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On Set Theory and the Bastardization Process

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On Set Theory and the Bastardization Process

Unread postby icycalm » 16 May 2012 13:17

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/25012/25012-pdf.pdf

Nietzsche wrote:Yesterday—would you believe it?—I heard Bizet's masterpiece for the twentieth time. Once more I attended with the same gentle reverence; once again I did not run away. This triumph over my impatience surprises me. How such a work completes one! Through it one almost becomes a “masterpiece” oneself—And, as a matter of fact, each time I heard Carmen it seemed to me that I was more of a philosopher, a better philosopher than at other times: I became so forbearing, so happy, so Indian, so settled.…To sit for five hours: the first step to holiness!—May I be allowed to say that Bizet's orchestration is the only one that I can endure now? That other orchestration which is all the rage at present—the Wagnerian—is brutal, artificial and “unsophisticated” withal, hence its appeal to all the three senses of the modern soul at once.


The underlined part is one of two or three mistakes I've caught Nietzsche making so far. But it's so impossibly difficult to catch him making a mistake that I have to doubt whether I correctly understood his meaning. And it doesn't help that most of my "mistake candidates" are off-hand comments that he doesn't really elaborate on. They were not that important at the time, so he doesn't fully analyze them -- but they ARE important now, hence why I am interested in them.

Another "mistake" is that he says that he finds the theatre a vulgar artform compared to music -- an artform for the masses. And another one is the (very indirect) implication in Twilight of the Idols, I think, that architecture is an art. He doesn't actually SAY it, but it seems to be a given considering the positioning of the relevant passage in the book.

As for Baudrillard, there are self-contradictions and obvious stupidities every other page, so I am not really concerned when my views contradict his. On the subject of art more than half of what he says is obvious bullshit.
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Unread postby icycalm » 16 May 2012 15:31

Fuck.

Nietzsche wrote:Thirdly, and this is the worst of all: Theatrocracy—, the craziness of a belief in the pre-eminence of the theatre, in the right of the theatre to rule supreme over the arts, over Art in general.…But this should be shouted into the face of Wagnerites a hundred times over: that the theatre is something lower than art, something secondary, something coarsened, above all something suitably distorted and falsified for the mob.


There's no doubting this now, Nietzsche made a mistake. However, it can be excused, considering how primitive art was in his time, and therefore how difficult to correctly theorize.

To make this point clear though, in advance, I am not saying in this essay that videogames ought to "rule supreme over the arts" -- I am saying they ARE the supreme art. In order for it to exist, however, all other arts have to be vulgarized. Nietzsche is here principally concerned with castigating Wagner for vulgarizing music -- because he wrote soundtracks. And his arguments are correct. It is only in his underestimation of the value of theatre that his mistake lies. It had not yet occurred to him to compare artforms themselves -- at least not very rigorously. Wagner was vulgarizing music, literature, even dance to an extent -- in order to create drama. Nietzsche is here taking the side of the individual arts, in the same way that a literature critic takes the side of literature when reviewing, and trashing, movie novelizations.

All will become clear when the essay is done.
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Unread postby icycalm » 16 May 2012 16:17

This passage brilliantly explains the difference between a soundtrack and real music.

Nietzsche wrote:The aim after which more modern music is striving, which is now
given the strong but obscure name of “unending melody,” can be
clearly understood by comparing it to one's feelings on entering
the sea. Gradually one loses one's footing and one ultimately
abandons oneself to the mercy or fury of the elements: one has
to swim. In the solemn, or fiery, swinging movement, first slow
and then quick, of old music—one had to do something quite
different; one had to dance. The measure which was required
for this and the control of certain balanced degrees of time
and energy, forced the soul of the listener to continual sobriety
of thought.—Upon the counterplay of the cooler currents of air
which came from this sobriety, and from the warmer breath
of enthusiasm, the charm of all good music rested—Richard
Wagner wanted another kind of movement,—he overthrew the
physiological first principle of all music before his time. It was
no longer a matter of walking or dancing,—we must swim, we
must hover.… This perhaps decides the whole matter. “Unending
melody” really wants to break all the symmetry of time and
strength; it actually scorns these things—Its wealth of invention
resides precisely in what to an older ear sounds like rhythmic
paradox and abuse. From the imitation or the prevalence of
such a taste there would arise a danger for music—so great that
we can imagine none greater—the complete degeneration of the
feeling for rhythm, chaos in the place of rhythm.… The danger
reaches its climax when such music cleaves ever more closely to
naturalistic play-acting and pantomime, which governed by no
laws of form, aim at effect and nothing more.… Expressiveness
at all costs and music a servant, a slave to attitudes—this is the
end.…


What a genius this man was.
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Unread postby icycalm » 25 Jan 2014 01:18

On Set Theory and the Bastardization Process (I)
http://culture.vg/features/art-theory/o ... ocess.html

