Re: A loopy education; was:Dripsody

["Joe Kasinskas" <kasinskas@snip.net>]

----- Original Message -----
From: <SketchyJoe@aol.com>
To: <Loopers-Delight@annihilist.com>
Sent: Wednesday, May 03, 2000 10:25 PM
Subject: A loopy education; was:Dripsody


> I'm very happy to here that many of us here were exposed to the outer
edges
> of art at an early age.  The Cubist statement, made me laugh as I just
> exposed some 10 year old kids to Surrealism today.  I will say that as a
> music teacher that attempts to open my kids' minds, the process is not as
> easy as one would assume.  First, I still feel a pressure from my
colleagues
> and from parents to teach more tradition subject material

I have to applaud your work with these kids.  They are exactly the right 
age
to be exposed to the stuff-outside- the-box.  Ten-year-olds get this stuff
so easily because their worldview is yet to be established.  The
"educationists" in charge of music education in the schools are missing 
this
point in trying to have notation and the "classics" taught in general music
classes.

Last year I worked up a hands-on gallery installation of Alvin Lucier's
"Queen of the South", Steve Reich's "Pendulum Music" and a version of 
George
Brecht's (Fluxus) "Drip Music" for a month long show in Helena, MT.  This
stuff was the a real stretch for people used to traditional arts.  It was 
an
intro to installation music and historically prepared people for Trimpin's
"Colonininpurple" which was installed at the Art Museum in the same town.
 Trimpin is a soundartist/sculptor from Seattle - anyone seen/heard his
stuff?).

Kids accepted the strewn material vibrating on a leveled set of floor toms
driven by a synth that they got to play. In Queen of the South the
"notation" is the image patterns that appear on the surface of the drums.
They had to explore and try different things and come up with various
approaches.  The search became the music. A looping mentality that is
frankly missing in most music education.

In my travels with these pieces I have encountered a lot of support from
science teachers because the music brings the notions of resonance, 
pendulum
decay, dopler shift, etc  alive and puts them in peoples' hands and not an
abstract set of principles in a textbook to be approached theoretically.

In the past you would have had  trouble with a music supervisor doing these
things but with the recent move toward Interdisciplinary Education in
educationist circles the science / art / music interface may make that same
music sup stand up and take notice and maybe even enjoy the fact that kids
are having a great time in the exploration mode.

Loop and Learn.  I totally agree with Larry Tremblay - hats off to you,
SketchyJoe.