[NetBehaviour] Paul Morley in Conversation with Simon poulter

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Paul Morley in Conversation with Simon poulter | How technology is 
changing music in the context of Marshall McLuhan's theories.

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The folk and ritual musics of oral cultures are a distant memory, and we 
are now deeply embedded in the digital age. One of the results of our 
digital world is that music is everywhere; on streets, in shops, on 
television, in trains, on headphones, even on your phone. Music has 
become portable, and technology has transformed the sleepy vistas of the 
acoustic age into a pulsing, voltaic soundscape of 
electronically-enhanced, auto-tuned voices, synthetic rhythms, and 
oscillating harmonies. More than this, technology has had a massive 
impact not only on the way music is conceived and recorded by musicians, 
but also the way in which it is received and consumed by audiences. It 
has narrowed the gap between composer, performer, producer, and 
audience, blurred genre distinctions, and even removed music from the 
physical realm.

In 1965, Marshall McLuhan stated that 'The medium is the message', which 
was his characteristically enigmatic way of saying that the means by 
which we communicate our ideas have an impact on what we actually say. 
One need only look to music to see how accurate McLuhan was in this 
judgement; we have witnessed the transformation of a perfomance-based 
medium to an electronic one, the metamorphoses of a tactile, physical 
medium, to intangible, digital ephemera.

In this talk, music journalist Paul Morley and Simon Poulter discuss the 
rapidly evolving musical landscape in the context of McLuhan's theories, 
addressing the demise of record shops and the physical medium, the 
effect the internet has had on its commercial consumption, and the 
emergence of hybrid forms in the face of dissolving genre distinctions.

Paul Morley is a journalist, author, and musician, who has written for 
publications including NME, The Observer, The Financial Times and Arena 
Homme Plus. He is a regular contributor to BBC 2's Review Show, and 
writes and presents documentaries for BBC4, BBC Radio 2, and BBC Radio 
4. His books include a meditation on suicide (Nothing), and a biography 
of the group Joy Division (Joy Division: Piece by Piece: Writing About 
Joy Division 1977-2007)

In conversation with Simon Poulter, an artist and curator based in 
London. Simon develops programmes and commissions for a variety of 
organisations including MAC, Metal and the AND festival. He has recently 
become Head of Programme at Metal, developing projects in Liverpool and 
Southend.

McLuhan's Message is a Watershed Project in partnership with the Digital 
Cultures Research Centre at the University of West of England. Curated 
by Simon Poulter.

http://www.watershed.co.uk/dshed/seminar-4-paul-morley-conversation