I wrote:Of course the older artists and critics, who failed to make the transition to the new artform, regarded it with contempt and many of them scribbled long and impassioned essays in defense of their doomed craft;


I don't know much about silent films, but I know that several famous figures of the era (including at least one director), did write such essays as I claim here. I just can't seem to find them now, so if anyone knows of any please link them here and I will edit in a little parenthesis at that point. It would be helpful to people to read some ridiculous essay from 100 years ago that champions the supposed "superiority" of silent movies.
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Unread postby movie » 25 Jan 2014 04:20

From Rudolf Arnheim's "The Sad Future of Film", written in 1930:

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The essay can be found on Google Books: http://books.google.com.au/books?id=Qbl ... &q&f=false
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Unread postby ingolfr » 25 Jan 2014 08:13

Directors haven't stopped complaining about technological advancement either.

Quentin Tarantino comments on Digital vs Film
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BON9Ksn1PqI
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Unread postby icycalm » 25 Jan 2014 08:26

Haha, what hogwash. It's not like he's a very good director either. Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction were 4/5, and all the rest barely manage to scrape a 3/5.

The illusion is lost with digital lol. But Baudrillard peddled the same bullshit. What a bunch of fucking losers.
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Unread postby icycalm » 25 Jan 2014 08:43

It's funny how fascinated he seems to be by his discovery of the fact that there's no motion involved in movies, but just a series of still shots. Which is exactly the same line of reasoning Zeno used to prove that motion is impossible. Therefore even in real life movement is an "illusion", which was taken further by tons of philosophers, including Baudrillard, by claiming that everything is an illusion lol. That our lives themselves are illusory lol. So all our lives are "artistic" then, not just Tarantino's films. But I've already explained how this works to SriK in the "Cutscene" thread, and all these people I just mentioned are just bad at conceptualization, and Zeno (and Parmenides before him) were just the first ones to commit this particular mistake.
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Unread postby icycalm » 25 Jan 2014 08:51

In short, there is neither illusion nor reality -- there are DEGREES of illusion (or degrees of reality -- these are just different ways of saying the same thing). The statement "everything is illusion" is just as meaningless as "everything is reality" -- it is by pinpointing an object's or a process's location on the spectrum between these two extremes that we actually arrive at a meaningful idea that we can use in the conduct of our daily lives.
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Unread postby icycalm » 25 Jan 2014 09:01

It's like saying "everyone is short" or "everyone is tall". This is meaningless blather that is of absolutely no use to anyone. What we need, for every particular object, is HEIGHT, which is to say, the height differences between various objects. Similarly, YES, strictly speaking EVERYTHING is illusory (or everything is real, it means the same thing), but what we want is the RELATIVE level of reality of different things. E.g. a woman sitting next to me is more real than the "woman" in the monitor across from me (which is not a woman but a collection of liquid crystals that sort of looks like a woman from a distance). We do not need to define a level of ABSOLUTE REALITY in order to make our comparison and arrive at our conclusions. I mean we don't even have ABSOLUTE LENGTH either. When we say that someone is two metres tall, all we are doing is comparing that person with a piece of wood which is sitting somewhere in the Louvre or something. As far as relativity is concerned, no such thing as "absolute length" exists: it depends on where you are standing and how fast you are going when you make your observation. Not to mention quantum effects and the like, which distort your reading further.

But what does Tarantino know about any of this? What does he WANT to know about any of this? And can a man who in all seriousness claims that there's no illusion involved in the operation of a digital camcorder for some reason, even PARSE what I am saying here?
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Unread postby icycalm » 25 Jan 2014 09:11

Beyond Good and Evil, 34:

