Expelled
Monday, April 14, 2008
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Kant/Aesthetic judgements
(if you've somehow stumbled across this blog, ignore this post - I don't have Word and writing an essay is way easier here than in Notepad)
PHIL2500 WEEK 5 TUTORIAL QUESTIONS
(Reading: Extracts from Kant's Critique of Judgement)
JOEL COTTERELL
1. According to Kant, why must judgements of beauty and taste be disinterested?
Kant wastes no time in pointing out that a judgement of beauty is purely aesthetic. It is so because it is necessarily about the beautiful object's presentation to the subject, and the nature of the subject's reaction to this presentation. Presentations, Kant argues, are "aesthetic if...the
subject referred them...solely to himself". In support of the idea that a judgement of taste occurs in the subject's contemplation of an object, he later adds that "what matters is what I do with this presentation within myself".
When judgement of an object extends beyond this contemplative realm, the subject's perception of the object is clouded by interest in such a way that aesthetic judgement is no longer possible. Instead of being judged as an ends-in-itself, the object is judged as a means to an end. It is hard for a homeowner to appreciate a painting's beauty if they are more occupied with its usefulness in decorating a bare wall, for instance.
As highlighted in section eight, a judgement of taste/beauty is more than an expression of personal liking, though - it requires that the liking is shared by everyone. Since the subject's perception of an object is guided by their interest therein, and since interest implicitly varies in intensity and kind from subject to subject, an incompatibly arises here between interest and judgements of taste/beauty. Only when the subject is free from interest are they able to make a judgement of taste, looking at the object as an end-in-itself in a way that is universally valid.
PHIL2500 WEEK 5 TUTORIAL QUESTIONS
(Reading: Extracts from Kant's Critique of Judgement)
JOEL COTTERELL
1. According to Kant, why must judgements of beauty and taste be disinterested?
Kant wastes no time in pointing out that a judgement of beauty is purely aesthetic. It is so because it is necessarily about the beautiful object's presentation to the subject, and the nature of the subject's reaction to this presentation. Presentations, Kant argues, are "aesthetic if...the
subject referred them...solely to himself". In support of the idea that a judgement of taste occurs in the subject's contemplation of an object, he later adds that "what matters is what I do with this presentation within myself".
When judgement of an object extends beyond this contemplative realm, the subject's perception of the object is clouded by interest in such a way that aesthetic judgement is no longer possible. Instead of being judged as an ends-in-itself, the object is judged as a means to an end. It is hard for a homeowner to appreciate a painting's beauty if they are more occupied with its usefulness in decorating a bare wall, for instance.
As highlighted in section eight, a judgement of taste/beauty is more than an expression of personal liking, though - it requires that the liking is shared by everyone. Since the subject's perception of an object is guided by their interest therein, and since interest implicitly varies in intensity and kind from subject to subject, an incompatibly arises here between interest and judgements of taste/beauty. Only when the subject is free from interest are they able to make a judgement of taste, looking at the object as an end-in-itself in a way that is universally valid.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
SODOM
Seeing as this is kiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinda black metal I'll make a post. And seeing as assessment for ol' MSTU2000 is done, I'ma swear in this entry :) .
HOLY FUCKING HELL! Extremely ass-kicking concert. Here's a quick rundown.
Sodom
- legends of thrash, my favourite of the German thrash scene's "big three" of Destruction, Kreator and (duh) SODOM. They have this status for good reason - some SERIOUSLY intense music OVERFLOWING with attitude and power.
- from memory, they played a pretty nicely rounded setlist, including a couple of numbers I'd been dying to hear ('Napalm in the Morning', 'Ausgebombt'), as well as a badass cover of Motörhead's 'Ace of Spades' . Unfortunately, their version of the Udo Jürgens' hit "Aber Bitte Mit Sahne" didn't get a play :( .
- the crowd was fantastic - plenty of energy, but without the dickheads that seem present at every other gig that make you fight like a Spartan to keep your crappy fourth row position. Incidentally, my friends and I managed to stay in the second row. Giggidy. There were also some really cool denim/patched jackets to be seen.
- got to meet the band after the set. Pretty cool guys :) .
HOLY FUCKING HELL! Extremely ass-kicking concert. Here's a quick rundown.
Gospel of the Horns
- ripped my head off with their brand of black/thrash metal. Really heavy, evil stuff with a definite old-school feel about it all. Massively impressed.Sodom
- legends of thrash, my favourite of the German thrash scene's "big three" of Destruction, Kreator and (duh) SODOM. They have this status for good reason - some SERIOUSLY intense music OVERFLOWING with attitude and power.
