{"id":7303,"date":"2020-02-16T11:44:15","date_gmt":"2020-02-16T11:44:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/?p=7303"},"modified":"2020-02-16T11:44:15","modified_gmt":"2020-02-16T11:44:15","slug":"gimme-some-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/2020\/02\/16\/gimme-some-now\/","title":{"rendered":"Gimme Some Now"},"content":{"rendered":"

In an attention economy devised to distract and occupy consciousness, the exponential flow of information generates continual flux in its wake. The novelist William Gibson recently observed that this leaves us with \u2018insufficient now to stand on.\u2019<\/a><\/span>[i]<\/a> How can art and music respond in this context?<\/p>\n

Gibson\u2019s Neuromancer<\/em> (1984) foresaw and forewarned about the development of emerging digital technologies, virtual realities, and massively powerful corporate entities that control data.[ii]<\/a> As a result of information overload and digital distraction, a deficit of attention and meaning has become more pronounced. Our present digitally-accelerated culture is akin to that which Jean Baudrillard outlined, where \u2018there is more and more information and less and less meaning.\u2019[iii]<\/a><\/p>\n

This creates a challenge to remain present \u2013 as a seemingly-infinite cascade of data continually threatens to undermine the stability of the present. A culture of information saturation mediates social relations in digital space and the \u2018meatspace\u2019 of the physical world \u2013 a relentless barrage frequently driven by the force and logic of late-capitalism and the free market \u2013 where profit is the highest good.<\/p>\n

These mediated dimensions of reality relentlessly seek to commandeer our attention and shape our perceptions (Cambridge Analytica, etc.). Is it possible to be free in this context? How to live with our extended technological prosthetic nervous system without it dictating the focus of our lives? How to resist corporate conglomerates that monitor and accumulate data to convert this into capital and power?<\/p>\n

In order to resist the extractive and manipulative aspects of these hyperrealities, space is needed to comprehend experientially where we are at \u2013 so that we can remain autonomous. If we can recalibrate our connection to the digital spectacle, we may disentangle ourselves from it and gain the freedom to address some of the global issues we face: climate change, ethnonationalism, inequality, neo-imperialism, and so on.<\/p>\n

\u2018The purpose of all art is magical and evocative\u2019, said William Burroughs, a means to evoke \u2018the real magical forces that sweep away the spurious\u2019, and where a concert can be \u2018a rite involving the evocation and transmutation of energy\u2019 connected with the engagement between audience and performers as well as the use of repetition and volume.[iv] <\/a>\u00a0The role of sound in altering consciousness subtly and profoundly fascinates me, especially in electronic music, minimalism, and underground rock.<\/p>\n