Friedrich Nietzsche wrote:No matter what philosophical standpoint people may adopt nowadays, from every point of view the falsity of the world in which we think we live is the most certain and firmest thing which our eyes are still capable of apprehending: - for that we find reason after reason, which would like to entice us into conjectures about a fraudulent principle in the "essence of things." But anyone who makes our very thinking, that is, "the spirit," responsible for the falsity of the world - an honourable solution which every conscious or unconscious advocatus dei [pleader for god] uses -: whoever takes this world, together with space, time, form, and movement as a false inference, such a person would at least have good ground finally to learn to be distrustful of all thinking itself. Wouldn’t it be the case that thinking has played the greatest of all tricks on us up to this point? And what guarantee would there be that thinking would not continue to do what it has always done? In all seriousness: the innocence of thinkers has something touching, something inspiring reverence, which permits them even today still to present themselves before consciousness with the request that it give them honest answers: for example, to the question whether it is "real," and why it really keeps itself so absolutely separate from the outer world, and similar sorts of questions. The belief in "immediate certainties" is a moral naivete which brings honour to us philosophers - but we should not be "merely moral" men! Setting aside morality, this belief is a stupidity, which brings us little honour! It may be the case that in bourgeois life the constant willingness to suspect is considered a sign of a "bad character" and thus belongs among those things thought unwise. Here among us, beyond the bourgeois world and its affirmations and denials - what is there to stop us from being unwise and saying the philosopher has an absolute right to a "bad character," as the being who up to this point on earth has always been fooled the best - today he has the duty to be suspicious, to glance around maliciously from every depth of suspicion. Forgive me the joke of this gloomy grimace and way of expressing myself. For a long time ago I myself learned to think very differently about and make different evaluations of deceiving and being deceived, and I keep ready at least a couple of digs in the ribs for the blind anger with which philosophers themselves resist being deceived. Why not? It is nothing more than a moral prejudice that truth is worth more than appearance. That claim is even the most poorly demonstrated assumption there is in the world. People should at least concede this much: there would be no life at all if not on the basis of appearances and assessments from perspectives. And if people, with the virtuous enthusiasm and foolishness of some philosophers, wanted to do away entirely with the "apparent world," assuming, of course, you could do that, well then at least nothing would remain any more of your "truth" either! In fact, what compels us generally to the assumption that there is an essential opposition between "true" and "false"? Is it not enough to assume degrees of appearance and, as it were, lighter and darker shadows and tones for the way things appear - different valeurs [values], to use the language of painters? Why could the world about which we have some concern - not be a fiction? And if someone then asks "But doesn’t an author belong to a fiction?" could he not be fully answered with Why? Doesn’t this "belong to" perhaps belong to the fiction? Is it then forbidden to be a little ironic about the subject as well as about the predicate and the object? Is the philosopher not permitted to rise above a faith in grammar? All due respect to governesses, but might it not be time for philosophy to renounce faith in governesses?-
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Unread postby ingolfr » 08 Feb 2014 04:10

When they were making the normal version of The Hobbit, I wonder how they chose with artistic integrity which frames to omit from the 48framie version?
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Unread postby icycalm » 08 Feb 2014 10:14

I guess it doesn't matter if the whole purpose of it is to put the audience to sleep?
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Unread postby icycalm » 22 Oct 2014 18:51

http://boards.4chan.org/v/thread/268673559#p268687505

Anonymous wrote:I'll give for granted that you all know who Goethe and Schiller are. They are the greatest German poets who ever lived, and Goethe is also considered the artist par excellence. You know what these guys had to say about art?

"Art is a game. Art should be playful, funny, mischievous. When you feel like you're living inside a dream, the work of art has served its purpose".


I'd like to place that quote at the beginning of the Set Theory essay. It would be very fitting. But I can't seem to find its source. I googled various parts of it, but nothing from those two writers came up. Octavio Paz seems to have said something mildly similar, but it's not good enough for my purposes, so let me know if anyone can trace the original down. I can't imagine that that dude came up with that quote himself, and then attributed it to others. He must be just misquoting.
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Unread postby icycalm » 12 May 2015 21:13

https://twitter.com/DCDC420/status/598039112243777537

Gongoozler wrote:@airpout @ReptiliansExist @_Sivera no matter what else you think of him, icycalm actually solved the whole "games are art" thing completely.


And you haven't even seen all of it yet. Or understood all of what you've seen. "Games are art" was solved back in the Genealogy, in 2010-2011. The next level is to understand that "art is games", which has been explained in the Set Theory essay. And the final level, which is that "videogames are art itself", will be explained in the upcoming "On Genre and the Tree of Gaming" essay.

We still have a ways to go to wrap all of this up, but people still haven't caught up to what was explained half a decade ago.

Read more, read again, and read more carefully.
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Unread postby icycalm » 30 Mar 2019 07:09

Part II: https://www.patreon.com/posts/25591841

icycalm wrote:Frank Miller's 300 comic is not simply a novel copy-pasted over paintings. That would have been absurd, and precisely what I mean by "bastardization".


Part III: https://www.patreon.com/posts/25632526

icycalm wrote:So now that we know that novel narrative is peak narrative, and it MUST be debased in order to be incorporated into more complex artforms (and the more complex the artform, the more it must be debased...), let's try to understand WHY.


Not sure how many more parts it will take me, but I will complete it in the next few days. I've delayed it for far too long because it's complicated, but now I am in the mood to finish it, and even have the full draft ready, so it will be done.
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Unread postby icycalm » 03 Jul 2019 05:52

https://warosu.org/lit/thread/S13396961#p13398233

Anonymous wrote:>>OP
>Are videogames capable of reaching the same level of story telling as books or screenplays?
Yes, but that is not the point of them, and if they did reach the same level of storytelling as books or screenplays, they'd stop being video games and become books or screenplays. Read icycalm.


An easier way to explain it to him is to tell him that books and movies are already videogames, very specific kinds of videogames in which most of the means of artistic expression are not being used. Ergo, yes, videogames can "reach the same level of story telling as books and movies".

Remember, kids, theory isn't hard if you're a genius. Or if you've read the geniuses. Otherwise it's not merely hard, it is impossible for you.
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