rose marshack : whyamistillawake.com

A New Beginning

I saw what will become my office today for the first time! It is nice; empty and with a navy blue wall, but still very nice. The best part was that my office is in the area with all the other professors! After so many years of … well, it’s all past now.

It’s hard to believe where I have found myself, where I have landed. I’m still kind of in a state of shock and I’m looking around to find out where the camera is, half the time. I’m in a job where pretty much everything I do and think about and care about pertains to my job! I get to teach things I know and love, and when I research, I can teach that stuff too! And best of all, when I perform, which is pretty much the thing I love to do best, that will help me in my career! It is the best thing in the world!!

Still working on syllabi. The Music Business syllabus is proving to be tons of fun to work on; I so obviously do know that material, and it is so easy to find people from my past to help guide these future students! Everyone I have asked so far has said agreed to be interviewed, either live or virtually, on iChat or phone; Bob Weston from Chicago Mastering Service/Shellac, Matt Talbott from Hum/Centaur/Great Western Record Recorders, a former President of Reprise Records, a former Warner Bros. attorney, our drummer who has a degree in Music Business and interned at RCA and BMG, etc…. the list goes on! Next I’ll probably call Mr. Steve Albini and see if we can do a tour of Electrical Audio up in Chicago. Then I’ll have to worry about getting 21 kids up to Chicago and back again….
My only other worry is most of these people are from the Rock and Roll school, not too many are jazz or classical, but I think it’s all applicable, no matter what. Many of the ‘former’ music industry people now have such a great perspective on the industry too, having been through it all. Hopefully The Kidz will appreciate this type of thing.
The other syllabus is for my “Architecture of Participation” class, which is going to be about Web 2.0, but I’m having a hard time narrowing myself down to it because I have so many favorite assignments I’ve given in the past and want to continue giving them. I need to just let go of that. I know that as a new professor I’ll try to fit way too much stuff in my syllabus. I do hope I don’t go wrong in the other direction though, and not teach enough…. nah.. I just have a feeling that it’s going to work out fine! It’s CRAZY!!! I keep having to stop myself from jumping up and down! I’m so excited!!

The Archetypes of Not Understanding Art and Technology

I’m working on a possible theory / writing now, but I’m missing the vocabulary for it. The problem is that there are people who understand technology and code, and there are people who understand art. And there are so few people who understand both. The only people I personally know (so far) are me, Rick Valentin, Richard Powers, and maybe Karrie Karahalios who comprehend all this stuff. There has to be more people though.

Let me enumerate the artist/technologist archetypes.

Type A: This person makes a printout of a mathematical equation, assigns some colors, placements, sounds to its range, (or, maybe they even make it a hologram) and then gets all excited about the pretty picture it makes - or the picture that it makes that looks like a body part - and then decides that this is art. It’s Pretty! Of Course it’s Art! (Yes, I know that there are some math equations that are just so squishy and nice and maybe even jump-of-faithy that they should be considered art, but it’s very hard to explain those ones to an artist, and there’s really no reason to print them out, either. They would work better as conceptual art.

Type O: This person has a rudimentary understanding of the term database, or code, and uses it in very bad metaphors, thinking that they can explain the connection between technology (or at least computer code) and art. The only person I know who did this well was Richard Powers but it took him 696 pages (although he threw in music as well.) and he transcended the little bridge you draw between code and art by creating a whole narrative around it.

Those are complete opposite sides of the spectrum.

Type F: This person understands art very well, and wants to make art that uses technology but doesn’t understand the technology, so they employ others to create it. There are variations on the scale of Fμ as to how they credit (and whether they listen to) their collaborators. Some of these people are terribly mean to technologists, or anyone they think knows more about computer programming than them.

Type H: This person understands technology very well and thinks that since they go to museums and really like the art there, that they should direct art projects.

I’m going to bed. And yes, I do have PMS.