From: Reed Konsler (konslerr@mail.weston.org)
Date: Fri 16 May 2003 - 15:27:42 GMT
Wade:
> 1- An artifact is a special case of performance, wherein the
> performance is the act of creating the artifact. A book about baseball
> is an artifact of the performance of explaining baseball. The
> performances in the example that led baseball to being played was the
> performance of the making the artifact, the performance of reading the
> artifact and explaining it to an audience, and the subsequent
> performances of the teacher and her students.
Makes sense.
If you write a joke down on a piece of paper that is a performance creating
an artifact.
If I read the joke and tell it to someone else, that is a second
performance.
What if I read the joke and don't tell anyone? I'm guessing that is just
one performance: author to me. Can I tell myself a joke? Can I play a
piece on the piano to myself? Does that count as a performance?
Is there a difference between telling a joke to yourself out loud and
thinking it to yourself; Imagining playing a piece on the piano and actually
playing it to yourself?
Let's say I developed an MRI that allowed me to read the musical part of
your brain so that I could make audible the notes you were imagining in your
head. Does it make a difference if I turn it off...is that no longer a
performance?
Let's say that you are playing a piece of music on the piano and I'm
watching it on a TV. If someone pulls the plug on my TV, have you stopped
performing? What if no one else can watch or hear you but me, and now I
can't?
If one neuron propogates an electrochemcial signal to another, is the
precise release of a delicate melange of neurotransmitters a performance?
If an enzyme chemically modifies it's substrate with deft precision,
elegance, and insghtful economy of energy and motion, is that a performance?
If one billard ball definetively strikes another is that a performance?
If a photon of light interferes with another in passing?
If 100,000 people in a stadium do "the wave", and nobody else sees them, was
that a performance? Is there any difference between 100,000 people doing
"the wave" and 100,000 neurons firing in symphony; 100,000 photons of light
interfering with each other?
> 2- There is no 'baseball meme'. At best, in the performance model,
> baseball would be a cultural venue. (Call it a memeplex, if you like,
> but to the performance model, a venue is a place controlled for the
> expectation of certain performances. A stadium is a venue controlled to
> expect organized sports.)
Controlled by whom or what? Whom or what [the venue?] is doing the
expecting? What confidence can they have in this expectation, and why?
> Where was it? It was held within the culture, and the memory of that
> culture.
No, I mean, like *where* physically. Does it just, as Scott asked earlier,
float around like a Platonic ideal? I presume not, but I still don't
understand how the culture relates to the physical. Where are the memes
between performances? How is the information in a piano recital recorded or
perpetuated when no one is *playing* the piano?
Best,
Reed
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