User:Niek Hilkmann/Graduate Research Seminar 2013/2014 - Trimester 2
Between Fact And Fancy
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Setting The Scene
Chapter 1. The big, gushing whirlpool of object orientated circulation
Lost
This chapter will consider all things ‘lost’ and what it actually means to be ‘lost’ and in what way this can come about and be changed.
Present
This chapter will consider what it means to be ‘present’ and what distinguishes it from being ‘lost’.
Back
This chapter will consider how ‘lost’ things can get ‘back’ and become ‘present’ again, without actually being there.
Chapter 2. The secret desires of the speculating dodologists
History
This chapter considers methods of history writing and how these constitute a view the of the past.
Speculation
This chapter concerns itself with ‘gaps’ in history and the way they are filled and what this constitutes.
Romance
This chapter actually considers the romantic worldview of the speculating historian and opposes that to ‘scientific’ speculation.
Chapter 3. The need for the lost or: How society needs mystery
Encyclopaedia
This chapter concerns the encyclopaedia and the way the modern popular encyclopaedia differs from past physical incarnations.
Wonders
This chapter considers the role of ‘wonders’ within the encyclopaedic thought and the way they are constituted.
Concerns
This chapters speculates the importance of wonders and the way they can become reissued within current society.
Chapter 1. The big, gushing whirlpool of object orientated circulation
Lost
Few words appear so definitely grim as the word lost. Yet, this is exactly the term with which this text starts. I will use the word, proximally 150 times in the following text, so it does not hurt to know what we are talking about. The word ‘lost’ is a past sense and past particle of the verb ‘lose’ which indicates two things: 1) Something becomes ‘lost’ within an act 2) Something always got ‘lost’ in the past. Apparent as this may seem, it is quite revealing that the word indicates that something actually has to happen for something to get ‘lost’ and that this lies in the unreachable quarters of a time that has already been. A person can ‘lose’ something, but the thing is not ‘lost’ until the ‘losing’ is over. The thing stays back in the past, together with the deed of ‘losing’ while we need to carry on with our knowledge that something is ‘lost’. One does not knowingly and actively ‘lose’ something in real life unfortunately. The ‘lost’ more than often is just ‘gone’ when we arrive or maybe it even ‘vanished’. Whatever, the case, it is not there anymore, even though it was there once.
More interesting than the idea that the thing is simply not there is the fact that we actively recall it as not being there. A ‘lost object’ might not concretely be present, but it is spiritually or maybe conceptually. For instance, if we take the Rodriguez Solitaire, we are aware of it’s not being present anymore. The way we recall this is by means of historical sources. The writings Francois Leguat are testifiers of the behavior of an animal that is not living in our present world anymore. It recounts a past event. As such, historical sources can recount past events. The diary of Leguat is a first hand account of his personal feelings and emotions on the trip, yet it is also a secondary source for the existence of the rodriguez solitaire. As such the past interweaves through objects again and again. The lost has to be accounted for in secondary sources to be present. Otherwise we would just be oblivious to its existence. That which is truly not accounted for has become nihil, it is simply gone without ever getting lost.
Events are not made of solid matter, but conceptual fabrications. The battle of Waterloo took place on Sunday, the 18th of June 1815. When the fighting stopped, the battle was over. It reached our history book however, by means of narration and history writing practice. The battle had been very important for a lot of people and changed the way culture and everyday life developed. That is why it was recounted and retold. Other events, such as me scratching my head on a non-specified date in 2009 are not recounted (not even by this mere mentioned). This moment is already truly gone, I cannot remember how and when it happened and my only awareness of it is that something like that happened. There are no sources about this and there is nobody interested in the occasion, as such the event is doomed to vanish from our history,
Objects however, do not disappear so easily. They can actually sustain through several events, being made concrete, and are not made concrete by their specific relation to a time and a place. They are witnesses to a specific time and can recount something about it in ages to come. Written texts, diaries for instance, do this all the time. A diary tries to make something concrete which is actually a passing abstract time based event. Lots of objects, like paintings and photographs try to do the same thing. A concrete object can testify for the past and travel between several before falling apart. Human beings do more or less the same thing, which is why people feel so dear to objects. They are after all solid matter, just like them. Yet their minds are constantly traveling from event to event in time, making them aware and afraid of getting lost.
Present
The present is a time that actually defies characterizing. It is most easily distinguishable from the past and the future by way of it’s not being either and the debatable characteristic that one is able to ‘act’ within it. The word present has affiliation with the word ‘now’, which also means not later or earlier. Yet, when thinking about the present arises one notices several problems. Even though the past as an abstract container of mentionable past events can be very clearly defined and the future as well by means of calendars and such, this is not the case with the present. Sometimes it’s just like events just fly though this moment to arrive at the other destination. Even though the present is a tough cookie to define we will look at it with the concept of ‘losing’ again in our mind.
