Рет қаралды 33
A broader question concerns bringing to light names of those who made some biofeedback music (skin, breathing, heart rate, brainwaves) in the US and Canada over the period of 1965-76 but were not included in the canon. The canon of pioneers is basically Lucier-Teitelbaum-Rosenboom and associates (students, collaborators). My suspicion is that the canon sourced from "Biofeedback and the Arts" (first assembled in 1974, printed in 1975, 2nd edition in 1976) is by no means a complete survey of what was going on in those days. Without diminishing the significance of the book, which's very dear to my heart and mind (as no other book ever published), I can't avoid mentioning that it is the only survey of the history of biofeedback music (to be fair, it's mostly about sound-involving pieces). Since 1975 there was not a single attempt to come up with an update. Some, who are as nerdy as the author, may note the recently published book of Flora Lysen (2022) and the books edited by Anton Nijholt (2014, 2019). Well, in the latter case, publications provide a disjointed array of examples of recently produced biofeedback art. In another case, the purpose was to make an argument about brain media using a more extensive, and thus less detailed in respect to biofeedback music, source base. Both efforts are important and legitimate. But they do not provide a critical (!) take on developments since the mid-70s and do not permit the building of the bridge between then and now.
I could bring into consideration the fact that "Biofeedback and the Arts" contains mostly the articles of D. Rosenboom. Other authors are mostly artists and only 2 authors, if I remember correctly, were trained as scientists and were NOT creating biofeedback art themselves. The book was published by A.R.C. Press, an independent publishing organization co-directed by John Grayson and David Rosenboom. It was not formally affiliated with an academic institution, and it was not an academic publisher. Thus, there was no need in peer review and no need to conform to certain standards. If a reader ever applied for a grant to write a book and had to indicate the experience of the publication, a reader would know that the self-published editions receive less credit and do not count in the case of, for ex., an application for the Guggenheim.
Wrapping up, I think the direction is clear. Whether determination will be supported is another issue. For now, I would like to feed in my biological computing system as much information (with evidence = hist sources) about biofeedback music created over the last half of a century as possible. It took 2,5 years to get to know enough to start wondering what I do not know actually. The examples I occasionally discovered over the last couple of months make me conclude, that there's likely more work (created till the 2000s) left outside of the scholarly (not to say general) consideration. I need to know about those likely poorly documented examples. It's less than a year till the 50 years anniversary. . . so a major revision is more than timely.
Abandoning the myth of a sole genius is hard. (sure enough, an entire dissertation project proposal)
The simplicity is convenient.
Taking down the illusion for the sake of complexity . . worth trying?
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P.S. If you have any historical sources to share, prompts, ideas, collaboration, or support proposal - please email me.