From: eliot@phoenix.princeton.edu (Eliot Handelman)
Subject: Sex 'n' Drugs 'n' Rock 'n' Roll (was: Re: Imagination vs. VR (was 
Date: 25 Aug 91 20:28:06 GMT
Organization: Cognitive Science Lab, Princeton U.



In article <1991Aug21.154830.19935@watcgl.waterloo.edu> jwtlai@watcgl.
waterloo.edu (Jim W Lai) writes:

;In article <1991Aug21.011630.292@milton.u.washington.edu> eliot@phoenix.
;princeton.edu (Eliot Handelman) writes:
;
;>In any case the question is not how VR will absorb
;>verbal consciousness so much as the kind of alterations it will bring about,
;>what new balance of the senses it will promote, the ways in
;>which intelligence will grapple with this new balance, and the sorts
;>of knowledge and experience that it will enable.
;
;One (mis?)application I can see is providing drug-experiences sans drugs.
;Virtual nirvana, chemical free. 

What's out of place here is the word "application," with or without
"misses." Once again, McLuhan (I don't have any sources with me, but 
McLuhan is so inexact anyhow): a new technology doesn't apply to the
conditions of or enabled by a previous technology because it alters those
conditions. Sarnoff, for instance (this is a McLuhan example), thought that
TV could be used in a strictly educational capacity: except that TV land
(a wonderful place to be, as Nick at Nite says) brings about certain changes
in the perceptual balance that virtually rule out any possibility of
disinterested learning. 

The more something operates directly on all of your perceptual subsystems,
the less room there is for "disinterest," for creating a private reflective 
space coextensive with and untouched by that occupied by perception. 
TV makes far greater perceptual demands than does reading (of course by 
constantly varying fonts and layout, in a newspaper for instance, you ensure 
a higher degree of perceptual engagement), so that part of you not sensorily 
involved is available for consultation, so to speak. If you're standing in
a subway station and the A train rattles in it's "so loud that you can't 
think" -- a certain space of selfhood has been appropriated by your 
perceptual involvement with the racket. That's the nature of high definition 
media. 

VR is promising total sensory involvement by offering high-definition
input to all the senses, so it stands to reason that reflective selfhood,
when the definition becomes high enough, will all but disappear. 

You can think about this by reflecting on the different sorts of criticisms
that are practiced for different sorts of musics. Definition is lowest
in classical music, which therefore enjoys the "technically" most precise 
but "emotionally" most moderate criticisms. At random, Taruskin writes
in today's NYT: "at one point Bach marks 'un poco allegro,' denoting
a slight acceleration. It is a rare indication and a valuable one ..."
... the value of course has to do with fidelity to (even uncovering of)
interpretative intentions, of a pure abstract Bach situated back some
250 years and more. Definition is low because no sensory experience
of Bach is unique or "true," each is simply a truncated perspective on
an experientially unavailable moment. Jon Pareles, on the other hand, writes, 
also in today's paper, about the Lollapazoola Festival: "audiences gravitate to
rage, and most of them don't care who or what the rage is aimed at."
About subtle accelerations or the like in "Nine Inch Nails" I learned nothing: 
it seems meaningless and inappropriate to discuss this music in that way,
precisely because sensory and therefore emotional definition is very
hight -- you're THERE. You're not considering what might also equally
have served to accomodate the unpresent structure pointing back to
a universal unsensory music that's known uniquely by its notation, because
no part of you is available for that reflective flight to critical 
abstraction, or available only at the high price of ugly detachment.

Note, by the way, that throughout the entire article, in keeping with
his observation about the charge of this music, Pareles abstains from
addressing content. You could go further and say that total sensory
involvement -- this of course includes emotional involvement -- is
by nature "contentless." That is, VR cannot possibly be "about" anything
at all other than what it directly IS. That's why the "interface" notion
is simply wrong. 

I wanted to say a few things about hallucinogenics and VR at this point,
but I may as well bridge between this and your next suggestion:

;VR would certainly allow for a new "notation" for
;the representation of music.  

I'm glad you put the scare quotes around "notation." Maybe you forget that
music also changes in accordance with newer technologies, and that
notation has almost completely died, and there a much stronger argument
can be made than that for the "death" of print. Strangely, computer and
electronmic music sought notation during their first 30 years or so,
partly because in "serious music" circles -- in music academia, for 
instance -- non-notated music is still regarded as suspect, mainly for
the reasons delineated above. Doctoral theses in music at some universities
will not be approved if they discuss non-notated music, so
that eliminates virtually all pop/rock/other music from "serious"
discussion. Until very recently pop music required a notation to
be copyrighted -- something like a lead sheet. Why isn't a recording
a "notation"? 

Interesting discussion here, but maybe others want to pick it up as I've
prattled on long enough. I'll have to take up your other points some other
time.