Readers respond to a letter by Peggy Deamer, an architect, calling for less arrogance and more collaboration in architecture. [...]
It is not only the public that is fed up with this idea of The Architect, but also the profession itself. Having watched ourselves increasingly backed into the corner of aesthetic elitism, we are now more interested in models of practice that do away with the egos and the glamorous buildings they are associated with.
— nytimes.com
75 Comments
Good Morning Tammuz. I do most my thinking out loud on Archinect so I myself am often not clear where I am coming from or going and it's nice to have people like yourself and Quondam jump in and critique.
Modernism - I lumped architecture, music, mathematics, physics, and philosophy all into what I am calling a 'thought exercise'. The best architectural reference text here would be by Eisenman - The end of the beginning, the begging of the end for Music I start with Karlheinz Stockhausen and meander into Iannis Xenakis and John Cage (although this is referred to as 'avant-garde'. - Luc Ferrari is worth a listen). for Philosophy I start with Descartes (typical college curriculum) and end at Husserl, for physics I sum it up with the real Heisenberg (not the meth cooker) - Newtonian physics does not suffice, and for mathematics (I made this up) around the time of Hilbert, Whitehead and Russel, Gödel, Weyl, and Brouwer (debate on the foundation of mathematics) and incompleteness...
In all cases, most the roots could be traced to the Renaissance and the Classical, this is why I reference Eisenman, but the roots get severed - severly. A revolution and crisis quickly ensue at the abrupt break from history or the fields inherent language.
Norbert Wiener's Cybernetics - 1st chapter - "Newtonian and Bergsonian Time" is a good reference for the contrast - vitalism vs mechanics (materialism)....positivism vs say the embodied mind.
in simpler terms - my defined version here - Modernism as a Thought Exercise - Is to layout the facts and justify each fact's existence without time. To abstract instead of to compose in time. To deny relations that make concepts unclear. To make concepts clear without context. To cause control of the uncontrollable through intended ignorance of relations. To make a VERB or ADJECTIVE a NOUN. To do all the above in a state of amnesia. To be free of narratives and constraints. To re-invent constantly. To eternally return to nothing, to eternally return to question and being, to eternally return because you can - Progressive without a past.
Once the elements are free for shuffling, a signifier or a material can be free to become and serve a concept.
Koolhaas - I've probably read S, M, X, XL too many times, Delerious New York only once, Junkspace at least 10 times, and numerous other texts. I am more familiar with the early stuff from travels across Europe in 2000's. Starchitects are being discussed here because they can be used as 'signifiers' of a whole set of beliefs and theories...the anonymous corporate agents are of no interest or use here.
This would take some scholary effort beyond the time I am afforded but in short I would describe the 'Koolhaas Nihilism' - architecture as the sensation of the spectacle of the hyper-capitalism delivered deliriously in an already presumed surreal global virtual world.
To give this statement a human character - The most talented designer in studio delivers the best projects at each jury. This students informs the jury who has experience and are experts in their fields what they are unware of and in a rage says - that's what you wanted. The student then leaves the building and goes to the park or the bar or the art gallery alone. The rest of the studio class and jury just sits there dumbfounded and stares, admires, and invents a narrative about the great work. The studio professor gives the student an A, but has no idea why, other than it felt right - because who else could put on such a performance (but it wasn't a performance).
Chris, You're like a breath of fresh air on this site.
"Modernism in fields is an abrupt removal from history through abstraction - it has its problems." It has it's problems, that's it, nothing more. As modern people you learn from the mistakes, adapt good solutions from the past and address the future. Any criticism on modernism is met with a wall. Not very modern if you ask me.
"the issue of GOOD place making" Exactly, deconstructing language to make everything plausable is liek Fox News saying there are two sides to the debate when one is clearly divorced from the facts. Admitting mistakes only makes you stronger, but the way modernism has been fetishized in academia is truly disgusting. Modernism is not modern as modern is too all encompassing.
tammuz,
"to present it (modernism) as creating a tabula rasa is a myth that should be put to rest already" For all your erudition, I would have expected you to know that much, inconvenient as it might be. But that dosn't negate the progress made under modernism, rather it's simply an attempt to set the historical record straight.
