove an important milestone for testing out models for 'post-capitalist' creative collectivity, an opportunity rather than an occasion for despair.

I think we obviously have to discount the idea of the state helping to make professional musicianship worthwhile/viable - not necessarily on principle, just on past evidence.
But it's not inconceivable that artists could create their own networks of distribution, in fact it'd be surprising if it didn't start happening soon.

Be that as it may, the impossibility of copy-protection means that the relationship between producer and consumer is going to have to change somehow - there is just too much of a temptation not to pay, no amount of idealising about human nature is going to change the fact that the revenue from honest joes won't be sufficient (ie look at 'shareware' - it only really works by locking you out of a portion of the functionality, or after a time period, neither of which are possible with music). The only way that might plausibly change is if there is lock-in to some proprietary hardware standard, so that in order to use the device properly you'll have to pay. Given that the iPod looks like winning out, and even Microsoft's attempts to create a secure form of delivery have utterly failed, that's not gonna happen either - and there is no incentive for hardware manufacturers to do this anyway since it makes their product less usable/valuable!

Finally,I do think there's a cultural problem (but don't know what to do about it) - mp3s are just a recipe for atomic decadence - a million people shut up in their bedrooms gorging bulimia-style on a million tracks, whilst the cultural platform for any interesting new developments dwindles. Whether that's fatal might depend on your view of the worth/potentiality of network-based relationships/web 'crowds'.