- from memory, they played a pretty nicely rounded setlist, including a couple of numbers I'd been dying to hear ('Napalm in the Morning', 'Ausgebombt'), as well as a badass cover of Motörhead's 'Ace of Spades' . Unfortunately, their version of the Udo Jürgens' hit "Aber Bitte Mit Sahne" didn't get a play :( .
- the crowd was fantastic - plenty of energy, but without the dickheads that seem present at every other gig that make you fight like a Spartan to keep your crappy fourth row position. Incidentally, my friends and I managed to stay in the second row. Giggidy. There were also some really cool denim/patched jackets to be seen.
- got to meet the band after the set. Pretty cool guys :) .
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Sunday, June 3, 2007
Black Metal UK
So now that I've discussed the music and its makers, I think it's about time I had a look at the way BM's fans can interact. To do this, I'll focus on Black Metal UK, an online community with over 9,700 members.
The first thing that struck me about this site was how democratically it seems to be maintained. It is "run on a non-profit basis", and the submission of news articles, album and live reviews, interviews, etc. by its members is strongly welcomed (hell, the site RELIES on it). The site provides services and coverage related to practically every aspect of the black metal community - in addition to the archive of reviews, interviews and news articles, the site hosts an extensive image library, promotional tools and links to other websites of interest to the BM community (such as online stores, record labels, zines...).
Perhaps of greatest value, though, is the site's quite active forum. It provides a space for BM fans and artists to discuss recordings and live events, general issues, current events and, quite unusually, politics/religion/philosophy. There is also a dedicated "trading post" forum, in which members can organise the exchange of recordings, merchandise and musical equipment.
Though the "UK" in the site's name suggests that it might focus mostly on BM in the UK (hehe, abbreviation overload), this is not the case - tours of the US, Europe , even Australia are discussed on the forums, and reviews are by no means limited to UK bands. I suppose this is an indication of the increasingly global nature of BM, and of music fan cultures in general.
The existence of such open online communities as Black Metal UK clearly makes participation in fan cultures considerably easier than it was "back in the day". This can only be a good thing, as far as I'm concerned.
The first thing that struck me about this site was how democratically it seems to be maintained. It is "run on a non-profit basis", and the submission of news articles, album and live reviews, interviews, etc. by its members is strongly welcomed (hell, the site RELIES on it). The site provides services and coverage related to practically every aspect of the black metal community - in addition to the archive of reviews, interviews and news articles, the site hosts an extensive image library, promotional tools and links to other websites of interest to the BM community (such as online stores, record labels, zines...).
Perhaps of greatest value, though, is the site's quite active forum. It provides a space for BM fans and artists to discuss recordings and live events, general issues, current events and, quite unusually, politics/religion/philosophy. There is also a dedicated "trading post" forum, in which members can organise the exchange of recordings, merchandise and musical equipment.
Though the "UK" in the site's name suggests that it might focus mostly on BM in the UK (hehe, abbreviation overload), this is not the case - tours of the US, Europe , even Australia are discussed on the forums, and reviews are by no means limited to UK bands. I suppose this is an indication of the increasingly global nature of BM, and of music fan cultures in general.
The existence of such open online communities as Black Metal UK clearly makes participation in fan cultures considerably easier than it was "back in the day". This can only be a good thing, as far as I'm concerned.
"Life Metal"
Just saw the term "life metal" (as opposed to death metal) in someone else's blog about Christian music. Haha.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
VBS-TV Doco - True Norwegian Black Metal
Greetings, readers :) .
A few days ago I was made aware of documentary on BM that focused on a key member of the scene and, rather than rehashing tired and glamourised ideas and images of the genre, attempts to offer an honest picture of the BM movement as it is today. Naturally, I had to write about it...
Though the documentary is presumably intended to be an illumination of the genre as a whole, it's based quite strongly on Gorgoroth/the singer, Gaahl. This is for good reason - Gorgoroth are a textbook BM band, sonically (employing blastbeats; abrasive, aggressive guitar playing; screamed vocals), visually (long hair; massive spiked armbands; inverted crucifixes; corpsepaint; pig heads on stakes set up in front of the stage) and when it comes to extra-curricular activities (Gaahl was imprisoned in 2005 for "torture-like violence"; guitarist Infernus was released on parole in March this year). Phew.
Anyway, the doco starts off with some concert footage, a background of the style and the band. Only when we get to the stuff with Gaahl (dubbed "the most evil man alive" by Terrorizer magazine) does this documentary start to show its unique value.
