the [microsound] list is discussing what some judge to be a severe lack of quality among those who write reviews of electronic art endeavors (in this case, sonic/music things), following are some comments:

sotto voce: I think there are several ways to go with the concept of reviewing (speaking as someone who once had a music column AGES ago in my university paper -- mostly to get back-stage concert passes with the local promoter in Denver)... :-\ -- reviewing is a process of reducing the energy of a performance into a linguistic re-presentation for others to read and presumably 'get something' of the original performance. -- the principle behind this is to take evolutionary advantage of the experience of an Other in order to optimize Self-survival. relying on Other's eyes and ears so as not to become hopelessly obsolete or even lunch meat. to remain viable in a social system one is forced more-or-less to heed this second-hand info as a part of socialization. -- the best review is "you had to be there"! -- a better review is made by someone who has the linguistic skill to take in the energy of the performance and translate the energy into a piece of text -- maybe or maybe not directly relating to the performance itself. -- the worst review lists the equipment (or otherwise frets about the materialist situation) or lists the song titles and how much applause there was or how the performer was dressed, or makes up possible 'meaning' of the performance, etc ad infinitum ad nauseum... -- personally, I have come to 'judge' (and sometimes reduce to text) my own enjoyment of a performance simply by noting (by keeping a few objective neurons available), noting where my mind drifts to as the performance proceeds. a lousy performance is when I am thinking of money troubles or how much my back aches because of the crappy seating. inspiration is the act of energy entering the body -- energising it for whatever activity follows. -- I know I can spin a decent text 'about' a performance of any kind or nature if it inspired me. to be insipired, I have to remain open to the widest possible set of expressions. -- some people who review things on a regular basis often attain a "following" of people who like the same things the reviewer likes. this is a process of mass socialization which can be detrimental to diversity of tastes (especially when it is on the scale of the NYTimes, etc etc...) in direct opposition to this, I believe it is more important to nurture idiosyncracy -- I suggest to my students, when I am playing some 'difficult' selections (Andrew MacKenzie's / Hafler Trio work comes immediately to mind), I ask them to make their own judgement about whether they are inspired by a work. self-confident judgement combined with open-ness is a good starting combination to approach art expressions that seem at first difficult and hard to absorb. -- of course, inspiration can be a tough thing to pinpoint in the moment, and might well only come later in time from 'difficult' performances. other people simply close off the possibility of liking something based on preconceived stereotyping, never allowing the possibility that a strange form of expression might be a possible source of inspiration -- "I don't like _________" (fill in the blank with any genre or stereotype). -- a personal motto is "I'll do (listen to, watch, try, etc!) anything twice, three times if I like it" -- just to make sure I don't miss something inspiring. -- reflecting on trusting someone elses judgement, I have experienced several moments when attending an event with someone who is experienced in a particular genre or form of creation, I have, through trusting that individual, come to enjoy and understand the work, when as an individual I might not take the time and focused intensity to break through an initial dislike. (doesn't dislike of a material typology of expression arise simply from fear of the unknown?) (happened to watch Scorcese's Bob Dylan film last night -- it was interesting to see documented the absolute revulsion and contempt that the folk circle -- both musicians, critics, and audiences globally -- had for Dylan when he started his "sell-out" collaborations with The Band. talk about close minded public! goes the same for the actor Don Adams who died this week -- he was lamenting that the strength of his character in Get Smart (i.e., how set people became on him in that character) was such that it precluded ANY gainful acting after that sitcom went off the air after 4 seasons. it was such that the social system did reward him with substantial royalties from reruns, but he basically never had other acting jobs again...) so, much of the time, critics 'play' to an audience that they have to keep -- imagine a critic in the LA Times who was constantly giving impassioned reviews of things that were publicly reviled. it would be a contradiction of terms. one could conclude that a critic is a necessary (though evil;-) function that glues a large social system together by ensuring at least some unified (or shared) values.

Nina Linard, the host for the weekend program Alma del Barrio on KXLU passed away this week. so many memories of the Sunday program, on those foggy mornings, slow, sun pressing through during a breakfast out on Lincoln Blvd, finally breaking out, head home, grab the board and head to guardstand 13 on Santa Monica beach, or jump into the Spyder, top down, cruise up PCH to Malibu, everywhere warm water, warm air, palm trees, sunshine, and Alma blasting.