In the previous paragraph I suggested that the word ‘lost’ suggested that an act of losing would be necessary for something to become lost in the future, where it would in turn lie in the past (see picture). As you see in the attached picture one has to actively lose something for it to become lost. This proposes a couple of problems though. In the present, one cannot have lost the thing one is ‘losing’, which means one loses something by making it shift to the past to make it lost in the future. This would suggest a sort of time traveling. The future however never arrives according to this logic, because one cannot define the present in the same way as a past event in which it already happened. This paradox all the more proves the inadequateness of linguistics when it comes to thinking about time, objects and space.
All mind games aside, the true problem with this idea of ‘losing’ is that it suggests that objects get actualized by being subject to an action, if not ‘losing’ than another deed. This means that something that is being ‘used’ in the present tense is something actual. To be more concrete, that something that is being put into ‘action’, more or less like a tool, and being part of a time-based event, is an actual object, while a passive object is part of the past. This suggests that the ‘lost’ or ‘redundant’ object’ at one point stops being ‘used’ which makes it a ‘past’ object. The strange thing about this is that passive objects, meaning past objects actually recount the past in the present, making it an active participant of another time. What I would like to propose is to clearly define these two characteristics of the object, the ‘present’ one that gets shifted to the ‘past’ and the ‘past’ one that gets shifted to the ‘present’ in the next chapter.
Reissue
So far we have focussed upon the linguistic metaphysical definition of certain times in relation to the meaning they have for concrete objects. In this paragraph I would like to consider the concept of issuing and reissuing to highlight another side of this matter. When we consider objects as being either ‘active’ or ‘passive’ we are condemning them to both time-based and matter-based constraints, while the actualization of objects is actually a duality that becomes concrete in its relation to mankind. Let’s propose the most basic of all human tools: the axe. We take an example from the Paleolithic age and consider the following. 1) The axe was used during the Paleolithic age 2) This age lies in the past 3) It is not being used as an axe anymore. I highlighted the part ‘as an axe’ for a very specific reason. When we consider the axe as a representative of the Paleolithic age we do this by considering it a tool with a specific purpose that illustrates its usage. By not being used with this idea in mind the object has become redundant, much like its owners and builders. However, this is not the entire matter.
First off, the axe has more purposes, as an historical object it has shifted through many more hands that were not interested in cutting meat. The axe can be put into a display in the museum and become a narrator of a certain time, as I already proposed. Bu the axe can also live up to a certain economic value at an auction and become a sort of currency. This is already a way of reissuing it within a contemporary framework, making it an active participant again, but divided from it’s past meaning which is certainly ‘lost’ in the process. Now consider the tourist industry that makes new hand axes to sell as souvenirs. These are in a sense authentic hand axes, one only needs to cut something up with it to make them active again, but furthermore they are contemporary souvenirs with their own meaning.
A souvenir is a personal remembrance, a very concrete manifestation of a specific time based event, like visiting a Paleolithic cave for instance. This personal aspect is able to give an object almost any meaning and relation you like. The axe becomes something completely else than might ever have been intended. This is up to you. From an historical viewpoint this puts in question the matter of authenticity. All kitsch and forging is at once an authentic form of kitsch and forging. A lighter in the form of a hand axe is actually a nifty resurgence of primitive design. As an historic object it’s a concrete reissuing of an historic object that puts the original in a perspective, yet also disfigures it. In our next chapter we will consider what is actually disfigured, according to whom, what gets lost in the process and what we win by reissuing objects and making them shift through different times.
Turning Scrooge’s Hourglass: Understanding speculative time travel through Dickens’ A Christmas Carol
"Ghost of the Future!" he exclaimed, "I fear you more than any specter I have seen. But as I know your purpose is to do me good, and as I hope to live to be another man from what I was, I am prepared to bear you company, and do it with a thankful heart. Will you not speak to me?"
i.
In Charles Dickens’ everlasting 1843 novella ‘A Christmas Carol’ three ghosts visit the greedy Ebenezer Scrooge on Christmas Eve. Each of these spectres takes him on a trip to a specific time and place throughout the story. These journeys are meant to give Scrooge insight into the human heart and change his miser ways. ‘A Christmas Carol’ as a literary exercise has very much the same goal and aims to open the heart of the reader so he will contribute to those less fortunate and join in the Christmas spirit. It is a carefully constructed example of moral propaganda, in disguise as a tale of the heart. The way Dickens deploys the concept of time travel has been very carefully thought out and always in relation to this humanistic goal. In this short text I would like to take a closer look at the way he uses time travel and what is constituted by this means.
