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From: garry@cs-sun-fsc.cpsc.ucalgary.ca (Garry Beirne)
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
Subject: Re: Musical Virtual Worlds
Message-ID: <1990Nov17.201222.22629@cpsc.ucalgary.ca>
Date: 17 Nov 90 20:12:22 GMT
References: <1990Nov13.213038.27046@cpsc.ucalgary.ca> <11156@milton.u.washington
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Organization: The Banff Centre for the Arts
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> My current line of work involves what I'm calling an "auditory cyberspace."
> It's based around some notions of consciousness, especially of temporal
> integration & the possibilities of transmitting cognitive structure, as
> outlined in my PhD thesis "music as secondary consciousness: an
> implementation," which ought to be on the shelf within a few months.....

Your work sounds *very* interesting, and I would like to get some references
from you.  Where and when could we read about your work?  Can you give us an
example of a cognitive structure that might be useful to transmit in a
cyberspace?  Do you imagine that concrete messages can be 'encoded' in these
structures?

> The concept that we're "visually oriented" is shallow and, I think, probably
> incorrect: consult any textbook of auditory disorders ...

BRAVO. It seems my 'quoted' suggestion that we were 'visual animals' didn't
imply my disbelief in this notion (though my source of disbelief comes more
from an intuitive and experiential rather than from any scientific position).
The aural component of our virtual worlds should not be treated as second class
citizens to the visual components; as nice little special effects to enhance the
so-called experience.  It will be interesting to see Eliot Handelman's work, or
others, can illuminate the power and necessity of sound in cyberspace.

Eliot, do you think that sound could have greater importance than visuals in
certain cyberspaces?  In all cyberspaces?

> The "musical" perspective espoused by most recent musical cognitivism is
> based on some unfortunate misunderstandings of musical history: especially
> problematic is the notion of musical generative grammars. There is no
> such thing, in my view; worse, I think it is detrimental any sort of thinking
> that goes on around music to insist on the ideas od a "semantics," be they
> emotive, significative, or pseudo linguistic. Habituation entails
> perceptual automatization, as already James pointed out. The reliance of
> cognitivism on previous experience is at most a pedagogical blunder, not
> an insight into how music "works." I am looking at things that force
> involvement
> and map out experience, not things that are, from an intercationist
> stance, already dead.

There's a lot of stuff in this paragraph. I would be grateful for further
illumination of your ideas about musical grammars.  What do you mean by things
that "map out experience?".

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  Garry Beirne           Box 1020        Phone:   (403) 762-6641
  Head, Computer Media   Banff, Alberta  FAX:     (403) 762-6659
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-- 
  Garry Beirne           Box 1020        Phone:   (403) 762-6641
  Head, Computer Media   Banff, Alberta  FAX:     (403) 762-6659
  Media Arts             Canada          UUCP:    garry@cpsc.UCalgary.CA
  The Banff Centre       T0L 0C0         PAN:     BANFF