Q-Tip, Comments, and the Inactive Imagination

A few months back (and I can't recall where), Dan commented on a small portion of an interview he conducted with Laurie Anderson when she was performing in Charleston.  If I remember correctly, Dan was asked Anderson about the excitement of new media and how it opened up avenues of artistic expression to more people, providing greater tools for DIY art. 

Anderson's response, you could tell, was somewhat disappointing to XARK’s fearless leader.  She observed that while there were certainly positive aspects, most of the work seemed less interesting.  When we’re all pulling our crayons from the same box, she noted, the work is bound to become somewhat less interesting, somewhat more homogenous.

One of the reasons I found her claim so interesting is that, like Dan and a lot of other folks, my tendency has been to celebrate the increasing access people have to a variety of tools as well as to a wider range of information.  Here was an interesting oppositional angle, coming from an “artist,” no less:  if we give the same tools to everyone, what makes any particular “artwork” or any particular statement, interesting?

While there are a number of satisfactory—or at least interesting—ways to answer that question, I want to tilt the conversation in a slightly different direction, a direction that I hope to explore with Dan in a fuller fashion later.  Here, I want to ask, because new media not only provide us with new tools for artistic expression but also with new ways to express our assessment of art (or any ‘product’), how do we value the judgments themselves?

There’s an interview with Q-Tip in the August 2008 issue of Spin (p.90) this month that might help highlight this question.  Q-Tip expresses concern that, because technology allows everyone increasing access to both music and to the artist, neither seems quite as “special” as it might have in the past. Harkening back to Walter Benjamin’s overquoted observation that art loses its “aura” (uniqueness in space and time) in an age of mechanical reproduction, Q-Tip is claiming that both art and the artist lose something when they are as accessible as the web enables them to be. 

The interviewer, sensing something interesting, then pushes the following exchange: 

Q. As an artist, how do you feel about that [technology making things accessible]?

A.  I think it's a shame, because everyone becomes a critic.  You see something at the bottom of everything that says, 'What's your comment?'  And everyone has to offer their opinion and comment. Then there is internal warfare between the commentators with their comments.  Rollins69 said something about the new Lil Wayne song and who did the beat.  Then SarahWoo58 will be like, 'No, he didn't do the beat, this guy did the beat.' To me, that drains the art.  All of a sudden, the imagination just passes.  Whereas predating the Internet and predating videos, you had an active imagination.  You would hear sounds and then get mental pictures of what these sounds felt like to you.  It engaged you and made you more invested in it.  It made you want to get tickets to the show, buy the album, put the poster on the wall.  Now, it's sensory overload."

I find myself fascinated by this comment for a number of reasons.  First, just when I expect Q-Tip to complain that the “Leave a comment” sections are problematic because they turn everyone into a critic (and I do think this is where he’s going), his examples are technical (“Who made the beat?”) rather than aesthetic (i.e., “This is the strongest recording in 10 years”).  While there’s certainly an interesting conversation to be had about aesthetic criticism, I’m confused about what could be the damages caused by arguing over factual questions.

Secondly, Q-Tip moves from examples about fans arguing over technical issues to an observation that such a discussion “destroys an active imagination.”  Does access destroy active imagination, or does it encourage a more active set of questions as one realizes that one has an outlet for these thoughts.  I think the latter.

Third, and finally, his final move is the one I find the most confusing:  here, we see a transition from a concern with the “destruction of active imagination” to the fact that fans are no longer as invested in an artist and therefore no longer purchase material goods, no longer want to see them live.  While I understand that access changes our relationship to goods and people—and a long line of cultural and media critics have made this claim and explored multiple threads of it—I’m not quite sure it changes our desires to see live shows.  “Free” access to music might alter our desire to pay for it, but I doubt it alters our desire to watch a live performance.

Ultimately, I suppose, my interest here is less in the answers to all of the questions and contradictions I pose above (although I am interested in those) and more with the fact that we witness—in Laurie Anderson’s comments and in those of Q-Tip--a somewhat surprising animosity toward digital access, and critical commentary.  I wonder:  what motivates it?  A desire for artistic uniqueness?  A longing for a stable set of critical rules?  Sadness at the demise of active imagination?  Or, more crassly, a concern with the loss of material wealth?

Or perhaps we skip right over thinkg about what motivates the artist and ask the more important questions:  what changes do we ourselves witness?  and how do we value those changes?

Comments

[John B.]

First-time commenter here; be kind . . .

Benjamin was concerned with the issue of Mechanical Reproduction as devaluing Art's 'aura," as you mention; Q-Tip (and Anderson), though, both seem to be talking about--and expressing ambivalence toward--Mechanical Production. The computer, the digitalizing of sound, makes it possible for anyone to make music--this is especially true of the sort of music that Anderson and Q-Tip make--that is, the means they employ in making it.

Put another way: before The Computer Age, artists always held a sort of high ground relative to critics: The unspoken portion of the dismissive statement "Everyone's a critic" is that not everyone is an Artist. Now, computers begin levelling the ground between between artists and critics (intriguing that Q-Tip sees musical competitors as "critics"--as though they offer through their own music an implicit judgment on his music: If they liked his, they wouldn't be making their own).

As for the questions you raise toward the end, I think the artists' concerns about all this are more existential than material in nature--judging by their words, that is.

