Some of this may be generational -- the reaction of those of us who grew up and established our patterns and habits before the arrival of digital (I'm 69). I remember how astonishing my first iPod was and how each new iteration seemed a leap-frogging advance. We were dazzled by these new interfaces because they gave us ways to play that were unlike any we'd had before. But eventually we settled into new ways of behaving and now complain every time the latest update gives us more features and options that we don't need. I've been fortunate to spend a great deal of time with my 19 year old granddaughter who is certainly attached to her phone, but seems to be untainted by all of the ills that phone use has supposedly visited upon her generation. She's not mesmerized by the interfaces because they're not new and strange to her -- they're the way the world has always been, and she's learned how to incorporate them into her life in ways that seem quite healthy. I've written about this in a couple of essays, but you might enjoy this one: https://heyscott.substack.com/p/n-of-1
This article caught my attention because of the title, which reminded me not of the bible proverb, but a brilliant track and lyrical twist from Dead Can Dance. "In The Kingdom Of The Blind The One-Eyed Are Kings" on the Serpent's Egg album in 1988. Back when most of my peers still collected music on vinyls, which then might become treasured parts of our collections. And it was also the time of making mix tapes, where we would share the discoveries you wanted your friends to absolutely know about ! ( And/or to try and show off that you knew where the really good stuff was and/or to make an assemblage of some of your current favorites ). The Data Worlds and Music Industries have made innumerable shitty maneuvers to exploit our desires and profit from them. And impotant to see how they continue to disrupt (artist) livelihoods. Won't have time to go into any elaborate analysis of that here, thought it's a worthy subject to illuminate, so we can better grasp our adversaries and systems that have invaded and plundered cultural production like strip mines. I would contest that Kenneth Goldsmith isn't really a very good reference point, if we want to get sharper perspectives on how the IT world has fucked up so much. Nor how we might NOW go about reclaiming the commons from scoop-it-all platform profiteers like Spotify, Apple, Amazon, etc. KG is the idiot who once made a senseless trendy ( attempted ) art piece out of reading Michael Brown's autopsy among other flagrant acts of acting out his poetic deficits. KG is an interesting specimen to analyze, similar perhaps to Yuval Harari, who became a "neoliberal pet" because he tries to tell us that there are no alternatives ( TINA ) to being ravaged by Big Tech corporate takeovers. ... https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/2018-11-20/ty-article-magazine/how-yuval-noah-harari-became-the-pet-ideologist-of-the-liberal-elites/0000017f-dc13-d856-a37f-fdd3511f0000
“In the digital ecosystem, the apparatuses surrounding the artifact are more engaging than the artifact itself.” It was once assumed that digitization would liberate cultural artifacts from their physical containers. We’d be able to enjoy the wine without the bottles. What’s actually happened is different. We’ve come, as Goldsmith says, “to prefer the bottles to the wine.”
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But the opposite is also true: back when music was bought on vinyl and CDs, the artwork on the sleeve / jacket / jewel case and in the accompanying liner notes / booklet / insert contributed to the overall experience of enjoyment.
It's not that we preferred "the bottles to the wine", it's that the artwork was part of a work's collective experience: the physical and the aural were one.
On streaming sites, what we've been left with is just one small image that represents the album (if the concept of 'album' even makes sense anymore). Is this 'artwork' even memorable? Not really. There is no bottle, only wine.
I agree in general, but take issue with your conflation of the record jacket and the CD jewel case. The record jacket was a most congenial container for recorded music, but the jewel case was the work of a sadist. I've always suspected that one reason MP3s and then streaming took off so quickly is that they offered an escape not from the physical album but from the horror of the jewel case.
Some of this may be generational -- the reaction of those of us who grew up and established our patterns and habits before the arrival of digital (I'm 69). I remember how astonishing my first iPod was and how each new iteration seemed a leap-frogging advance. We were dazzled by these new interfaces because they gave us ways to play that were unlike any we'd had before. But eventually we settled into new ways of behaving and now complain every time the latest update gives us more features and options that we don't need. I've been fortunate to spend a great deal of time with my 19 year old granddaughter who is certainly attached to her phone, but seems to be untainted by all of the ills that phone use has supposedly visited upon her generation. She's not mesmerized by the interfaces because they're not new and strange to her -- they're the way the world has always been, and she's learned how to incorporate them into her life in ways that seem quite healthy. I've written about this in a couple of essays, but you might enjoy this one: https://heyscott.substack.com/p/n-of-1
This article caught my attention because of the title, which reminded me not of the bible proverb, but a brilliant track and lyrical twist from Dead Can Dance. "In The Kingdom Of The Blind The One-Eyed Are Kings" on the Serpent's Egg album in 1988. Back when most of my peers still collected music on vinyls, which then might become treasured parts of our collections. And it was also the time of making mix tapes, where we would share the discoveries you wanted your friends to absolutely know about ! ( And/or to try and show off that you knew where the really good stuff was and/or to make an assemblage of some of your current favorites ). The Data Worlds and Music Industries have made innumerable shitty maneuvers to exploit our desires and profit from them. And impotant to see how they continue to disrupt (artist) livelihoods. Won't have time to go into any elaborate analysis of that here, thought it's a worthy subject to illuminate, so we can better grasp our adversaries and systems that have invaded and plundered cultural production like strip mines. I would contest that Kenneth Goldsmith isn't really a very good reference point, if we want to get sharper perspectives on how the IT world has fucked up so much. Nor how we might NOW go about reclaiming the commons from scoop-it-all platform profiteers like Spotify, Apple, Amazon, etc. KG is the idiot who once made a senseless trendy ( attempted ) art piece out of reading Michael Brown's autopsy among other flagrant acts of acting out his poetic deficits. KG is an interesting specimen to analyze, similar perhaps to Yuval Harari, who became a "neoliberal pet" because he tries to tell us that there are no alternatives ( TINA ) to being ravaged by Big Tech corporate takeovers. ... https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/2018-11-20/ty-article-magazine/how-yuval-noah-harari-became-the-pet-ideologist-of-the-liberal-elites/0000017f-dc13-d856-a37f-fdd3511f0000
KG's book celebrating the net, "Wasting Time on the Internet," is somewhat enjoyable when read as self-parody.
“In the digital ecosystem, the apparatuses surrounding the artifact are more engaging than the artifact itself.” It was once assumed that digitization would liberate cultural artifacts from their physical containers. We’d be able to enjoy the wine without the bottles. What’s actually happened is different. We’ve come, as Goldsmith says, “to prefer the bottles to the wine.”
---------
But the opposite is also true: back when music was bought on vinyl and CDs, the artwork on the sleeve / jacket / jewel case and in the accompanying liner notes / booklet / insert contributed to the overall experience of enjoyment.
It's not that we preferred "the bottles to the wine", it's that the artwork was part of a work's collective experience: the physical and the aural were one.
On streaming sites, what we've been left with is just one small image that represents the album (if the concept of 'album' even makes sense anymore). Is this 'artwork' even memorable? Not really. There is no bottle, only wine.
I agree in general, but take issue with your conflation of the record jacket and the CD jewel case. The record jacket was a most congenial container for recorded music, but the jewel case was the work of a sadist. I've always suspected that one reason MP3s and then streaming took off so quickly is that they offered an escape not from the physical album but from the horror of the jewel case.