The reproduction of music and the ritual of listening
I carefully placed the disc in its tray. Spinning the volume knob to the preferred setting of 24, I pressed play. Slipping out the album sleeve from behind the plastic clips, I flicked through the square pages. I looked at the artwork. I read the lyrics. I marked the satin gloss paper with my oily fingerprints. I lay down on my bedroom floor. I looked at the ceiling. I listened.
Andrew Frost, from the Art Life on the ABC, writes that music is ‘software for the latest playback devices’ and that it has ‘become an almost worthless commodity’. He has a point. The thrill has gone. The hunting and gathering in record store shelves has succumbed to the ease of the search box and the one-click shop. I hear a song on the radio. I pick up my phone. I type the artist’s name. I click ‘buy album’. I listen to it for half an hour. I forget I own it.
Frost proposes that it is the proliferation of music that has thinned its inherent value. Music is no longer rare, nor difficult to obtain. He writes that ‘the purchase of music has become a sordid and shameful gluttony’. We have become pigs with our snouts stuck in the troughs. The question is, do we need to starve ourselves of something in order to value it?
Frost writes that art with its emphasis on the original object is able to resist the wholesale commodification experienced by music and that its cultural value is measured by more than its materials. He states that rarity is everything. He proposes that the proliferation of video art online and on the shelves of retail stores is hampered by the artist’s desire to maintain the artwork’s ‘aura of specialness’ by keeping the work as a limited edition, available to only a few discerning collectors.
I as a video artist have chosen not to show my video works online, on youtube or on my own website. It isn’t because I feel that it will cheapen the works value through mass proliferation. It is because I want to control the experience of my work. I want the pilgrimage to the white walled temple of the gallery or museum. I want the quiet space. I want the artwork to belong to a cultural ritual that extracts the viewer from the ‘real world’ and places them in that other empty space. It is like listening to an album for the first time. The bedroom floor. The ceiling. There needs to be a ritual of escape.
Listening to a new album while reading the paper or peeking at video art on youtube in between phone calls at the office does not belong to that ritual.
We do not need to starve ourselves of something in order to value it. Rarity isn’t everything. Ritual is everything.
The bread that is the body of Christ doesn’t lose its value to Catholics because it is eaten every other day of the week outside of Mass. It is is the performance, the ritual, the way the bread is eaten that gives the bread value.
Installation art and the temple of the white-cube thrived after the age of mechanical reproduction because artist’s became conscious of the need to control the experience of an artwork, to embed a ritual in the work, in order to maintian the work’s aura. As Walter Benjamin wrote in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction:
The earliest art works originated in the service of a ritual – first the magical, then the religious kind. It is significant that the existence of the work of art with reference to its aura is never entirely separated from its ritual function. In other words, the unique value of the “authentic” work of art has its basis in ritual…
You can watch extracts of Andy Warhol’s Empire on youtube. The value of the work existed in the experience of sitting in a darkened theatre staring at a single image for 485 minutes. Warhol understood the value of this ritual of experience and barred any abridged screenings of the film such as this youtube video. The youtube video does not devalue the work just as a postcard of the Mona Lisa does not devalue the work.
Jarvis Cocker also understands the value in the ritual of the experience of art. Cocker wrote instructions on how to listen to his 2007 album Jarvis
Warning!
JARVIS should not be used as a sedative or an accompaniment to exercise.
You may sit if you wish – kneeling is really not necessary.
JARVIS can be broken into convenient bite-size pieces but probably works best when swallowed whole.
Do not adjust your tone control, it’s meant to sound like that. It’s not LoFi or HiFi – it’s MyFi and hopefully YourFi, too.
A song isn’t really a song until somebody hears it – so thanks for listening
Remember! As always, please do not read the words whilst listening to the recordings
The only problem was that these instructions were printed on the disc. If you purchased the digital version you wouldn’t have had any idea on how you were suppose to listen to the music.