"Seattle library building was a very pleasant surprise. If it doesn't really do much for its surroundings at the pedestrian level, I actually blame the city -or at least that part of the city- , not the building." Yeah, the city is the problem....At least you acknowledge it's failings even though you've blamed it onthe surrounding city. I've never heard that take, to be honest.
Thayer-D;
Modernism cannot be separated from the long evolution of culture and neither will culture stop at Modernism. And even Modernism is a term that, like mozzarella, once you put your fingers into it, breaks up and slips away. You have a mythohistorical envisagement of culture; it is difficult to discuss things with you as it is difficult to discuss the nature of the world and its creation with a religious person. So, from the point of view of what Modernism is or is not, I'm not going to really delve into this with you. I'm not convinced by what Chris had to say (by research, I don't just mean reading books but also cross referencing with his works and working process) either but we're all allowed to think (or not think, believe is more accurate in your case) in our way.
As for the Seattle library building. You say this:
"....At least you acknowledge it's failings even though you've blamed it onthe surrounding city. "
Firstly, I didn't acknowledge failings. Secondly, if you take a walk around the neighbourhood, you'll find that the pedestrian life is pithy and found to be lacking. In that sense, actually, the library is very much in keeping with the nature of the context. Ironically, the building is very regionalist and, to top it, critically conceived.
This has absolutely nothing to do with style (your religious domain) but, and perhaps a Seattler might corroborate this for us, the nature of the planning of the city, the parcelling of work-related neighbourhoods from residential neighbourhoods, the nature and number of commercial enterprises at the pedestrian level.
Not everything is about style. Montreal is full of modernism buildings and yet the interaction at the pedestrian level is much more engaging. Beirut as well; Hamra is mostly post 1950's buildings and it is an incredibly vibrant pedestrian level. The same could not be said in regards to Ottowa in Canada, to post-Blitz cities in England such as Plymouth and Portsmouth - whereas Brighton affords a much more lively ambience.
Why is that? Absolutely nothing to do with your mythical world, nothing to do with style. What is far more important is how mixed the neighbourhood is. By that I mean whether the city is parcelled into work-ghettos that are separate from residential ghettos - a formula that I dislike a lot, a ford line-production urban space that impoverishes both the working neighbourhood and the residential one.
So, this is why I blame (that part of) the city and not the building. At the pedestrian street, the building succeeds 100% in being part of that part of the city. Is this Koolhaas' fault? Reread my previous post and you'll find that this is consistent with "casualness", his realism. I have tried to contrast him with someone like Schumacher, who I believe is an ideologue (therefore, like you, rather irrational and finds the logic to justify his inculcated beliefs). The building accepts, casually, without any resistance, that it is part of Seattle....and that it is, fundamentally, a glass box containing functional spaces within - but what he does with this - contained within the casual framework of being in such a generic grid city neighbourhood and working with the vocabulary of generic mid/high rise- is very interesting and exceptional.
Also, I wouldn't have been able to say this without visiting the building and the neighbourhood.
It is strange what an actual visit to a building, within its context, will do. Pictures and descriptions and dogmatic beliefs do not suffice really.
I haven't read all of this, but I've gathered that there are two seemingly opposing views, 1 is that starchitecture is bad for the profession and 2 that bad design is responsible for the profession's poor state. I guess I don't see those things as mutually exclusive. Students are taught to be starchitects and to design for their own wishes, ignoring any constraints and encouraged to impress their professors with their awesomeness, and it doesn't translate into good design given the constraints of gravity, budget, flexibility, usability and conformity.
One of my favorite buildings is a wheaties box turned on its side, it has no shock or awe value nor does it make me bilious or give me vertigo. If making a statement is not the only way to design a building, somebody should tell the architecture schools, because that is the only way they teach it.