During ‘A Christmas Scrooge’ Scrooge, the protagonist of the story has several encounters with the world of spirits. Before the previously mentioned Christmas Ghosts appear in his bedroom, the ghost of his former colleague, Jacob Marley, visits him. He warns him to change his ways or become like him after dead, chained and filled with regret. This happens while Scrooge is most certainly awake and consumed in a linear everyday time. However, he at first dismisses the occurrence by doubting his own mind. He says:
"You don't believe in me," observed the Ghost.
"I don't," said Scrooge.
"What evidence would you have of my reality beyond that of your senses?"
"I don't know," said Scrooge.
"Why do you doubt your senses?"
"Because," said Scrooge, "a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!"
Scrooge speculates about the reliability of senses, something that recurs later in the book as he is witness to ever more far unbelievable spectacles. Yet, this first ghost did not alter time, but manifested himself within the framework in which Scrooge believed. No serious shifting of vantage point takes place.
After this encounter Scrooge moves to bed, exhausted and with his clothes on. After a non-specified amount of time he gets awoken by the ghost of Christmas past. This ghost is able to bring Scrooge to specific moments and events that occurred in the past at Christmas. During these visits Scrooge is not able to communicate with anyone they encounter and is also not able to alter these. The Ghost Of Christmas Past expands on this with the following words:
"These are but shadows of the things that have been," said the Ghost. "They have no consciousness of us."
As such, the events are not physical, but mere traces of the past. Scrooge is only seeing these traces in a physical manner. This would be a shift in material one could say. Though it is difficult to make the non-physical into a material form, it is easy to relate to this sort of time travel. It is not so different from what we experience when we cognitively turn back to certain moments in our memory. We do not physically experience these moments again, but we are able to reflect upon them as a witness, much like Scrooge does during his visits in the past.
The following day, or so Scrooge believes, the second ghost visits Scrooge at his bed. This is the ghost of Christmas Present and he shows him what is happening that Christmas Day at various different places. Again, Scrooge is not able to communicate or participate in the events he is witnessing. Though it is not specified in the text, this has to mean that again they are witnessing shadows. Shadows of the present are a difficult thing to grasp; the present is always a momentary occurrence. How can one be witness to a moment and not actually be there? This articulates Scrooge’s detachment with the present and the people around him and gives his visits a sort of voyeuristic tendency. The way he discusses events that are actually happening while being present and not being present bear similarities to the message board beneath a news feed on the internet. There is a displacement in space, instead of time. To make matters more complicated, The Ghost of Christmas Present also has some knowledge of the future:
"Spirit," said Scrooge, with an interest he had never felt before, "tell me if Tiny Tim will live."
"I see a vacant seat," replied the Ghost, "in the poor chimney-corner, and a crutch without an owner, carefully preserved. If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, the child will die."
"No, no," said Scrooge. "Oh, no, kind Spirit! say he will be spared."
"If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, none other of my race," returned the Ghost, "will find him here. What then? If he be like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."
If the ghost of present is truly a ghost of present he distills his knowledge of the future by means of the present, meaning he can communicate with future ghosts of the Christmas Present. There is no single ghost of Christmas Present, each has it’s own and each gets lost at the end of Christmas day, after which it becomes the realm of a singular ghost of Christmas Past. The future ghosts of Christmas Presents would be the same entities as the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come. This Ghost differs from the ghost of Christmas past and present by not uttering a single word. The Ghost shows a couple of events and lets Scrooge do the talking. The future events that they visit are by no means definitive as the story proves and previous ghosts indicates. In this way Scrooge and the Ghost appear to visit a speculative future, one that what could be, much like the one the ghost of Christmas Present speculated about. In this way they are shadows:
"You are about to show me shadows of the things that have not happened, but will happen in the time before us," Scrooge pursued. "Is that so, Spirit?"
The future is not definitive in Dickens his mindset, while the past and present are. Yet, all can be made of the same shadowy stuff. If we give a psychological reading of the events we could suggest that the ‘shadows’ are human projections on events. Much like in Plato’s allegory of the dream cave they are there and not yet there, but they are the basis for a concept of reality. This reality would be the world in which Scrooge wakes up after the visits of the ghosts. He would have to get deeper insights into himself and the people around him to be a better, active citizen and break out of his isolated speculating mind, engaging in an active present.
ii.
