pouët.net

I'm curious to know what to you think about Eric Satie. And please do answer, after that you can go away, and please go.

lots of name dropping in this thread

pete: I've not dropped mine, I'm sticking to my guns here (damn that toffee apple!). At least you have the option of dropping half of yours.

ganymed: if you'd been reading pouet for the last 8 years now, you would have known all the shit we the "noise faction" had to put up with from the rest of the scene factions: the oldskoolers, the goatrancers, the boomboomboomtechnocrowd, the metalheads.

and if one thing came out of the whole debacle was a better global awareness that all things have room for existing and are entitled to their own importance given their context.

it's simple: in the same way you'd never enjoy a techno demo if you'd be in the mood to chillout, buttler will never understand stockhausen because he's always in the mood for the melody that he has come to expect from his definition of music. we're telling him music is more then his defition and he is laughing at us like if we had grown into an internal bubble of self-respect.

this, humbly, is not being pretentious, it's beeing open minded.
so what actually upsets to death of us the "noise faction" members is the fact that _some_ people still enjoy hiding behind their "you're all a bunch of pretentious wankers" argument instead of understanding that we aim for diferent aesthetics altogether and there is room for everyone.

these kids, when confronted with the possibility that they simply arent perceiving things for what they are, they run in circles with hands in their ears reocuringly shouting "artyfaggots artyfaggots pretentious artyfaggots lalala" instead of thinking on the possibility that experimentalism is a natural and important step in the evolution of any "movement/scene".

now do yourself a favour and reread this thread looking for any references that indicates any of us, that were bashing buttler for his narrowminded attitude, actually dislike melodic music. you'll find none.

and yes, i do ocasionaly snap and abuse my "dictator" position, having grown for _years_ in the scene beeing called an artyfaggot on a daily basis for simply releasing whatever i found more interesting to do next to a position where i can actually colaborate, mutually inspire and change ideas with reknown demoscene artists, i do find it extremly insulting that braindead half-twits feel the authority to run around the yard that i been helping to trim into shape shouting cluelessly that we're all just wasting our time being pretentious artyfaggots and just enjoy each others pretentiousness instead of real music and real art.

this is particularly annoying when we've been doing exactly the oposite for years now, breaking the stigma defition inbuilt into the teenagers of what is and is not their definition of a demo into accepting the more experimental pieces as a natural progression that enables the evolution of the whole scene in itself.
you dont have to embrace experimentalism to do great music or great demos, just aknowledge that it isn't a fetish joke would be nice.

this argument that experimentalism is important is ofcourse once again labelled as pretentious artyfaggot justifications by the annoying kids, which in turn builds up to justify our frustration, making us want to just slap the living crap out of the annoying clueless twat that was obviously never educated into thinking things through prior to uttering unfundamented opinions that only reflect his narrowmindedness and insults anyone who actually sees value in the piece.

HAHAHAHAHA OH MAN i've just figured it out

Buttler/Alarm you're both a genius and also a fucking evil son of a bitch!

now i only just figured out why you keep pressing this con artist point, and, jeez you totally had a lot of us here duped for this long. damn man we all thought you were a literal total fucking idiot and that people like that couldn't exist. and then you kept talking about how the late great must have been a con artist and it dropped. you're not being a total ignoramus - you've just pulled off the greatest piece of trolling possibly ever, but making everyone so angry. you must have totally picked your words so carefully, because the whole act is 100%.

damn man i salute you!! \o/ i think for the first few posts it looked like you were just making some typical troll jokes, then it went serious for 12 pages and now i can finally breathe easy.

you're pretty funny, :D like, this thread got me, and so many other people, so worked up and you must have been cracking up solid for 4 days or whatever it is now :D

haha, i wish i'd figured it out earlier!!

buttler: irony is wasting time reading your idiocy when i could be creating something. hypocrisy is your lack of willpower to understand our arguments.

forest: nah, i've grown past that hypothesis, he's really that stupid.

also, its cosmic how nutman was involved. i dunno if you had it figured out between the two of you, but my money's on you having him duped too. :D

anyway, genius work man, even if you gave ps (and me, and others) a few heart attacks... with great comedy comes great responsibility eh?

and i SO so SO so SO thought you were being serious!!

ps: it's funny looking back, I was in agreement with butler for quite a while. Take a look at the last comments on $_ though, a slight difference is apparent :)

I think it just comes down to seeing things in black and white or shades of grey though. There are pretentious artyfaggots out there, and there are con artists putting on exhibitions in galleries while secretly laughing at the critics. The mistake is thinking that applies to the lot, and not the minority, believing that you're right, and seeing what you want to see to confirm your view (and hey, we're all guilty of that at some time).

calling someone a troll or a stupid ignorant because he doesn't share your extreme opinions or tastes on arts ('extreme' compared to mainstream opinions), is so self-conceited.

It's not like he's just doing that. He's insulting the man calling him a con artist. It's not just not liking what a guy did his whole life.

Do you not see what I have done here? It is time to reveal the method behind the madness and unveil my work...

BEHOLD THIS THREAD! A work of art, orchestrated by yours truly!

