Sound in Time

Futurism and The Aesthetic of Failure

Futurism sought to reimagine reality as new technology transformed it, but Cascone's central concepts in The Aesthetic of Failure acknowledge the post-digital disenchantment in which the internet itself has made failure a key aesthetic in most contemporary art. The Futuristic Manifesto takes concepts from Russolo, a radical alternative in the classical musical tradition, who argued that the traditional orchestral compositions and instruments are no longer able to adequately capture and depict the loudness, speed, and intensity of modern life.

2. What Cascone meant and the roles that computers play

The author simply means that the digital technology’s medium, at the moment holds less enthrallment for the composers in and of itself for the reasons that electronic commerce has become the business fabric’s natural part through reeling out, by the gigabyte, of digital fluff.

Originally, the internet was fashioned to fast-track the development of research and exchange of ideas between the academic experts. In this perspective, it is perhaps no surprise that this internet is behind aiding the birth of new trends in the computer and music something that is outside the limits of the academic think tanks.

3. Appearance of a pop-star relation to development of printing and the rise of capital/market society

The development of printing to a large extent promoted the appearance of the pop-stars and which through the culture industry contributed to the rise of the capital/market society.

4. How consumer culture, repletion, and regression

Going by what is shown on the screen, the evidence is obvious that culture industry has made the film into a business. Through advertising, visual effects and celebrities are shown, revealing the product’s value to the consumer on the basis of the entertainment value of the film, and the number of stars it has. This had hurt innovation and conformance to a norm as repetition become a normality for the reasons that it does not hold any weight. This monopolistic culture has a firm grasp on what sells. It is due to this constant control that the culture industry continuously produces the same garbage by constantly re-cycling visuals, plots, stars, themes, concepts, and ideas. This repetition enforces the ideology that the culture industry is an entertainment business that makes culture business.

5. Regressive, reflexive and regenerative mash-up

The music mash-ups are usually regressive. However, they could be reflexive, if they were pushed to become works of art, due to their critical position. In other words, the music mash-up at many times points back to the greatness of the original track mainly by way of celebrating it in the form of a remix. In this regard, term regressive tends to make an implicit reference to the theory of Adorno in mass culture whereby according to him, it is a tendency of the media to offer the consumers with commodities and entertainment that is easily understood. On the other hand, the regenerative mash-up like the other remixes makes the originating source of material evidence. Unlike the previously mentioned mash-ups, regenerative does not necessarily use the samplings or references to validate itself as a cultural form but rather lies in its functionality.

6. Remix, Mash-up, Medley

Whereas Remix is the reworking or adaptation of an existing work, a mash-up is generally snippets of songs remixed. On the other hand, a medley is basically a song, one after the other without any remix. In my parlance remixes are alternate versions of work, while mash-ups blend two or more works together.