The Medium is the Message
The Medium is the Message or
Rethinking Meaning in Music and Media
For the last several months, I have gently set aside much of musicmaking time to study and create film. If you asked me one year ago whether or not I was a filmmaker, the answer would have been “Hell no! I’m amusician! A live musician!”. One year after the onset of a pandemic that completely robbed the world of live music, I’m not so sure I’ll ever go back to only making live music.
When the pandemic arrived, we all saw a glut of concerts from living rooms, musicians constrained to tiny squares in the emergent “virtual orchestra”, and rebroadcasts of old performances. “We’re bringing the concert right into your living room,” they said, “now from the comfort of your own home…” Of course, it’s commendable to even have the gumption to make art under these stark circumstances. It is no small feat to stare into the abyss, toes at the edge of the cliff, and take a step into the unknown. But as a lover and consumer of art, I felt no pull towards these experiences.
The ever-pressing question that titles this blog popped into my mind… “What happens next?” I felt a responsibility to keep making, supporting, and sharing art; still, the path wasn’t clear.
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It’s almost always the case that I find answers to the BIG questions of classical/contemporary music OUTSIDE of the mainstream of the field. By fortunate chance, I stumbled upon media philosopher Marshall McLuhan’s assertion that (as is this blog post) “the medium is the message”. Through this now famous adage, McLuhan argues that the content of any medium carries less semiotic weight than the formal container in which it is communicated. Even while holding subject matter constant, a film means something different than a CD than a newspaper than a tweet than a blog than a shirt… so on and so forth. Here’s a short explainer video about this theory.
What!?!? Could it be true the content matters less than the form by which it’s distributed? This was the first time I was hearing of it! Though McLuhan wrote his seminal work Understanding Media more than fifty years ago in 1964, this is a radical idea when applied to the world of classical music. What medium(s) do we work in? What meanings do these formal containers themselves carry? And how might a deeper investigation of media shape our work into the pandemic times and beyond?
By contrast to its radical positioning in the classical music ecosystem, this idea is all but taken for granted in the world of popular art. Just take Lady Gaga whose oeuvre is deepened through her use of a variety of media including records,music videos, live concerts, videos of live concerts, feature films, documentary films, fashion, visual art, performance art, photography, print media, and more. And Dolly Parton has a theme park! I need not give more examples; just look around.
Classical music? We play live concerts, sometimes make records, and sometimes make videos of live concerts. Fine. But not enough for the times we live in.
Live concerts, the traditional method of sharing classical music, create wonderful, arguably irreplaceable, meanings as a medium. By gathering together as an audience to listen to music, we engage in a shared communal experience unlike any other. But live concerts are not the only medium by which we can transmit musical ideas that carry experiential power. What if we questioned the fundamental assumption that musical organizations exist to give concerts and substituted it with the deeper truth that musical organizations exist to share musical experiences?
Think about that for a moment.
Perhaps more important than the content of the medium we share our work in to understand how audiences engage with it. This is, of course, media dependent. At a live concert, people sit quietly and listen. At an art gallery, people walk around and look. While listening to a recording, people sit on their comfy chair, exercise, or whatever else they’d like. To watch a film, most people log into Netflix or YouTube and watch from their homes. To read this blog, you are probably at your computer or on your phone. If this were a book, you would hold it in your hands, turn pages, and perhaps annotate your favorite lines (is it this one?). None of these behaviors are inherently good or bad; it simply depends on the message that the creator seeks to convey.
An organization that chooses to diversify the media they work in will build well-rounded relationships with their community, reach new audiences, and communicate deeper truths about their artistic work. Rather than being relegated to creating value during a handful of rarified hours each year (live concerts), the organization’s work will be more temporally accessible to their community. And, by imagining what is possible outside the concert hall (or even outside of the concert ritual), the organization will be free to create new experiences
The act of intentionally creating work in other media doesn’t just address artistic matters but also those of equity. By creating musical experiences that can be shared digitally and asynchronously, organizations make their art more accessible to people who can’t attend due to financial, geographic, or health barriers. Digital media shouldn’t replace live experiences, but it only makes sense to invest in sharing our art with the broadest community we can reach.
