I don't know, I suspect that the sight and sound of someone torturing
pigeons to Beethoven could be considered a Dada Installation.
Bill
-----Original Message-----
From:
On Behalf Of Scot Mcphee
Sent: Tuesday, 4 December 2007 2:44 PM
To: michael hunter
Cc: Birding Aus
Subject: Blue-faced Beethoven and sacrificial pigeons
On 04-12-2007, at 11:40 AM, michael hunter wrote:
> What about the sacrificial pigeons Scot?
Well, I would hazard that being in a predator/prey relationship is a
perfectly natural order. After all, the individual pigeon does have a
chance of escape from the predator. The major problem I would have with
it is mostly about the propagation of a feral species (I assume here
that 'pigeons' means 'rock doves'), and a general one about the impact
of agriculture on native species. So, yes it's concerning, however I
don't think it's on the same level of personal culpability as the
rock-chucker, who was only doing it because it upset his sense of
aesthetics (a mere trifle compared to the life and death matters of
human food supply, no?).
Additionally, and I didn't say this straight up because I thought it
would be too much of a distraction - I think the rock-chucker displays a
terribly stuffy view of "fine music" whereby it has an entirely
fossilised relationship to the space it is performed in - contrast, for
example, to John Cage's 4'33".
Which is to say I not only have an issue to the behaviour as it concerns
cruelty to an animal and disturbance (in both counts) of a native
animal's natural behaviour but also I have an aesthetic objection as
well - it reduces nature to merely a passive visual "backdrop" over
which music is performed. A most curious reaction to a performance of
Beethoven, one of the greatest Romantic composers!
Romanticism, as anyone who has seen a Caspar David Friedrich painting
should be able to attest, most certainly does NOT think of nature as a
merely passive recipient of man's actions - quite the reverse, it's all
about the sublime, untamed, natural elements that overwhelm man and his
intellect. And here we have a person who thinks he can appreciate
"Beethoven" in a natural setting while driving off the untamed natural
elements he deliberately chooses to set the performance in. In other
words, an intellectual pygmy of the highest degree.
regs,
scot.
===============================
www.birding-aus.org
birding-aus.blogspot.com
To unsubscribe from this mailing list,
send the message:
unsubscribe
(in the body of the message, with no Subject line)
to:
===============================
==============================www.birding-aus.org
birding-aus.blogspot.com
To unsubscribe from this mailing list,
send the message:
unsubscribe
(in the body of the message, with no Subject line)
to:
=============================
|