"Modernism cannot be separated from the long evolution of culture and neither will culture stop at Modernism. And even Modernism is a term that, like mozzarella, once you put your fingers into it, breaks up and slips away."....tammuz...............Eric Owen Moss said chocolate, but muzza rella will work, ha....."I think, therefore I am". That statement alone traditionally is taught as the intro to Modern Philosophy makes clear the abruptness of the Modern Thought Exercise. To eternally return, or at least repeat a mode of thought to cause creation - which creates affectively difference is the essence or beginning of style. So everything can become a style - even Emergence. I am a very Modern kind of guy, I operate on abruptness, for the most part i have found history and foundations easy to deconstruct, but this has been a futile attempt at nothing. The only research as you call it I have posted on the interweb is about Dreams. The exercise in modeling my dreams in the computer to make the images recollected from a dream which in turn created a virtual physical model that could be studied similar to reality proves one thing if I can borrow a term I am learning from Log 31 - Neo-naturalism. The Dream studies proved nothing and if I go down the neuroscience route it will prove to be equally meaningless unless as an Ideology like Schumacher accept such mathematical relationships as true and generative in themselves. Like my older 6 year old daughter says - blah blah blah. The question becomes if you operate on visions and dreams first prior to designing by data and design principles is why such assemblies of visions occur when attempting to Solve a design problem. What I am finding it relates to experience and time and therefore as a Style will typically start by being entrenched in the past and the local and grow from there. This is what I am learning....
btw Thayer-D i used to post here quite often, especially over 10 years ago...then i got a teaching job and since most my posts were anti-academic i took a 3 year hiatus...Not that I taught anything as tammuz would call it - required 'research'. taught skills. What tammuz calls 'research' I call work, but most my work is professional practice kind of stuff, you know codes, structural issues, restoration, waterproofing, etc......which again isn't worthy of academia's time and then we wonder why there is no collective knowledge of anything....
from eight years ago...not much has changed.http://archinect.com/forum/thread/39255/i-read-archinect-today-oh-boy
Modernism as an ideology is what sucks. As a style (ironically), it can be employed rather successfully if addressing the practical realities of day to day life. Growing up in EUR, Mussolini's new Rome, I can testify to how urbane modernism can be. Then again, Italian street life is about as hard to eradicate as the common cold, unlike in the USofA, where it didn't take much to evacuate the middle class from most of our cities. As for Modernist's wish to be above style and tar anyone who employ's the word "style" the way it's commonly understood by the public, I can't join you in your naval gazing.
No one is separating modernism from the long evolution of culture any more than slavery from America's history. But to claim that one can't speak about modernism becasue it slips away (like jello) is pure sophistry. One claims ambiguity when one becomes uncomfortable, if they haven't devolved into hostility or curled up into a ball. That's ok for you and many others, but as you see, it's still possible to communicate with a common understanding of words like 'style' and 'modernism' and still disagree. In school, professors would always claim that modernism was more than a style, and therefore superior to mere styles. That's how you can tell an ideologue, they can't see their own world from the outside.
" But to claim that one can't speak about modernism becasue it slips away (like jello) is pure sophistry"
I didn't say that you can't speak about modernism. The fact that you project your inane simplifications onto someone else doesn't really prove anything except that you are a dishonest discussion partner (as you did with "its failings", a concept I similarly did not introduce). I said once you put your fingers into it. This is altogether something else. And something else, altogether, is when you speak of modernism. Below is an elaboration, just so that you don't come up with more nonsense.
This is your issue Thayer-D. Many of us don't think of modernism as an ideology, whereas, in fact, being an ideologue, you yourself do think of it as such and accuse us who live and practice within it casually of this- a sleazy way of projecting onto others your dogmas.
Rather, it is felt as a framework of thoughts, practices and, yes, styles (having more than one style) that is, when one ventures an actual distinction of what modernism is and where it originates and the breath of coverage- hard to parenthesize historically and culturally.
There is a modernism that clearly carries for roots the traces - aesthetic and material- of the industrial age, There is a modernism that goes back to finding volumetric harmonies as did the Renaissance. There are modernisms that find their inspiration from vernacular Mediterranean (or indeed other) cultures. There is a modernism that parallels the globalization of capitalism and another that paralleled the globalization of socialism.
I did not delve into Chris's post because it was just, as it will necessarily be, a series of name dropping that cannot encapsulate modernism; the names might for him but for me they look like a McDonald recipe for modernism. Modernism is not just Cage, and Xenakis and Stockhausen in music (ie the abolition of conventions, harmonic and suchlike) , for example. This is the cliché of an Idiot's Guide, and a necessarily partial one at that. There is equally people who practiced within the conventional harmonic modes who were also modernists, taking inspiration from both European folk music such as Bartok and Janacek, both of who could not be separated from one part of the modernist practice of music at their time as you had neo-classicist modernists such as Stravinsky. Ravel, who continues impressionism, brought it into the core of modernism.
