Day Two

Futurism. I wrestled with where to start this class. Jarry would have made a fine beginning, but with only 13 ½ weeks and 6 projects something needed to go. So – the next best thing was to start with the Futurists. Great conversation today – students really seemed to get the point beyond just offending or annoying its audience. The engagement factor seemed to play a big part in our conversation today. We discussed the idea of dynamism and simultaneity and also unpacked the idea of destroying museums and libraries and what was intended with this gesture. All of this was captured in the notion of a manifesto defining itself against something. Not purely anti-art, but anti-entrenchment, anti-ossification, anti-stuck-in-the-past. The Russolo material continued this conversation into a discussion of sound. It’s amazing how much our contemporary sound pallet has changed since I started teaching this material. The noise factor seemed to be isolated to industrial and fringe material, but has been pulled into the center. This is qualified, however, by the aetheticization of these sounds – weaving them into a recognizable musical structure. These should be interesting bits to carry through the rest of the term. This seemed to work as good introductory material.