This morning, I was listening to Steve Reich’s Three Tales, partly because I am currently trying to make an artwork about Hindenburg, which the first movement or “tale” of Three Tales deals with. Along with this historical motif, he used another historical event, the nuclear bomb experiment at Bikini and a “current” issue which becomes a historical afterwords, cloning of Dolly. Some parts of the third tale Dolly sounds out-dated not in terms of music composition but of a socially provocative issue. Then, I started thinking about the difference between the presentation of historical materials and that of out-dated shocking “current events.”
This comperason is a very simple one but works as bottom-line of the discourse.
- Historical materials — is contextualized its ‘significance’ with its precedent and following events. So, the presentation of it is either a simple presentation of context or an addition to the context.
- Out-dated events — is based on ‘shock of new’ and data, the basic factual information of the events. New in ‘shock of new’ is the sense of unprecedented impact related to the amount, size, technology (etc.) of something.
Of course, a shocking current event will become a historical event, going through the steps which contextualize it enough to be understood as History. First shock effect ceases, then the related information is thoroughly studied, various stories will be constructed by researchers, either academically or politically, then it is put into one or more contexts to fit into larger stories and becomes a part of History…
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These are interesting sentences from Dolly of which I want to pursue wider interpretations.
Steven Pinker: I might be fooled by a good silk flower. It doesn’t mean that its a real flower. It may just mean that I don’t know enough about flowers.
Lanier: Its a terrible mistake, to think of the spiritual impulse, as arising from cognitive weakness.
Steinsaltz: Every creature has a song – The song of the dogs – and the song of the doves – the song of the fly – the song of the fox. – What do they say?
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On YouTube (again) I found a really interesting clip. This seems to be an outtake of Hindenburg or something else what was originally going to be included in Three Tales.