Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id MAA07719 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Mon, 5 Feb 2001 12:57:44 GMT Message-ID: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D3101745C33@inchna.stir.ac.uk> From: Vincent Campbell <v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk> To: "'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Subject: RE: Labels for memes Date: Mon, 5 Feb 2001 12:56:47 -0000 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21) Content-Type: text/plain Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
<In whatever it is that I've been doing, I've been preferring to
grapple with
> "memetics" sort of issues at the surface. Recently, I watched an episode
> of
> a fan club show (IIRC it was on VH1) which looks at the ways various
> popular
> bands have impacted the lives of their fans. One episode was on the band
> "No
> Doubt". I happen to like their music and their lead vocalist with pink
> hair,
> but the hardcore "No Doubt" fans take it to the limit, some of them
> coloring
> their hair pink and doing other things that seem to stem from their
> affection for the band. If you were to look at how fans imitate bands or
> how
> other rival bands in the same musical niche emulate the more popular and
> successful bands, would trying to figure out how the underpinnings of
> these
> phenomena are encoded in the brain add anything to ones knowledge? That
> practice would seem a tad superfluous to me. How would knowing how a
> tendency to dye ones hair to match that of a rock music superstar or even
> put on face paint to imitate a member of KISS be possible or even add
> anything to knowledge of the phenomenon(a) if possible?
>
> I looks like music is a hotbed of trends and general influences which are
> culturally transmissible. Look how hiphop has influenced music over the
> past
> couple decades. Hiphop's originator had some influence from artists such
> as
> James Brown and Kraftwerk, which have been sampled in many tracks down
> through the years. Would how these influences are encoded in a DJ's brain
> or
> the brains of the people who enjoy and buy the music add anything to ones
> understanding of the phenomenon? From collaborations between hiphop and
> rock
> acts like the RunDMC/Aerosmith project and the Public Enemy/Chuck
> D/Anthrax
> project a couple years later, we now see a big influence of hiphop on
> rock.
> Bands like Korn, Limp Biskit, and Kid Rock come to mind. Does how this
> hiphop thang is encoded in the brains of the recipient artists and fans
> make
> any significant difference, or can this be treated at the surface merely
> as
> artefact, cultural unit or whatever? I'm not even sure if the hiphop
> phenomenon can be reduced to all that many cultural "units", but the
> reduction to brain states (mnemons or whatever) may be going way too far.
> I
> guess I'm talking from armchair (literally and figuratively) ignorance
> though.>
>
These kinds of concerns appear to be central to much of the
Darwinizing Culture book- things like do we need a definitive notion of the
meme to start doing empirical research or no? do we need to worry about
what's going on in peoples' brains or not to study memes? There are clear
differences of opinion on such matters still, so I don't really have any
answers, but I sympathise with the sentiment here.
Vincent
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