What is common between this modernist composers is not the "abolition of harmony" but actually the expansion on harmony (ie another chapter in the history of music). It is not the negation of history, culture and tradition...but their modulation and their reinterpretation, repositioning and augmentation.
It is not true that modernism sees itself as a clean break from history. It is only naïve and deceived individuals on both sides of the conceived "divide" that portray it as such..and there are many and it is tiresome and impoverishing.
Thus, there is no universally contained subject that is modernism that can be viewed from within. And if you take modernism out of contemporary culture, around most parts of the world, you take a huge part of culture out of itself. At the same time, viewing modernism from outside is possible for someone who has already accepted this myth of a cultural/traditional "divide".
In reality there is much confusion when talking about modernism. Is it being conceived within the modernist age(are we still there)? Influenced by academically modernist ideas? Bearing the visual imprints of recognizable modernist styles? Or...as it seems to be the case with Thayer-D....everything that doesn't bear the visual imprints of a recognizably "classical" style?
Thayer-D is doomed within her or his duality of dogmas, by delineating the dogmas associated with the absence of one thing ("classicism") with the dogmas associated with the presence of another ("modernism"). This is a dualistic religion, like Zoroastrianism but so much poorer.
There is equally people who practiced within the conventional harmonic modes who were also modernists
Ya...and those who practiced modernism before it was even a term...Does this mean it wasn't modernism? That's kinda like saying fucking sheep was not beastiality in the 15th century because it was just called love making...
modern?
Modernism is a borrowed style. Form follows function was a big "like duhh" for the hopi, or the Inuit or any culture that worked with stone, earth, timber, mud brick...etc. This idea that the modern era began once a white dude from Europe conied the term "modernism" is a form of intellectual imperialism and eurocentrism. Truth is that the aesthetic, the philosophy of material honesty, the physics-art marriage of form following function, was done before...It occured independently in cultures that were isolated from one another in time and space. The roots of modernism go back possibly further than those of the "classical"...
Circa: Way the fuck before Land Art, Kahn, Boulee, Brutalism.....?
Minimalism was not discovered in the modern age, it was rediscovered and reinterpreted. The only unique aspect of industrial age Modernism is industrial production.
That said...IMO A modern building is only as good as its landscape. Interpret that as you wish...
Nice jla-x! It's not tidy, but it's true. Now modernism as an ideology...that we can pin point.
+++ jla-x
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
tammuz you do realize you just proved my earlier point that 'modernism is a thought exercise'
"There is a modernism that clearly carries for roots the traces - aesthetic and material- of the industrial age, There is a modernism that goes back to finding volumetric harmonies as did the Renaissance. There are modernisms that find their inspiration from vernacular Mediterranean (or indeed other) cultures. There is a modernism that parallels the globalization of capitalism and another that paralleled the globalization of socialism."
followed by Thayer-D's statement that further supports this statement
"In school, professors would always claim that modernism was more than a style, and therefore superior to mere styles. That's how you can tell an ideologue, they can't see their own world from the outside."
If you think like a Modern about Modernism, you will know what Thayer-D's last sentence means.
----MUSIC_____
Tammuz, it appears you seem to be fairly unfamiliar with Xenakis, unless you included him in your re-list mistakenly, maybe I was wrong about Cage and Stockhausen.... I have read a book Xenakis wrote and a bunch of other stuff - I know this isn't research to you, but had you read any of his text...you would have learned that when Xenakis went to a music teacher in Paris or something (can't remember their name) this teacher recommended him to study under Olivier Messiaen due to his lack of interest in Harmonics...well that's the way Xenakis put it, I would suggest he probably wasn't good at Harmonics (if you read what the teacher said politely another way). Xenakis made music using Stochastic Mathematics - nuff said - Harmonics my ass, what is the purpose of Stochastic Mathematics? Your argument is Rhetoric and not substantial...abrupt removal or expansion is the same thing when you isolate your rhetoric so conveniently from the history of this conversation - yada yada !
