Invisible Music
Oct. 23rd, 2003 09:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ltmurnauA while back I was in the Vincent de Paul thrift store and picked up three CDs with odd titles: "Industry/ Leisure/ Pop"; "Street People"; and "Technovision". It wasn't until I got home and played some of them that I understood what I had bought: production music or, in a sense, corporate Muzak.
This music is designed strictly to set moods and more often act as bridges between scenes in corporate training films and things like that. Here's a sample* from "Industry/ Leisure/ Pop", content described as "corporate themes and atmospheres" (there are over 50 tracks on the CD, all different versions and lengths of about ten tunes):
http://www.carlinmusic.co.uk/sounds/Carlin16501_POSITIVE_ACTION.m3u
Can't you just imagine everyone getting up from the table as this music plays, ready to try the new software or human resources strategy, or truly feeling their new commitment to working in a space free of sexual harassment? I know I can. I've often thought that all my office needed was an appropriate soundtrack (though all too often that would be the soundtrack to Eraserhead).
If you want to hear more, the Carlin Music Company (which produced the three CDs I have) is offering samples online at http://www.carlinmusic.co.uk/try/Carlin_Listing.htm.
***
This "invisible music" reminds me of the term J. G. Ballard coined of “invisible literature”, which he says comprises “market research reports, pharmaceutical company house magazines, the promotional copy for a new high-energy breakfast food, journals such as Psychological Abstracts and the Italian automobile magazine Style Auto, the internal memoranda of TV company planning departments, sex manuals, [and] medical textbooks such as the extraordinary Crash Injuries.” [from an interview in Re/Search #8/9] He says this vast catalogue of half-known obsessions and arcane data is the best window into what we are really thinking about these days. Take that, Don DeLillo, right up your most personal orifice.
I found an interesting riff on Ballard's idea of invisible literature as applied to the blizzard of paper that showered New York City on 911 Day at http://www.noemalab.com/sections/ideas/ideas_articles/pdf/dery_memo_mori.pdf.
***
My wife and I fight constantly about what wake-up CD to put in the machine. I like to wake up to squealing trumpets blaring "The East Is Red", or the Ramones belting out their two-minute anthems, or Diamanda Galas screeching passages from Leviticus. She wants to wake up to barely audible Faure, or at least music without a discernible beat. Only person I know who can get a two-day headache from under thirty seconds' exposure to any unpleasant environmental stimulus, especially music. Where's the middle ground here? So now I have "Technovision" in the machine, but its Muzaky nature is so unobtrusive I can't wake up in time!
This music is designed strictly to set moods and more often act as bridges between scenes in corporate training films and things like that. Here's a sample* from "Industry/ Leisure/ Pop", content described as "corporate themes and atmospheres" (there are over 50 tracks on the CD, all different versions and lengths of about ten tunes):
http://www.carlinmusic.co.uk/sounds/Carlin16501_POSITIVE_ACTION.m3u
Can't you just imagine everyone getting up from the table as this music plays, ready to try the new software or human resources strategy, or truly feeling their new commitment to working in a space free of sexual harassment? I know I can. I've often thought that all my office needed was an appropriate soundtrack (though all too often that would be the soundtrack to Eraserhead).
If you want to hear more, the Carlin Music Company (which produced the three CDs I have) is offering samples online at http://www.carlinmusic.co.uk/try/Carlin_Listing.htm.
***
This "invisible music" reminds me of the term J. G. Ballard coined of “invisible literature”, which he says comprises “market research reports, pharmaceutical company house magazines, the promotional copy for a new high-energy breakfast food, journals such as Psychological Abstracts and the Italian automobile magazine Style Auto, the internal memoranda of TV company planning departments, sex manuals, [and] medical textbooks such as the extraordinary Crash Injuries.” [from an interview in Re/Search #8/9] He says this vast catalogue of half-known obsessions and arcane data is the best window into what we are really thinking about these days. Take that, Don DeLillo, right up your most personal orifice.
I found an interesting riff on Ballard's idea of invisible literature as applied to the blizzard of paper that showered New York City on 911 Day at http://www.noemalab.com/sections/ideas/ideas_articles/pdf/dery_memo_mori.pdf.
***
My wife and I fight constantly about what wake-up CD to put in the machine. I like to wake up to squealing trumpets blaring "The East Is Red", or the Ramones belting out their two-minute anthems, or Diamanda Galas screeching passages from Leviticus. She wants to wake up to barely audible Faure, or at least music without a discernible beat. Only person I know who can get a two-day headache from under thirty seconds' exposure to any unpleasant environmental stimulus, especially music. Where's the middle ground here? So now I have "Technovision" in the machine, but its Muzaky nature is so unobtrusive I can't wake up in time!
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