TheCapitalClinic

In my previous blog on The Politics of Resistance, Small Group Dynamics, and Super-nodes, an experienced "micro-label" operator and artist referred us to some seminal thinkers [activists] to provide some guidance to help artists [as agents/actors in a multi-dimensional, push-pull world of conflicting interests] through the current crises in the music industry as they come to grips with a failing business model and new technologies.

This week I have decided to take up some of the points raised in a new blog at the Nightschool for Entrepreneurs because this is an opportune time to develop a New Fuzz Music Collective for the reasons discussed below.

quote: john geek:

...Iconoclastic artists...fighting to insert themselves...as agents-in-the-world while engaging in a push-and-pull with the economic powers that be, would be well-advised to review the works of... Pierre Bourdieu...Guy DeBord...[and Marshall MacLuhan]... I think these folks are more relevant than ever today, and their action ideas are more achievable than they have ever been thanks to the internet...

To john geek: This is quite a line-up: Piere Bourdieu, Guy Debord, and Marshall McLuhan. Let me attempt to "blog-distill" in some quick take-away quotes how these formidable truth-seekers might view the [perhaps false] dichotomy of the (i) soul-searching requirements of artists as natural "inner directed" resisters of authority on the one hand and (ii) the social/economic pressures of an "other directed" consumption-driven society, on the other hand, that we have been discussing above [the bold-face emphasis has been added by me].

1. Bourdieu attempts "to transcend a series of oppositions which characterized the social sciences (subjectivism/objectivism, micro/macro, freedom/determinism)." "He extended the idea of capital to categories such as social capital, cultural capital, and symbolic capital. For Bourdieu each individual occupies a position in a multidimensional social space; he or she is not defined by social class membership, but by the amounts of each kind of capital he or she possesses." Thus, he attempts to show empirically that..."despite the apparent freedom of choice in the arts, people's artistic preferences (e.g. classical music, rock, traditional music) strongly correlate with their social position."

2. "Debord's theories attempted to account for the spiritually debilitating modernisation of both the private and public spheres of everyday life by economic forces during the post-WW2 modernisation of Europe. He rejected as the twin faces of the same problem both capitalism of the West and the statism of the Eastern bloc." "...alienation is more than an emotive description or an aspect of individual psychology: rather, it is a consequence of the mercantile form of social organization which has reached its climax in capitalism." Dubord and his works, " will still be remembered a hundred years from now - were written by someone who regarded himself as 'a professional revolutionary working in the cultural field'."

3. " The main concept of McLuhan's argument (later elaborated upon in The Medium is the Message) is that new technologies (like alphabets, printing presses, and even speech itself) exert a gravitational effect on cognition, which in turn affects social organization: print technology changes our perceptual habits ("visual homogenizing of experience"), which in turn affects social interactions..."

It is an intriguing challenge that john geek poses to reduce the foregoing selective ideas to a common thread of relevance in today's web-based world; however, for the sake of advancing the Fuzz cause at this critical juncture, allow me to suggest that each of these seminal thinkers could provide intellectual support and find emotional resolution in the notion of the establishment of a Fuzz Music Collective, alluded to above.

I think Fuzz artists and their affiliated boutique labels should pursue further the idea of a new web-based "Fuzz Music Collective" based on an "open application platform" [as opposed to the "walled-garden" approach taken by social network platforms like MySpace and Facebook] because I think the collaborative power of unfiltered collective action has the potential to resolve many of the vexing issues we have been addressing of late about how independent artists [and trusted facilitators/boutique labels] can co-exist and thrive in a symbiotic relationship in the modern digital era. As I stated elsewhere, I think the tri-partite relationship of Artist/Facilitator/Platform will be critical to development of a viable music business model of the future.

Actually, I understand that Fuzz is launching [hopefully this week] an innovation that has a "knock-your-socks-off" potential to kick-start the notion of a Fuzz Music Collective. As this new "application platform" is released [along with the "new look" of a more intuitive Fuzz site], I will start to blog more about this initiative to try to give the potential new business model some practical legs. While it is premature to state that the new Fuzz application platform is truly "open", I think the inevitable tide of pressure of the artists and their fans embracing the new application platform will make it so in due course.