Keyser & Shuriken - newsletter #39: To waste a multitrillion-synapse brain
Newsflash 9.11.2000
Dear friends,
we spent this weekend in Zagreb (and it's still on our minds) djing at the
Kontrapunkt club-night. The amazing hospitality and friendliness of our
hosts (Eddy & Dus), the taste of Croatian cappuccinos and the best audience
we have met yet (screaming through the drum breaks until the theme came
back, unbelievable), the fun we had partying with our friends (big up Maja,
Dunja, Sanjin, Szabolcs & Zsuzsi) are sweet memories that leave us without
words for this week.
That's why we quote taken from "A Conversation with Marvin Minsky" edited
by Otto Laske:
"Otto Laske: That is already done in studies in AI and Music, where you
find systems for doing harmonic analysis, and systems generating
compositional material, - these are all specific kinds of things, and the
claim is not that we know what music is. It seems to me that, viewed in the
light of such studies, the term "music" expresses rather an acceptance on
the side of society that something is o.k. The composer, as composer,
doesn't care whether something is music. He is driven to generate
something, and then, if an audience finds that what he produced is
acceptable, or 'music,' he is happy, and otherwise he is not - but it's
essentially not his doing as much as it is society's.
Marvin Minsky: That raises an exciting and interesting question - that many
people are reluctant to consider, which is the question: what is, or ought
to be, o.k.? One thing I like to do is to consider the major human
activities, and try to get people to ask: "is it o.k.?" All over the world
many people listen to music for hours each day; in this country many spend
substantial portions of their incomes on recordings, high-fis, personal
earphone devices, rock concerts, and tolerate background music in their
workplaces, restaurants, airplanes, and what not. Is that all right?
Similarly, we ought to wonder whether it is reasonable to engage in sports.
I ask people, "isn't there something funny about grown people gathering in
a huge stadium to see other grown people kicking a ball from one end to the
other?" Each of those persons is using a multitrillion synapse brain. It
would be fun to ask the religious ones to consider whether it is not a sin
to waste such wondrous hardware on watching adults kicking balls around? My
own view is that this is less a sin than a symptom - of infection by a
parasitic meme (namely, one that carries the idea that such an activity is
o.k.) which has self-propagated through our culture like a software virus,
a cancer of the intellect so insidious that virtually no one thinks/dares
to question it. Now, in the same way we see grown people playing and
working in the context of popular music that often repeats a single
sentence or melodic phrase over and over and over again, a instills in the
mind some harmonic trick that sets at least part of one's brain in a loop.
Is it o.k. that we, with our hard earned brains, should welcome and accept
this indignity - or should we resent it as an assault on an evident
vulnerability?"
Check out the whole interview - dealing mainly with Artificial Intelligence
(AI) and Music
http://www.ai.mit.edu/people/minsky/papers/Laske.Interview.Music.txt
Keep on thinking about what's o.k. till next week!
Keyser & Shuriken
Playlist
Tilos Radio (http://tilos.hu)
Kristalykert (Crystal Garden - 8.11.2000) - DJs: Keyser, Lee'n'gum
Listen: http://tilos.hu/mp3/24/Wednesday/0000.m3u
1. Lonnie Liston Smith & The Cosmic Echoes - Cosmic Funk (Harmless)
2. Dennis Coffey - Scorpio (Sussex)
3. Eddie Warner - BrutusDrums (Fat City)
4. Jerzy Milian - Wsrod Pampasow (Muza)
5. Ken Rhodes - The Profile (Spinning Wheel)
6. Big Boss Man - Sea Groove (Blow Up)
7. Orchester Ambros Seelos - Mabusso (Spinning Wheel)
8. Mr. Chop - Contamination (Stark Reality)
9. United 8 - Getting Uptown (To Get Down) (WEA)
10. Archie Sheep - Hypnosis - Eddy & Dus mix (Mo' Smog)
11. Andre Arpino - African King (Blow Up)
12. dZihan & Kamien - Smile - Eddy & Dus mix (Couch)
13. Soul Drummers - Shango Prayer (Afro Art)
14. Fauna Flash - Sundays at the Party - (Compost)
15. Hajime Yoshizawa - Secret Flight - Pavel Kostiuk mix (Especial)
16. New Sector Movements - Survival (Virgin)
17. Jazzanova - Fedime's Flight - Kyoto Jazz Massive mix
18. Minus 8 - Badman & Throbin - Gábor Deutsch Lovely Vocal (Compost)
19. Kimbu Kimra - Raise The Dead - Atjazz mix (Compost)
20. Hacienda - Nightflight (Infracom!)
21. Slow Supreme - Flesh (Jazid)
22. Chateau Flight - Prism (Versatile)
23. The Menheads - Gui Bassa Ritmo (Vienna Scientists)
24. Snowboy - Oya Ye Ye - UFO mix (Ubiquity)
25. The Black Science Orchestra - Uptown (Afro Art)
26. UFO - Somewhere - Restless Soul Moontime mix (Brownswood)
27. Tutto Matto - Take MY Hand (Tummy Touch)
28. Makoto - Extensions Of Life (Earth)
29. Buscemi - Ramiros Theme (Lowlands)
30. G Force & Seiji - Naturally (Laws Of Motion)
31. Decoder & Substance - Heat (Moving Shadow)
32. Tim Hutton - Beenafool - The Nextmen mix (Pias)
33. Mescalito - Snetence Deferred (Tummy Touch)
34. Jill Scott - Love Rain (Hidden Beach)
35. DJ Shuriken - Psyked Up Muzak (Compost)
36. 24-Carat-Black - The 24-Carat-Black (Harmless)
37. Sheeba - Jungle-Fever (Cobalt)
38. Jerzy Milian - Choreographic Sketches (Muza)
39. Art Konik - Hum (Comet)
40. Spinning Wheel - Listen (Spinning Wheel)
41. Kifali - R.A. (Hi-top)
Tour dates:
11.11. Budapest, Sziget Events Hall: FREEE 5. Birthday Party
28. 11. Budapest, Merlin Theatre
29.12. Budapest, Trafó: New Fusion
30.12. Budapest, Trafó /w Lee'n'gum
***********************************************
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Thanks for the support: Anna @ Acid Jazz; Paul @ Afro Art; Paul @ Blow Up;
Manu & Eric @ Comet Records, Rainer, Michael & Kaisa @ Compost Records;
Zeljko @ Cosmic Sounds London; Vlado & Mario @ Couch Records; Christian @
Klein Records; Iain @ Grand Central Records; Andrea @ Island Blue; Andre @
Jazid Club & Records; Jazzland Records; Jürgen (Jazzanova) & Sonar
Kollektiv; Nicola & Filippo @ Fez Jazz/Schema; Gak Sato & Rocco @ Right
Tempo; Nat @ RhythmLove; Marcus, Oscar & Reini @ Spinning Wheel Records;
Oli & Sammy @ Stereo Deluxe; Alex "Reggie" @ Straight Ahead; Ali @ Switch;
Gilles (worldwide); Hannes & Flow @ Twentysomething Tunes; Laszlo @ UCMG
Hungary; Yonderboi & Trevira Modern, Ambi & Amorf Ördögök; United Future
Organization & Kaori; Nik @ Universal Jazz; Werner @ Uptight; Pita @
ParaRadio; Gilb-r & Didier @ Versatile/Future Talk; Rune & Dag @ Voices of
Wonder; Tom (Les Gammas crew); Eddy & Dus; Tosha (Pencilbrain); Enrico Riva
(LEA); Alan Brown (aka Cukipapa); Martin Antibalas
Respect: all people @ Tilos Radio
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