els.where.ii

Hello again *. Glad the response helped; though it's a complex debate, as I previously said, and there are many issues within it, therefore. One has to start somewhere, though - so I think, and I originally hoped, that my analogy of figuration / narrative might function as one method of opening up a central structure of one possible debate on this subject, as I see it. I'm no real close-reader of the noise-artists you cite, sorry; so any comment I might offer would be general. There is, though, a certain 'listener transcendence' possible I think with exposure to pure noise - as opposed to, say, limited passages of same within, say, a rock structure: ie. King Crimson, The Fall. The danger here, in my view, is that that can tend toward escapism, zoning out; when, to my mind, the object is to zone in. There are different kinds of noise, of course - all giving off differing conceptual attitudes, allusions etc. Harmonic distortion, for example, can offer alternative forms of supposed beauty - insofar as one can eventually hear pleasing tonal qualities, melody and so forth; as one can see faces etc. in an abstract painting. This is an effect of the logicality of the brain, of course; as it makes sense of what might be intended non-sensically. Thus, that initial avant-gardist intention is rationalised, ratified, nullified, rendered aesthetic only. I called this decoration in my previous response; and, for me, that has a negative connotation. That is why, for me personally, there has to be some kind of connection to - in effect - language, the so-called 'real world'; this to say, there must be some kind of meaningful attempt to offer elements of understandable communication. In that way, one can offer a message which might convey useful ideas about the world, rather than offering an escape from same. An artistic commitment to the latter seems to be overtly recreational, to my mind; and that is the last thing I see art as. Best wishes, *