It is disappointing that no one seemed to take notice of Will Self's "imaginary archive of modernist radio" broadcast Sunday Feb. 3 cf. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01qdyvf
presented as the rediscovery in the bowels of Broadcasting House of a "remitter" built secretly in the 1920s that could
recapture today from the ether the not-quite-vanished radio broadcasts of even 90 years ago, extending for example to the "sound track" of Fritz Lang's silent movie Metropolis (i.e. orchestral scores, composed expressly for this movie, available to those cinemas with paid orchestras competent to play it, instead of a pianist improvising.)
Author Self's commentary had nothing specially enlightening to say about modernism, as advertized, but his scrapbook of recorded fragments held the attention, perhaps of enough people to constitute an acceptable broadcast audience, although it did not apparently prompt any cogent thought.
He interpolated in the middle:
Q: "Why did you want to make a programme about modernism?"
A: "It's just an emotional thing . . ."
Perhaps Marshall McLuhan said 50 years ago everything that might be said, but in another scrapbook that we have not yet sorted into categories we can recognize.
Kingsley Amis said of James Joyce had invented something like the LP record, with room to hold absoutely everything. (He dissented, saying jazz was better on 78 r.p.m. disks than longer on LP.)
presented as the rediscovery in the bowels of Broadcasting House of a "remitter" built secretly in the 1920s that could
recapture today from the ether the not-quite-vanished radio broadcasts of even 90 years ago, extending for example to the "sound track" of Fritz Lang's silent movie Metropolis (i.e. orchestral scores, composed expressly for this movie, available to those cinemas with paid orchestras competent to play it, instead of a pianist improvising.)
Author Self's commentary had nothing specially enlightening to say about modernism, as advertized, but his scrapbook of recorded fragments held the attention, perhaps of enough people to constitute an acceptable broadcast audience, although it did not apparently prompt any cogent thought.
He interpolated in the middle:
Q: "Why did you want to make a programme about modernism?"
A: "It's just an emotional thing . . ."
Perhaps Marshall McLuhan said 50 years ago everything that might be said, but in another scrapbook that we have not yet sorted into categories we can recognize.
Kingsley Amis said of James Joyce had invented something like the LP record, with room to hold absoutely everything. (He dissented, saying jazz was better on 78 r.p.m. disks than longer on LP.)
thanks v much.
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