Interviewees suggest that Gorgoroth is a band fueled by ideology more than aesthetics, and judging by the interviews with Gaahl, he plays a large part in this. Living in the tiny town of Espedal (a town apparently owned and inhabited mostly by his family), he is isolated from the general population. The documentary crew are said to be the first journalists permitted to visit Gaahl at his house. As further rejection of contemporary society, Gaahl lives without a lot of modern technology - he has neither a phone nor plumbing (in fact, one journalist mentions having to walk a kilometre through mud to go to another house just to "take a shit" (pardon the language...actually, can we swear in this?)). Individualism is clearly a big thing for Gaahl, which he makes clear by sharing his philosophy of "following the god within yourself".
So how do we relate this to BM? Gaahl's defiantly individualistic way of living and thinking matches up perfectly with the violent rejection of Right-Hand Path, collectivist religion that is found in BM. His rejection of technology is also similar to several common BM musical practices, such as the rejection of highly developed instrumental technique and the use of lo-fi production. At one stage Gaahl actually makes his attitude to creativity and convention explicit - he attributes his dropping out of art school to the failings of its rules and expectations ("you cannot go to school to become an artist"). For him (and the genre of BM), "the process of creating is based on being away from people" and convention.
Perhaps the most extreme example of isolation and struggle in the documentary is when Gaahl leads the crew on a walk up a snowy mountain to a hut his grandparents built. Several members of the crew don't understand why he would bother with a "nature walk" when it's supposed to be a documentary about metal, and struggle with both the concept and the task considerably. There is one thing that really struck me about this scene/idea - the suggestion that isolation is a part of Gaahl's heritage thanks to the fact that Gaahl's grandparents would build a hut at such an impractically high altitude, where there are no trees (which would require them to carry the logs up the mountain themselves). Could it be, then, that as well as being a rejection of contemporary society and values, the very BM idea of privileging isolation is an acceptance of the previous "way of doing things"?
Makes sense to me.
You can find the video here.
A few days ago I was made aware of documentary on BM that focused on a key member of the scene and, rather than rehashing tired and glamourised ideas and images of the genre, attempts to offer an honest picture of the BM movement as it is today. Naturally, I had to write about it...
Though the documentary is presumably intended to be an illumination of the genre as a whole, it's based quite strongly on Gorgoroth/the singer, Gaahl. This is for good reason - Gorgoroth are a textbook BM band, sonically (employing blastbeats; abrasive, aggressive guitar playing; screamed vocals), visually (long hair; massive spiked armbands; inverted crucifixes; corpsepaint; pig heads on stakes set up in front of the stage) and when it comes to extra-curricular activities (Gaahl was imprisoned in 2005 for "torture-like violence"; guitarist Infernus was released on parole in March this year). Phew.
Anyway, the doco starts off with some concert footage, a background of the style and the band. Only when we get to the stuff with Gaahl (dubbed "the most evil man alive" by Terrorizer magazine) does this documentary start to show its unique value.
Interviewees suggest that Gorgoroth is a band fueled by ideology more than aesthetics, and judging by the interviews with Gaahl, he plays a large part in this. Living in the tiny town of Espedal (a town apparently owned and inhabited mostly by his family), he is isolated from the general population. The documentary crew are said to be the first journalists permitted to visit Gaahl at his house. As further rejection of contemporary society, Gaahl lives without a lot of modern technology - he has neither a phone nor plumbing (in fact, one journalist mentions having to walk a kilometre through mud to go to another house just to "take a shit" (pardon the language...actually, can we swear in this?)). Individualism is clearly a big thing for Gaahl, which he makes clear by sharing his philosophy of "following the god within yourself".
So how do we relate this to BM? Gaahl's defiantly individualistic way of living and thinking matches up perfectly with the violent rejection of Right-Hand Path, collectivist religion that is found in BM. His rejection of technology is also similar to several common BM musical practices, such as the rejection of highly developed instrumental technique and the use of lo-fi production. At one stage Gaahl actually makes his attitude to creativity and convention explicit - he attributes his dropping out of art school to the failings of its rules and expectations ("you cannot go to school to become an artist"). For him (and the genre of BM), "the process of creating is based on being away from people" and convention.
Perhaps the most extreme example of isolation and struggle in the documentary is when Gaahl leads the crew on a walk up a snowy mountain to a hut his grandparents built. Several members of the crew don't understand why he would bother with a "nature walk" when it's supposed to be a documentary about metal, and struggle with both the concept and the task considerably. There is one thing that really struck me about this scene/idea - the suggestion that isolation is a part of Gaahl's heritage thanks to the fact that Gaahl's grandparents would build a hut at such an impractically high altitude, where there are no trees (which would require them to carry the logs up the mountain themselves). Could it be, then, that as well as being a rejection of contemporary society and values, the very BM idea of privileging isolation is an acceptance of the previous "way of doing things"?
Makes sense to me.
You can find the video here.
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