Cage's 4'33" was to introduce the audience into the piece - As you would say expanded Harmonics? Really?!? The audience is now listening to itself listening to a piece of music - this is absolute abrupt and removed from 'traditional' composition in music.
Stockhausen...I might give you some expansion to Harmonics there given the methodologies employed...
____philosophy_____
Rene Descartes said "i think, therefore I am" and then explained everything from there. So your silly statement
"It is not true that modernism sees itself as a clean break from history. It is only naïve and deceived individuals on both sides of the conceived "divide" that portray it as such..and there are many and it is tiresome and impoverishing."
or are we talking about the 'thought exercise of modernism' which is not a style but therefore is also not Abrupt....confounding you are!
___Architecture___
jla-x says " The only unique aspect of industrial age Modernism is industrial production. " Modernism as a Thought Exercise and now a dogma/style of exercise as I said earlier - "Modernism in [all] fields of study is an abrupt removal from history through abstraction - it has its problems."
Abstraction. Pin point it with - Form Follows Function and run with it...
The same 'quest' preached in academy to students about Modernism is no different than the quest in Emergence, etc...the goal is to 'create' continually and appropriately true to the conditions of language of architecture and this to can be a dogma
Think about the following quote as a principle to be followed and you have just invented a style of modernism, or stylized modernism
The following paragraph from Ignasi de Sola-Morales book “Differences“
“Mies’s work is developed not out of images but out of materials – materials in the strongest sense of the word; that is, the matter from which objects are constructed. This matter is abstract, general, geometrically cut, smooth, and polished, but it is also material that is substantial, tangible, and solid. And at the same time, it implies a wider materiality that takes in the gravity and weight of the elements of construction, the tensions in their static behavior, their hardness or fragility, and the material artifice of the technology that prepares and handles the elements from which the building is raised. This is a materialism, finally, that sets out from the origin of the material problems of lighting, air conditioning, sealing of the outer skin, and the satisfactory function of the building in relation to the use for which it was designed. The whole tremendous body of innovation in Mies derives neither from imitation nor from the abstract discourse of concepts of space, light, or territory. In Mies, the realities are, from the very outset, material for the work of architecture.”
vs
“It then became clear to me that it was not the task of architecture to invent form. I tried to understand what that task was. I asked Peter Behrens, but he could not give me an answer. He did not ask that question. The others said, ‘What we build is architecture’, but we weren’t satisfied with this answer…since we knew that it was a question of truth, we tried to find out what truth really was. We were very delighted to find a definition of truth by St. Thomas Aquinas: ‘Adaequatio intellectus et rei’, or as a modern philosopher expresses it in the language of today: ‘Truth is the significance of fact.’” – Mies van der Rohe (quoted by Peter Carter in Architectural Design, March, 1961) taken from Kenneth Frampton’s – Modern Architecture a Critical History
These result in two (2) very different forms of Modernism practiced as a religion if you chose not to "eternally return" to the "question of being", which is something 99.9% of humanity can not do day in and day out. Nihilistic schizophrenia ain't easy people.
Shouldn't move this whole conversation to another thread?
Chris : "tammuz you do realize you just proved my earlier point that 'modernism is a thought exercise'"
No, that's not true. I said a "framework of thoughts". There is a great difference between a thought exercise and its framework. For instance, I am able to frame my thoughts -and undertake "thought experiments"- differently, with different nuances, in each of the languages I speak. But within each of these languages -these rules of syntax and vocabularies that carry different nuances- the exercise will differ. Likewise, modernism, with specific sets of syntax that we are familiar with, is the frame work for whatever "thought exercise" that you're speaking of. I cannot say that baroque is a thought exercise or the renaissance. Each is a world that, to some extent (again, parenthesizing is always a bit ambiguous and to some extent not final (for instance, the transition from baroque music to classical music, although one is certain of what is baroque and what is classical)) starts somewhere and ends somewhere else, where perception, aesthetic, morality, language, etc are all bound by a common framework which we call the baroque spirit or the modernist spirit. So, no, you're not being proven. I criticized your term "thought exercise" exactly because of this. Modernism (or baroque or abbassid or moghul or ...) is not just about the thought but its foundations, its limits, its overall framework, its subliminal underpinnings. Much more encompassing than a thought exercise that I choose or choose not to think. I venture that even Thayer-D is using modernist inspired language to talk about ideologies and so on, albeit uninspiredly.