Music is so much more than what happens inside the concert hall. By reimagining the role of media in our ecosystem, we not only unleash the possibility of reaching new audiences, but also to discover and share the depth of musical experience available with the right imagination.
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What if we questioned the fundamental assumption that musical organizations exist to give concerts and substituted it with the deeper truth that musical organizations exist to share musical experiences?
Because I feel so strongly that this a powerful issue for presenters in the classical/contemporary music world, I’ll share with you some of the work that we are currently engaged with at Density512. But first I’d like to disclose that I definitely do not have the answer figured out. Not even close. And second, you should know that I am not the creator of most of the current Density512 season, only a facilitator for a community of imaginatively groundbreaking artists that I am grateful to learn from every day.
We made a deliberate decision not to focus on virtual concerts in the pandemic era. Instead, we chose to embrace digital media and create specifically for the digital space. Rather than creating our usual art and mediating it through a screen, we’re sharing work that is digitally native. In other words, instead of playing the lose-lose game of watering down the live concert experience through recording, we create work that communicates its highest degree of value in the medium through which the audience experiences it.
This year Density512 is sharing work in forms of: podcast, documentary film, performance videos, our first EP, virtual-interactive-theater, interactive livestream, online installation, physical outdoor installation, and a choose-your-own-adventure digital oratorio. And we’re launching a new music media and record label, DensitySOUND, to distribute media recorded by Density512 and provide infrastructure for the distribution of new music by visionary artists in Central Texas.
Looking back, I now realize that we’ve never taken medium for granted. Of course, we gave concerts, but also participated in a kinetic-sound-sculpture, silent film screenings, and visual art exhibitions. But with a pandemic-forced shift into the internet, we now work not only in the medium of live-experience, but also digital experience. And I believe that our work is richer for having made the choice to fully embrace each medium’s inherent meaning.
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Now, here’s the personal plug for two projects that I’m intimately involved in, both of which I briefly alluded to.
The focus of my filmmaking labor is the short documentary Remembrance and Ritual: Reflections on Eva and the Angel of Death which I am directed and edited (am edit-ing!). The film aims to contextualize the new opera Eva and the Angel of Death (music by Thomas B. Yee and libretto by Aiden K. Feltkamp) which tells the story of Eva Mozes Kor, a survivor of Josef Mengele’s twin studies in Auschwitz who, in her own words, “discovered the cure to victimhood” by befriending a Nazi doctor and, on the fiftieth anniversary of her liberation, stood beside the ruins of the gas chambers in Auschwitz to deliver her Declaration of Amnesty to the world. Now that is an incredible story.
The films aim to give greater context and meaning to the opera. While opera is a great medium for exploring emotional psychodrama and sharing emotions with others in real-time, it fails in delivering other specific messages. The film is structured around a recording of Eva’s interview with the opera’s composer and librettist, archival footage and photos from Eva’s life, our recording session of arias from the opera, and interviews with the cast and creative team. In this way, we hope to connect our audience directly with Eva’s personal story in order to discover how her teachings can impact the way we live in the world.
I couldn’t imagine trying to communicate the fullness of Eva Mozes Kor’s life experience in any one medium, or even only in two. But I know that working on this project both as an opera and in its opera documentary film has deepened my relationships with Eva’s story. When we do perform the opera live (post-pandemic), I am certain that we will screen this documentary film to those who seek a deeper experience from the opera itself. And I know that I will be a better interpreter, conductor, and artist for having created it.
Lastly, I’d like to direct you to the DensitySOUND Kickstarter Campaign to learn more about our efforts toamplify the impact of Density512’s artistic output and share important work created in Central Texas in order to connect our region with the national and international new music community.
CLICK HERE TO VISIT KICKSTARTER
We have a lot of new media in the works that will amplify the impact of Density512’s artistic output and share important work created in Central Texas in order to connect our region with the national and international new music community.
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For now, I’d like to leave you with a few questions:
• What media do you consume?
• What messages are embedded in those media themselves?
• How can you align the intentions of your artmaking with the medium by which you share it?
• If the medium is the message, what message are you sharing with the world?