Music in Its Natural Habitat
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ShareI believe that the erosion of the “fan mentality” has something (but not everything) to do with the increasing insignificance of the physical nature of musical media. As music is defined less and less by its physical nature (whether in the form of LP, tape, CD, or any other corporeal object), the presence of any particular piece of music on our cognitive state becomes less and less significant. In the era of physical media, any particular piece of music was inevitably associated with a physical artifact. In order to listen to a piece of music, one had to engage with the physical medium associated with that piece of music. This physical medium included images (the album covers), text (the liner notes), and equipment (musical devices required to play music, including turntables, tape decks, etc.).
These factors all lead to cognitive associations that we, as listeners make with the music. Whenever we would think about the music itself, we could immediately associate that music with a set of images, words, and devices. These associations strengthened and developed our cognitive image of any particular piece of music. In the current era of digital consumption, however, these associations are dissipating; we no longer associate a particular piece of music with other, extraneous factors to the degree that we once did.
This sense of dissociation has been clearly felt by anybody who has spent time cycling through songs on their iPod or contemplating musical choices in any digital medium, such as a computer hard drive or a web site (such as MySpace or Lala) that offers consumers a wide range of musical choices. Of course, these media forms rely to some degree on image and text for their presentation, but not to the same degree that musical pieces in the physical era of media consumption did. As technology delivers an increasing number of options for music listening, the music itself becomes increasingly dissociated from any kind of physical medium. This significantly reduces the impact that any single piece of music can have on our conscious state because that piece no longer carries with it the same cognitive connections that it would have in previous eras.
Neuroscientist António Damásio, in The Feeling of What Happens, writes that “we store in memory not just aspects of an object’s physical structure… but also aspects of our organism’s motor involvement in the process of apprehending such relevant aspects: our emotional reactions to an object; our broader physical and mental state at the time of apprehending the object” (The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness, Mariner Books, 1 October 2000). In other words, when our mind perceives an object, it perceives not just the object itself, but also other aspects of the objects environment, which we, as conscious beings, associate with that object. Similarly, when we perceive a piece of music, we inevitably associate with seemingly unrelated aspects of the music’s environment, such as images, words, etc.
This helps to explain the dissipation of the “fan mentality”; particular musical pieces no longer create the strong cognitive associations that they once did, because they are longer as closely linked to specific imagery. In the era of physical media, album covers were highly important. In today’s era, it is hard to think of any cover that has attained the cultural relevance of any Beatles album (think Sgt. Pepper, Abbey Road, etc.). Once again, this may seem to run counter to the scenario with which I began this piece; after all, doesn’t the fact that the digital era encourages me to listen to the same songs repeatedly only reinforce the “fan mentality”? This repetition, however, remains related to the new cognitive listening processes encouraged by the digital era. In my case, it became increasingly difficult to conceptualize a wide variety of listening options; instead, I was only conceptualizing those options that stuck out in my mind primarily through musical qualities, and not through images and other material that I mentally associated with the music.
This process of conceptualization also extends to the physical environments in which we listen to music. After all, our experiences of listening to music do not occur in a vacuum. Instead, the music itself is related, in our minds, to other components of our physical environment, including the time and place of listening, as well as our own mental state. In the digital era, music is increasingly becoming portable, diversifying the environments within which we listen to music. Once again, this change is a matter of degree; although the Walkman helped to make music portable, music has only become more portable in subsequent eras. This portability, as with so many other innovations of the digital era, expands our possibilities for listening to music. It also, however, renders the music itself only a small part of a more expansive cultural gestalt. We may continue to listen to music, but we do so while walking, talking, driving, working, or some combination thereof.
As noted earlier, Damásio discusses the impact of environment on cognition; we don’t simply cognize an object, we cognize it in association with the environment we find it in. As music becomes more portable, we cognize it more and more as a component part of our physical environment, rather than as an experience in and of itself. If we walk down the street while listening to an iPod, we think of the music we listen to as a part of the street on which we walk. If we listen to music while working at home, we associate the music with the work we do. If we listen to music while driving, we associate it with the road on which we travel.
Conclusion
At the same time, our knowledge of and ability to appreciate this music only increases. These phenomena proceed in lockstep with the overall complexity of our media environment. As eras of media consumption proceed one after the other, the media itself becomes more complex, and our minds follow suit.
As with Eve in the Garden of Eden, however, our knowledge comes with a cost: in this case, the cost of intimate listening experiences that demand our full concentration. In “The Conception of Artistic Beauty”, G.W.F. Hegel asked “What is the true content of art, and with what aim is this content to be presented?” He answered “On this subject our consciousness supplies us with the common opinion that it is the task and aim of art to bring in contact with our sense, our feeling, our inspiration, all that finds a place in the mind of man” (On Art, Religion, and the History of Philosophy: Introductory Lectures, Hackett Publishing, 1997). As technological advancements move us into the future, music will continue to bring our minds into contact with new feelings and inspirations; the ways in which it accomplishes this task, however, will continue to change.
