Friday, March 30, 2007

Recommended

I'll be on the road and away from blogging for the next few days, so to fill in that absence, here's a fine talk by Robert Ashley on The Future of Music. I profoundly disagree with him on one important point (I think that music -- unlike hamburgers, automobiles, oil, grain, currency and under-paid labor -- has the possibility of opting out of commodification) but Ashley manages to shoot down all the cardboard ducks in the Geater Musicland Arcade and does so with even more than his usual brio. (Here's one of Ashley's money quotes: "The string quartet was the sampler that ate hamburgers.")

And if that's not enough, here's an online video of a lecture by Robert Irwin, an artist who left his studio behind and has never turned back.

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