From: Wade T. Smith (wade.t.smith@verizon.net)
Date: Sat 26 Apr 2003 - 16:20:42 GMT
On Saturday, April 26, 2003, at 01:18 AM, memetics-digest wrote:
> IMO
> the fact of individuality plays a far more greater role than you 're
> assuming.
Well, I didn't mean, in any way, to decrease an individual's role in
culture, far from it- the individual is one of the prime mutational
agents, but, really, I do mean to give the cultural time-space (the
venue, if you will), equal importance.
One individual's performance does not happen in a vacuum. (I might as
well mention that the individual himself doesn't happen in a
vacuum....) The performance is not possible without the venue,
regardless of the individuality of the individual or the degree of
mutation (of the intention and/or the action) of the performance.
The performance must also be perceived, and the venue (and its
determining factors of the quality of performance and receptivity of
the audience) is perhaps more important than the performer in this
phase of cultural transmission.
At any rate, the lesson from performance theory is that the performance
and the performer, as in McLuhan's theory that the medium is
indivisible from the message, are equal partners in culture and
cultural evolution.
There is no play without the theatre.
- Wade
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