You wanted to pay tribute to a great artist and what better tribute than one of the most heart felt, passionate, controversial and opinionated threads in recent Pouet memory.

Your faith has been tested, you have been lured into defending your art and deliberate on what it is that fuels your fascination. You have been encouraged to perceive your art from the perspective of the cynic, the critic and the philestine, and from angles you have never considered before.

No, this thread is not the handiwork of a troll. It is the work of an artist!


The question now is...do you believe me? Was this my original intention or is this my "pretentious blurb" attempting to justify my work? Are you a fool for not seeing the art in this thread or am I attempting to play you for a fool?

hi shane!

yey! i knew it! too late, but i guessed it first at least!

Not mysterious enough - guess you have to die too first :)

Buttler: i wonder, is your comment on this the same contemporary art you pulled off here? :)

Loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong th-read... (:

i still think you're a failure, if that makes you feel accomplished.

regardless of what your original intent was, turning an r.i.p. thread into a trollfest is pretty tasteless in anyone's book. next time take my advice and stay the fuck out.

reed:
Blah. Thats just stupid. If it had been about a demoscener (this is pouët, maybe, just like ps you forgot) I would have agreed. And if you compare this thread to any of the R.I.P <insert demoscener handle> you can see a remarkable difference. So instead of nagging about people "trolling" or whatever ask why someone would want to create a R.I.P thread here with the pretty obvious risks. For me, I can't think the thread starter really gave a shit about this so-called musician. If he had he would not go to pouët and lighten the fire.

That's nice, ps. Really grown up stuff you throw at me there. I ask only that bad words shouldn't be used, and what do you do? You choose the direct provocative approach, instead of making an effort to read what I'm saying - now, in this thread, who does that behaviour resemble? (in your opinion, that is)

In your world, yes.
In my world it would be the same if I went to the ocean and sat there for 4'33 listening - hell, that would be even more interesting. The idea about recording silence is not a bad one - that's not what I'm saying at all. It's giving the audience a chance to reflect upon...well, upon what they're most likely to be reflecting upon at that time, but seen from a "generic" musicians point of view, there's only ridicule left and a sense of "The emperors new clothes" - because you made an effort to create something, you think is worth listening to, and John Cage didn't (in your opinion) - he just hit record and that's it. Anybody can do that, you think.

The whole point is that not just anybody could think of it. Or even think it up. It seems so far out there, that noone really comprehends it. And perhaps that's the point.

4'33 is precisely not about four minutes of silence. It's also kind of pointless to listen to it at home.

It's about creating a body of time where the audience's sounds *is* the music. And this requires a modicum of ceremony, to assemble the audience, and let it understand that it has to *listen*

[quote]The question now is...do you believe me? Was this my original intention or is this my "pretentious blurb" attempting to justify my work? Are you a fool for not seeing the art in this thread or am I attempting to play you for a fool? quote]

Perhaps you would have had a bigger impact on certain people, if you would have said it all with 4 minutes of silence.

;)

Put that way one might even argue that music is just disturbing. It destroys the ability to listen, since you are (most likely) being led in a specific direction.
I guess it comes down to what approach you have, when you start out doing music in any form: you want to achieve something - lead the audience in a certain direction. And noone is to say if one or the other thing is right (for them and others), but they still have the right to speak their mind on whatever they want - yet, it doesn't hurt to know a little bit about what you're speaking your mind about, but it just feels like some people here only think close to waterproof experts are allowed to have an opinion AND tell the rest about it. Which is absurd.

Also, a few words about those complaining that a piece of work has to come with textual information:

There are very few kinds of works which are not composite of other works. A piece of music is both a score (a set of instruction) and the performance of many individuals.

A movie is a stronger example, a composition of a variety of creations under one label.

We were born in a generation for which recording has been slowly considered synonymous with music itself.

However music before came in many forms, and was not bound to the radio-format. It required to be learned, to be written under many forms and came within a tradition.

To follow a piece you have to share a certain cultural background. To claim otherwise is foolish and a total misunderstanding of what creating works for others is. Gamelan for example is something that the culturally western-trained audience of the XVIIIth century would consider ugly and unharmonious. The converse is certainly true as well, finding with their closed-minded equivalent finding ugly and unharmonious and even primitive your way of making music.

Sad to say that it seems a few among us seem to share the mindset of most XVIIIth century europeans, still clinching on the idea that there is one single harmony and one single set of parameters one is supposed to work with while making music.

So I was talking about sharing a cultural background, or at least a modicum of information before listening to a piece of music.

This is done for old and new pieces. For example in opera settings, where you are given a libretto (livret in french) which gives out the lyrics, information about the mise en scene and more.

There's nothing wrong about a creation if it requires that you are handed with some contextual information and keys to understand it. The need for it has even increase, what with the increasing access to other cultures that was given to our previous generation's elite and now our generation.

A few last words and a video. There's something old dying in you if all you're thinking about is to re-iterate, one after another, the same experience. If your attitude in life is that everything is always self-evident, then you're no better than a cromagnon.