Chris: "this teacher recommended him to study under Olivier Messiaen due to his lack of interest in Harmonics...well that's the way Xenakis put it, I would suggest he probably wasn't good at Harmonics (if you read what the teacher said politely another way). Xenakis made music using Stochastic Mathematics "
Do you know what harmonics are? You're using a specific term here. I never referred to harmonics, I referred to (western) harmonic conventions and harmony, never harmonics. Harmonics are component frequencies that are integer multiples of the fundamental frequencies that endow a note played by an instrument with a series of secondary notes that enrich it harmonically. This is also dependent on the acoustic nature of the instrument and one may identify the timbre of an instrument, its sound, by the set of these harmonics. A violin will bring out some harmonics while a sax with bring out another series (even if they play the same note, this is how you can differentiate the sound of a note being played by one or by the other). On the other hand, harmony is the evolution of consonance within music history. Hence we have major and minor modes (that are actually a simplification -or survival of the fittest collection- of more complex systems prior) that are based on different musical intervals within certain signature keys, we have chords that go together and others that sound discordant. What sounds harmonic now, would have sounded discordant at a previous time.
Stochastic music is if anything a step towards the abolition of conventional harmony and I had every right to include Xenakis with Stockhausen and a lot of John Cage music. You don't even know what I'm talking about and yet you argue. What I mean is that they don't follow the conventional western rules (at that time) of key signatures, scales and harmonic modulations . Instead of this historical accumulation of musical know-how, the likes of those trio opt for altogether different systems of organizing notes (or even of founding notes - hence the concept of micro-notes that is also not within the framework of conventional western harmony up to their creations..however musicians have always been aware - since equal temperament at least (when the concept of a "democratic keyboard" came up) - of tiny fractions of a note, called comas, in order to blend a note harmonically with one or the other to fit in different scales or intervals - string players adjust instinctively)). Systems based on algorithms or chance or whatever it is...but certainly not conventional western harmony. This is only, as I said, one grouping of composers within the overarching span of modernism and, as I have stated, there are others that continue within the framework of western harmony, even as they develop it further. there were even people like Berg and indeed Messiaen who utilize the world of conventional harmony and this then new world of harmonic dissonance based on new evolving arrangement of notes to great emotional effect. This is why Berg is so much an intimate listening experience than say Webern or even Schoenberg.
This is why you have an aborted view of modernism, a partial one based on what you simply know but not on what is available Have some humility - its obvious your knowledge is pithy and your rationale is simply unreasonable. You care more about creating simplistic formulas and judgements. It makes you a trivial dilettante, with all due respect to your person..and that's all.
I'm not going to run though the other nonsense in your post.
jla-x, I disagree with you :o) although I find it droll that you, coming from an opposite direction (which I disagree with) , actually agree with me...followed by Thayer-D's agreement with you (whilst disagreeing with me). Disregarding that funny latter part, my reason is not that one cannot find recognisable moments of a modernist spirit. I agree with you there. We, with our sensibility that incorporated modernism, will look back at history and perceive these moments as echoing ours/the present - however, this is of course a is lie. its would be correct to say that we echo them, since it is us who is inspired by the past and not vice versa. At that time, with their eyes and sensibilities, there was no awareness of structure and envelope, of space, of detailing that is framed by our world and understanding. Modernism didn't exist then but modernism certainly learned from them...however, collapsing history ahistorically is of course inapplicable. There is no inherent platonic truth in these forms and proportions, if this is what you're alluding to. Architecture, its beauty of proportions and so on, are all cultural inculcations and is to be read against time and context, not separate from these, not jumping over them. And if you are able to jump over them that is because there is a contextual bridge somewhere.
I like that new Taylor Swift song.
Taylor is quite a star.
