From: Wade T. Smith (wade.t.smith@verizon.net)
Date: Mon 10 Mar 2003 - 17:15:57 GMT
On Monday, March 10, 2003, at 11:09 AM, memetics-digest wrote:
> So Wade, are you saying here that performances are caused by
> memories and by anticipations and that thus the actually perfor-
> mance ( the result of the above interaction) stands completely
> loose from its originals !?
Not quite completely loose, because it is also constrained by the
time/space of performance, which is, in most cases, culturally
continuous, but it is _not_ determined, _in toto_ from these previous
thoughts, versions, escapades, spaces, etc.
There is a fact of performance called indeterminacy, which _has_ to be
considered, not to mention the error drift of information distribution
itself, not to mention that humans are the performers. These are the
randomizing darwinian agents of performance and they are powerful in
the cultural landscape.
_All_ performances are _not_ ideal realisations of the mindful
rehearsal or replications.
> In that sense the performance would indeed count as it was
> a/ the meme....
I'm not sure I parse that 'a/' successfully, but, yes, the performance
not only has to count, it has to count as the _sole_ provider of
information, culturally, (as no information can be supplied to any
audience without a performance*), and _as_ this unit of information of
culture, then it _is_ the meme, by definition.
*(Any cultural artifact is a special case of performance with an
extension in the time/space of its culture.)
- Wade
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