DO YOU SEE WHAT I HEAR?
IT is no secret that technology has far out paced common sense in the modern world; a single look at a daily newspaper will provide multiple examples of people using intelligently designed equipment for the accomplishment of dumb ends. I don't know if the problem exists because our best minds are drawn to the research and development end of things rather than the humanistic and philosophical, or because we are simply inclined to pay more attention (and more money) to scientists and engineers than to philosophers and social workers. But the problem exists.
The advent of prerecorded video as a mass medium sets up one more statement of what is now an old problem and poses a new specific question: what are we going to look at while we listen that is worth looking at more than once? There are the obvious things: old movies, for example. There are also, of course, musical shows, operas, ballets, those artistic constructions that them selves include a visual element. But here somebody has to figure out a more effective way of presenting them through the two-dimensional world of the television screen.
Certain live musical events may also have enough visual interest to bear repetition: cabaret acts, a unique and particularly successful jazz or classical concert, an occasional vocal recital, a rock or country group that has a real visual element to its act (Olivia Newton -John playing in the water'?). But what about all that music, pop or classical, we want to hear and which now, in line with the latest technology, we are to look at as well as listen to'? The back of Leonard Bernstein's neck, even alternated with shots of violinists bowing as one and trombonists shaking saliva out of their mouthpieces, will simply not do.
Watching a concert on television is not at all the same experience as being at such a concert, and it's going to take a great deal more than an enlarged screen and stereo sound to make anyone believe otherwise.
And most concerts are not news, nor are any studio performances. What we are after is music and performance, not reportage.
One could show travelogue pictures: merry Bohemian peasants (if any can be found) with Smetana's Moldau, long shots of sky and water with Debussy's La Mer, and so on. I wonder how long that idea would last.
Someone, I'm sure, will suggest giving us the printed score, page by page, on screen as the music goes by. That should also be interesting once or twice. Some will call for the Fantasia approach. But that takes a lot of ingenuity and a lot of time-and, successful as that film was, it is notable that Disney never did it again. Do we have any other choices? Not really. What we have instead is the necessity of finally facing a law of reality: all technology has its human side; all technology, if it is to be used, has a psychological and philosophical component. Quadraphonic sound failed not just because of the hardware mix-up, but because no one ever properly analyzed the nature of the sound-stage it produced and designed programs that were both effective on that soundstage and true to the music. Television is such a waste because few have ever defined it-a fixed, flat screen of a certain size and definition, located in a living room-and investigated what there was that would be indigenous, effective, and unique to that medium. Prerecorded video makes its own demands, sets up its own advantages and limitations, and someone will have to explore them as virgin territory.
So far as music is concerned, the best we can hope for is a series of unique approaches-like Allan Miller used in his TV films The Bolero and Romeo and Juliet in Kansas City-not only to the medium but to each individual piece of music. This is nothing less than the building up of a new art form, and it will be a slow and difficult process. The worst we can expect is that video will be another large technological step away from music, that the presentation of music will be found unsuitable or too difficult and that some other form of entertainment material will take its place. One thing to be sure of is that video will not be an excuse to record the entire repertoire all over again-unless there is a genius out there who knows, as the rest of us do not know, what it is that people will look at while they listen to music. And if there is, he is likely to become a very wealthy genius indeed.
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Also see:
CES 1982--The latest hi-fi trends and product introductions.
Source: Stereo Review (USA magazine)