Tammuz - no 'modern' thinking is the very thought exercise to break out of the framework.....given your avoidance to actually addressing the mathematical arguments and of not making an argument of substance with regard to the music debate, one founded on web searching definitions, it is clear to me you operate in frameworks only and therefore do not or can not actually perform this mental thought exercise 'being' and 'thinking'. I propose you start a new thread where you 'frame' the modern and I will gladly indicate the moments of deconstruction - the ontological break in foundation allowing new frames to emerge. Perhaps then you will understand? Taylor swift monkeys. Beer 47836. Johny football.
Chris, simply about the music...I used to play classical violin and studied some basic music theory. everything I said about music, I didn't need to look up. Its elementary for anyone who's interested in the subject. Also, when someone says harmonics, in playing a string instrument, its a technical term (not a general attributive one derived from harmony) indicating a light touch of the finger on the string which will effectuate a different note altogether from that if using a normal finger stop (you will hear it as a sort of a whistle) this is another way of manipulating acoustic harmonics.
As for the rest of that nonsense, perhaps you need to buddy up with, perhaps, Olaf and not me.
Tammuz you still said nothing and you clearly do not understand this thought exercise, clearly. I played saxophone for 8 solid years and preferred improv over reading anything, I could sit here and describe a bunch of techniques for making the instrument do things it is not supposed to but I won't - I do not find formalities important or useful. I also mess around a lot in making music in the computer. You have any original work to post? You like framework and I like breaking Out of the framework. So in this regard your personal scenario is useful in our conversation. Olaf is a character who in "non sense" attempts to create new sense, I wouldn't take anything he writes ever too seriously until he makes sense - and then you should take your odd disposition seriously. I am completely serious, since I write this under my real name, but I strongly believe in 'nihilistic schizophrenia' as a mode of being for purposes of continued creativity. There is a Deleuze Guatarri qoute in a Thousand Plateaus that sums this up well-latitudes and longitudes and something animal....lastly, do you have any work or a real name or are you someone who only has found success in internet forums? A few people have suggested Alvin Lucier is a one trick pony, and I would suggest right now our debate is at the beginning of this one trick and who knows maybe if you go off and start a thread framing 'modern' and I show you all the leaks in your damn we will arrive at the end of Mr. Lucier's one trick for a moment. If this were to happen you would probably give this moment a name, thus destroying its very essence. It takes commitment to be 'nihilistic' and 'schizophrenic', a commitment not dependent on framework.
johnny football isn't doing as well now that he left the texas collegiate system, is he? i suppose he has time to grow, but he'd probably have to learn a bit of humility before he can compete with the big boys.
that could totally be a double entendre. it's probably not though.
Say double enrendre 10 times....followed by - wheat thins and cool whip...like Stewy on Family guy. Good point curtkram...at Texas A&M Hill is doing pretty good breaking Manziels records right. Petty at Baylor doing as good as RGIII. Tebow was only as good as Urban Meyer, in my opinion Urban is one of the best coaches ever. Now coaches clearly make a framework in which most if conformists succeed, but are coaches working in a framework or do they try to break out of the frame? Chip Kelly I would say broke out, but now its a system. The Harbaughs and Stanford function very well within the framework - do you have a full back and a tight end? Then there was the west coast offense.....each breaker of the frame invents a new framework. If someone gave me time man could I make American football the best narrative of real life application of Delanda, Deleuze, and Derrida. Thanks for bringing it up curtkram.
the good coaches build a framework for the team they have. really, that's the big difference between college and nfl. college only gets a player for 4 years (also, the players aren't as good and you're picking from a much larger pool of potential candidates). a pro coach can build the team over time to fill their framework, whereas the college coach is often going to be unsuccessful if they try that. so they have to look at who they have, and build a framework that not only fits their talents, but also their ability to work with each other and trust each other.
and that's why college football is better than pro.
I absolutely agree but not sure that argument will convince my wife. She hates it because its always on. Although there is one argument for a college coach building a program around a specific framework - recruiting. Take Wisconsin where I think Bileman who is now at Arkansas could build a good strong running game by recruiting the big boys in state and getting the runners from the south. At my undergrad kansas most the rb's and qb's were from Texas. Problem is you need results fast so the athletic directors and boards often panic too early these days. Then you have one argument that is different for the pros - Peyton Manning. Build a team around one players talent. But all in all yes the narrative of college football is always more exciting, lots of framework breakers inventing new ways to play or frameworks constantly shifting.
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