I am an arts curmudgeon. Making no pretense to cultural literacy, I can tell you honestly whether I like something or not when it is presented as art, and I’m hardly worried about how well that opinion matches any standards, established or imaginary.
It’s one thing to let kids experiment with tools which transform their fledgling, or even poor, talents into something more tolerable by reducing some of the complexity. Being able to pick from a menu of figures and colors does not suck the life out of artist development by itself.
But there is no actual product. That is, what comes out of such a process is the learner still in process. We celebrate briefly, then bring on the next challenge. The greatest disaster is not refusing to smile and comment on the kid’s work, though such refusal is very wrong. The greatest disaster is making the kid too happy with it, as if your approval is so cheaply gained. Yes, be objective in the sense of setting aside your personal tastes, and know enough about things to recognize how other tastes can be valid, but don’t give fake praise just to build a fake ego on fake self-esteem. The product is the budding artist’s heart, not the fleeting bit of artwork today which should go in a different direction tomorrow, or at least reach a different level of achievement.
At some point, the work has to be meaningful to the audience. The artist can do whatever he/she pleases, but if they do not connect, they better have a day job. “Art” is too nebulous a word, despite the difficulty we have in replacing it. The passion of the artist is not the deciding factor, but one input. Without the resulting communication of that passion, it was nothing, after all.
We have had a culture which pretends to place as much power as possible in the hands of the creator. Go to any higher-priced art show and listen to the verbal garbage which passes for attempts to affirm something nobody, not even the artist, really understands. Bleeding edge art has become so free-form, it means nothing at all. It becomes an excuse to celebrate neurotic emotions. More meaningful would be to say in essence whether you like it and what the work of art makes you feel like doing. Ignore the price tags, because they have no reflection of the actual value, but a reflection of a mad, perverted culture which wants to be something it cannot. The disposition of most of the West’s art dollars have no bearing on the reality of what purpose art should serve.
So in music. We have an intellectual culture which has permitted a choke hold by the marketers. Money is the measure, and by golly you will buy what the marketers want to sell. So they actively quash anything which does not sprout dollar signs according to their established formulas. That formula includes seeking new ways to offer small modifications which test the formula in minute ways. The creator is pressured to cater to this regime, or their stuff does not get produced. The artist is allowed to pick from a surprisingly narrow range of artistic product which survived the marketing filters. The recording is engineered according to similar formulas, sold in media formats which maximize marketing control, and delivered by mechanisms to the listeners’ ears which also were selected by the marketers.
Marketers do not attempt to sense the public taste, but shape it into channels which maximize profits. They do make all sorts of arrangements for all sorts of different tastes, which we recognize as “genres” of music. But in the end, however virtuous is the product brought to market, that is merely an accident.
Vocaloids arise from the Open Source movement. Because of certain factors, it has escaped the laboratory and hit the market. By the time marketers take notice, it’s too late. The thing is deeply entrenched in the place where it is totally under the control of the creators. There is no performer, actually. It’s a product direct from the creators; it is precisely and only what they set forth, unfiltered, in that the software is just the mechanism. Poof. The entire music industry has been shot through the heart. Comaratively, we notice Linux and other Open Source system software has been somewhat a contender on the field, but it grew up slowly, and formed merely a parallel ecosystem, as it were. Vocaloid music burst out all at once, and at the one point when the music industry was already bleeding fatally after battles with the very consumers on which they prey.
But vocaloid music is not all good. Sure, it stands to gut the industry, but not the art. Humans as a whole, despite all the marketing and conditioning efforts, can be driven only so far. This new product will tend to sell best to folks who want music as a style compliment, not for the sake of art. It is not alive, and a critical element in art is the living touch between artist and audience. The most successful singer today has been dead awhile, but while he lived, he could connect to his audience like few others — Elvis Presley. It hardly mattered what he sang, only that he had that vocal charisma. Hatsune Miku, the green-haired animated teenager, cannot connect because charisma cannot be programmed. Emulation has very real limits.
That is as it should be. She won’t destroy the art of music performance, just help to keep one more generation of tastes from paying much attention to art itself. Hatsune will sing with perfect pitch and enunciation, giving the creators exactly what they envisioned for their music. But it will remain hollow and artificial. Hatsune cannot ever extemporize. But assuming they program that in, too, it still can’t duplicate charisma, that unquantifiable quality of human connection. Even when the charisma hides evil motives, serves to manipulate for evil purposes, it remains something possible only with people.
And while the genetic pool will always offer only a limited number of artists overall, the number of those who naturally pay that much attention is only slightly larger. The vast majority of those who could be taught to pay attention can also be taught to ignore it. The latter group drives sales, but the few are the ones who actually know something about it. They tend to be the same people who most threaten every mass movement, because it is their nature to examine and see past the presumptions of propaganda. They have always done their own thing, and always will, and only relative access to art will limit their participation.
I won’t run screaming from the room if you start playing a recording by Hatsune Miku. I probably will try to escape politely if you start playing Lady Gaga. I’ll leave town to avoid a live concert by her. She is an assault on art by virtue of using art to assault truth. I’ll have a hard time leaving the room if you play a decent rendering of most classical composers. But if the performance is live, regardless of music style, it’s a whole different ball game.