As I've thought about this, it seems that writing, more than the other arts, seems largely immune to technology's democratizing of the art-making process. The imaginative manipulation of language can't be digitalized. Yet.

[jmsloop]

John B, Interesting comment. I'm glad you did so, not only because you're saying something smart, but also because it led me to your blog. Fascinating entries.

You're absolutely right about my "mis-use" of Benjamin here, but it's almost a fitting misuse if only because there's something in Q-Tip's comments that point toward a distrust of any technology which democratizes input, be it the creation of "art" or the creation of "criticism" (itself an art). I find it fascinating the way this same apprehension is always raised with any new medium, but especially with those that level the tools being used, in a relative sense.

And while I think you're write that it's difficult to "digitalize" writing itself, providing the tools through which everyone can voice their opinion in a form that stylistically looks legitimate and "professional" does have its affects. Indeed, I thought this was the direction that Q-Tip was taking us: when everyone can write criticism and publish it on the same spaces, everyone takes their voice to have equal weight. And while that statement does have its appeal, I do wonder if there isn't something to be said about maintaining ways to value some forms of criticism over others.

[John B.]

jmsloop,
Thanks for the kind words.

You said:

"Indeed, I thought this was the direction that Q-Tip was taking us: when everyone can write criticism and publish it on the same spaces, everyone takes their voice to have equal weight. And while that statement does have its appeal, I do wonder if there isn't something to be said about maintaining ways to value some forms of criticism over others."

I see what you mean here. I'd just say by way of response that in the end (thankfully) a critic's ego does not in and of itself determine the value of his/her work. Whatever it is that leads an audience to decide whether something is "good" or "bad" still exists beyond the control of that ego. So, the technologies may be democratizing, but there still remains intact the machinery (itself democratized by the 'Nets) that collectively determines membership in the aesthetic aristocracy. But as for my own place as a critic, I'm under no illusions: I concluded independently of Harold Bloom that Blood Meridian is on a very short list of Great American Novels, but I know whose having said that carries more weight.

[Daniel]

Several things occur to me as I read this:

*One of my favorite insights of the past year came from your Vanderbilt colleague Bill Ivey, whose Arts, Inc. made the excellent point that mass media changed how humans related to the arts and ended the era of the "citizen artist."

So all of us grew up with a cultural concept of art and artists that is based on the idea of a star heirarchy (and, imho, on a great deal of marketing). And my favorite explanation of THAT comes from William Gibson (Spookworld):

In the early 1920s," Bigend said, "there were still some people in this country who hadn't yet heard recorded music. Not many, but a few. That's less than a hundred years ago. Your career as a 'recording artist'" -- making the quotes with his hands -- "took place toward the end of a technological window that lasted less than a hundred years, a window during which consumers of recorded music lacked the means of producing that which they consumed. They could buy recordings, but they couldn't reproduce them. The Curfew came in as that monopoly on the means of production was starting to erode. Prior to that monopoly, musicians were paid for performing, published and sold sheet music, or had patrons. The pop star, as we knew her" -- and here he bowed slightly, in her direction -- "was actually an artifact of preubiquitous media."

"Of--?"

"Of a state in which 'mass' media existed, if you will, within the world."

"As opposed to?"

"Comprising it."

And THAT is a very interesting intersection indeed: It's a world in which MASS media COMPRISES the culture while NETWORKED media exists outside of it, yet not outside of it, commenting on it.

And yet this networked media commentariat isn't necessarily so much a meta-conversation as it is a randomized cloud of nano-conversations.

Do those nano-conversations take the magic out of the art? One might better ask, where did this sense of "art" come from? What are its goals? What's the relationship between artist and "audience?" Is an audience just an audience when its members can take your work and remix it into a new creation? And then what's your relationship to the mashup offspring of your original?

*I've warmed to Laurie Anderson's comment about drawing out of the same box of crayons, which is not to say that I've come to see it as "right." It IS to say that Anderson's observation synchs very nicely with Seth Godin's core idea: What counts is what's remarkable, and nothing shifts faster than the line dividing original and remarkable from derivative and lame.

I like Anderson and her "Personal Service Announcements" and her "Only an Expert" song, her innovative attitude and her sharp persona. But to be remarkable is to stand out from the crowd, and what the networked media revolution has revealed is that there are hundreds, thousands of people who embody much of what Anderson represents. That's not a big deal if you're writing for Xark, but if YOUR ENTIRE CAREER IS BASED ON BEING REMARKABLE, then that's an issue.

In other words, if you buy the Bill Ivey idea that people can get as much out of CREATING art as they get out of CONSUMING art, even if that packaged "professional" art is of a higher quality, then sharing the crayons is an unmitigatedly good thing for "the people formerly known as the audience."

Is it as good a thing if you're Q-Tip or Anderson? Which is not to say they're elitist or reactionary, but is to say that they come from a naturally different perspective.

The implied question here is this: If we lack a system that rewards our best artists, won't our culture suffer a great leveling?

I think that's the wrong question, as it assumes networked media is what's undermining the connection between rewards and quality. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I present you the RIAA, Clear Channel Communications, Hollywood and the "books" section at Wal-Mart. Nothing could be more "mass" than these mass media conduits, and yet nothing could be more broken in terms of delivering quality and substance.

[Peg]

Right, Dan, and I think this goes back to an earlier conversation here about Joni Mitchell's "Do you want to be an artist or a star?" Someone (mistakenly) commenting that one can be both.