reading Charles Bowden's book Killing the Hidden Waters (The Slow Destruction of Water Resources in the American Southwest). I was not expecting what he presented, and was fascinated when he repeatedly makes the connection between levels of technological implementation and several attendant processes -- the consequent overall social structure, the impact on the environment, and the absolute energy cost of the different levels. starting with indigenous Indians and continuing through the contemporary inhabitants in the desert Southwest, he examines the useage of a range of resources -- water, fossil fuels, soil, and forests -- he points out the cataclysmic risk of unsustainable use. indeed, pointing out the obvious, he makes it clear that unsustainable use ends in some kind of socio-economic collapse -- perhaps deferred temporarily by substituting on resource for another -- but eventually depletion precipitates a collapse. noting a sequence of energy-coalescing advances (the horse for the Comanche indians, fossil groundwater for the High Texas Plains (the Llano Escatado), the metal shovel for the Pima indians, etc), Bowden examines the consequences of exploitation of resources via those advances and compares the social system both before and after access to the resource (as afforded by that technology). by basing the view on the intrinsic energy value of the resource, he forms a powerful critique against contemporary social systems that blindly insist on technologically maximizing the useage of a non-renewable resource base. based on my own energy-based worldview, Bowden confirmed the examples that I often use in class -- where the history of civilizations can be powerfully mapped by the existence of one or more non-renewable resources which causes the 'rise and fall' of the society. the rise when the resource-base becomes exploitable through technological advance or through simple physical access to the geographic locus of the resource and the subsequent fall when the access is denied or the extent of the resource is exhausted. examples I use are the British hardwood forests that, through technical advance became the basis for the construction of the British fleet which eventually defeated the Spanish fleet. later, coal, a potent form of concentrated solar energy is discovered, and drives the industrial revolution. British hegemony follows the decline in readily available coal. and, aside from a tenacious clinging to Gulf oli resources following World War I and continuing as a secondary partner to US hegemony, the British Empire is in very late decline. of course, this picture is somewhat over-simplified, but in most cases, a single fundamental resource or energy source or a combination of a few underlies any concentration of social power.

Groundwater is essentially nonrenewable in the arid west because the economies that exploit it cannot abide a low rate of use. By combusting nonrenewable coal and nonrenewable oil and nonrenewable natural gas, they have managed to lift nonrenewable water at incredible rates. By using water with abandon they can compete with more humid regions, where it is basically a free good. This extractive process, like the looting of ore deposits, soil, forests, and fuels, is the machinery behind the expressions "conquest of nature" and "the miracle of the deserts." Rip away the veneer of western history and this consumption of resources links the centuries.
***
(the final paragraph)
This writing has always been on the wall. It is not a revelation to learn that cheap energy makes societies boom, that groundwater in arid regions has negligible recharge, that humans tend to use as much of anything as they can lay hands on. We can ignore these facts and pump, mine, and combust with abandon, or we can recognize these facts and attempt to construct a sustainable society. There will be no painless answers, nor were there any in the past. -- Charles Bowden

he stepped outside. immediately the Milky Way is apparent, coalescing on his retina, despite an artifice of Light streaming from unshaded windows. through glass. electric Light, a stream from the beginning. through wires. and wires. crossing immense spaces in the dark landscape. strung from towers that are giant beasts striding, frozen across those spaces. leading to the dams or the power stations. where earth or water is forced to yield some of its elemental strength. give back that strength, turn the Light out, watch the stars get brighter. watch the stars enter the house. or even enter the head, filling it directly. imagine that, filling the head with stellar energy.

Nancy sends this one from Biarritz on the southwest coast of France. reputed to be the best surfing in Europe.

here's a side view of the titanium in my back -- up to the right. the cylinder in the middle is located at the core of the L3 vertebra. and the HUGE wood screws are in the L2 and L4. sheesh.

sliding into fall. this is the first year that I have not been working, teaching somewhere in the world in the month of September since 1986. instead, nursing body to some state of health, slowly. bored with reading and other forms of mediated consumption. can't sit long enough to really do concentrated work on new videos and such, but do want to at least get one new dvd done with the 3 or 4 new videos finished before summer started.

everything is in slow motion except for time passing rapidly. now more than two months from this cataclysmic accident. no meaning to interpret in the event and the subsequent process of recovery.

talking by phone to folks occasionally, hardly doing email, don't understand the malaise.

finally get around to uploading 25 sonic samples into the next Soundscapes project called SoundTransit that Sara and Derek are running. good excuse to consolidate some orphan files and to create several new ones. now that the video archive is almost all digitized, I can easily jump around and take audio or video samples from the last 5 years of video work, as well as work done on Hi8 back in 1997.

Fireskye's Cu Grianach (Sunny Dog in Gaelic), aka Sunny or Sunsun gets a big ASCA Championship for looks, smarts, and pizazz with 2-5 point majors, 1-4 point major and 1-3 point major, including 4 Best of Winners and 1 Best of Opposite Sex.