theory as poetry

March 14, 2018

Theory As Poetry: John Mowitt’s “Music in the era of electronic reproducibility” (1987)

music, as an organization of noise or sound, arises within the structure of listening music’s social significance derives from the role it plays in the stabilization of this structure, that is, how it articulates and consolidates structurally necessary practices of listening. – John Mowitt, “Music in the era of electronic reproducibility” in Music And Society, Continue reading

theory as poetry, Uncategorized
November 20, 2017

Theory As Poetry: Rosalind Krauss’s “Grids” (1979)

The grid is an introjection of the boundaries of the world into the interior of the work; it is a mapping of the space inside the frame onto itself. It is a mode of repetition, the content of which is the conventional nature of art itself. As we have a more and more extended experience Continue reading

grid thinking, theory as poetry, Uncategorized
December 7, 2016

Theory As Poetry: Italo Calvino’s “Six Memos for the Next Millennium” (2016)

A meticulous effort to match the written to the not-written, to the sum of the sayable and the not-sayable. These are two distinct drives toward exactitude. In trying to account for the density and continuity of the world around us, language is exposed as lacunose, fragmentary: it always says something less than the sum of Continue reading

theory as poetry
November 29, 2016

Theory As Poetry: Paul Gilroy’s “Darker Than Blue” (2011)

Ethical losses resulted from marginalizing the intersubjective, antiphonal equilibrium that had been practiced in ritual real-time collaboration between performers and crowds. Centering music creation on computer screens compounded these difficulties. The resulting music has sometimes celebrated the expulsion of any trace of fallible and funky humanity. The sinuous warmth of real-time bass and drum was often Continue reading

antiphonal equilibriums, theory as poetry
November 25, 2016

Theory As Poetry: David Sudnow’s “Talk’s Body” (1979)

A biology of action (19): You could say that experiences are deceiving, but you cannot say this if the goal of your description is the characterization of experiences and nothing else (22). A method for studying something always discovers only those possibilities that spring from a world the method creates. The perspective defines the phenomenon from the Continue reading

theory as poetry
November 17, 2016

Theory As Poetry: C. Wright Mills’ “On Intellectual Craftsmanship” (1959)

Thinking is a struggle for order and at the same time for comprehensiveness. Thinking of the opposite of that with which you are directly concerned. Orient [yourself] to the central and continuing task of understanding the structure and the drift, the shape and the meanings, of your own period. Do not allow public issues as Continue reading

theory as poetry
November 14, 2016

Theory As Poetry: Dick Hebdige’s “Subculture”

We are interested in subculture— in the expressive forms and rituals of those subordinate groups who are alternately dismissed, denounced and canonized we are intrigued by the most mundane objects which take on a symbolic dimension we must seek to recreate the dialectic between action and reaction which renders these objects meaningful (2). Subculture Continue reading

theory as poetry

Thomas Brett is a musician and writer who holds a PhD in ethnomusicology from New York University. He is the author of Principles of Electronic Music Production and The Creative Electronic Music Producer, a book described by Sound On Sound magazine as “a deep philosophical analysis of the various creative inspirations, ideas and processes involved in producing electronic music.” His essays have appeared in the journals Popular Music and Popular Music and Society, as well as edited collections by Routledge, Oxford, and Cambridge University presses. Thomas has played percussion on Broadway since 1997 and writes about music at brettworks.com.