In the previous chapters all the modes of time travel that occur in the book were more or less described as they appear and are usually understood. An interesting thing happens after the visit of the final ghost, however. Scrooge wakes up to realize that all his travels have actually occurred during one single night, instead of three. One could get the old cliché out of the closet and proclaim it was all a dream, making it possible to read the book as a psychological novel describing Scrooge’s dream instead of a fantastic ghost novel. This is almost necessary because paradoxes occur because of this event. The ghost of Christmas present would have shown Scrooge Christmas day while it was not Christmas day, but Christmas Eve. Or Scrooge would have had to travel back to Christmas day after the night:
x (Crosses indicate illustrations)
This paradox occurs because there is a clash between regular time and a fantastical time. The time Scrooge has spent during his travels should be longer than a single night, yet apparently isn’t. This time needs to be categorized or fitted into a narrative to make sense. To do that, it is necessary to grasp how time is actually understood within the novel. A Christmas Carol is actually a very clear example of a linear way of thinking about time, which only gets messed up towards the end of the novel. Within a linear time concept time itself is considered as an active agent that moves from one ‘time-based’ place to the other:
x
When time shifts along a line in which the future turns into the present and then into the past. The representation of this suggests the direction in which time is heading. The past can lie on top, which means that the present moves downwards, or to the left, following our reading trajectory towards the east. It is common to identify with the present and think towards the future. Another way of looking at time is to see the future moving towards us in the present, crossing us at one specific time and moving away towards the past. This mode of thinking requires a belief in ‘a sort’ of predestination, but manifests itself in many nuances.
In A Christmas Carol the future already exists up to a certain point, but by changing ‘the present’ it can change. The future is a tangible entity if one commits to it in the present. By means of careful planning and scheduling one can achieve goals. This can be seen in everyday life on a very common scale. For instance, a lunch appointment with ‘mrs. X’ at 12.30 tomorrow will make it more likely that she will have lunch at that that specific time. The future appears shapeable in this way, but only in so far as that the future is a future present. It is possible to stage occurrences, but 12.30 will also arrive without appointments with mrs. X. A specified and categorized moment only needs an accepted system to proclaim its arrival.
The same happens can be seen in ‘A Christmas Carol’ when Scrooge awakens on Christmas day. He is able, thanks to the correctional time trajectory of the Christmas spirits and with the help of careful planning, to change both Christmas Present, which has become a sort of Christmas Future, and Christmas Yet To Come. To do this, he has to mind all three and transcend them:
"I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future!" Scrooge repeated, as he scrambled out of bed. "The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. Oh Jacob Marley! Heaven, and the Christmas Time be praised for this! I say it on my knees, old Jacob; on my knees!"
Scrooge must control himself to become a better member for society. Now that he knows himself and it’s social rules he is able to make use of time to his advantage. The Christmas spirits have let Scrooge loose in a linear time based world in which people, according to humanistic laws can change things for the better and take control. Scrooge does this by buying turkeys, giving to welfare and attending parties. But maybe, he could have achieved much more by becoming a time lord?
iii.
So far, this short thesis has considered what is actually happening within ‘A Christmas Carol’. This final chapter will suggest some ways in which Scrooge could have taken time into his own hand and change society for the better in accordance to Dickens’ social ideas, but with a touch of magic realism. In the previous chapter the Christmas day paradox that occurs in the final chapter of the book was described. It comes down to one question: ‘How can Scrooge experience three days within one night?’ He himself only says the following about this:
"It's Christmas Day!" said Scrooge to himself. "I haven 't missed it. The Spirits have done it all in one night. They can do anything they like. Of course they can. Of course they can. Hallo, my fine fellow!"
Three days in one night, within a regular serialized way of thinking about time would ask for us to consider time on multiple levels with each of the visits happening on another plane:
x
Time would move according to regular laws, but it can manifest itself in different ways. Another way in which this would all be possible is by a shift in time at the end of Scrooge’s travel:
x
In both cases the ghost of Christmas present was already present, but not definitive, just like the ghost of Christmas yet to come after Scrooge returns. Time shifts individually for Scrooge, appears pre-determined, but is actually changeable in every present, which is a singular form of time, a particular instance that just is and is the only basis for our concept of time. This is of course the foundation for every sci-fi time-travel paradox in existence.
What if present is the only physical time and past and future present themselves within this? Consider the possibility that Scrooge was fooled by the entire town and that they acted out the time traveling scenes that he witnessed and that they afterwards just moved the calendar back three days. This would make all the events in ‘A Christmas Carol’ a little less magical, but could fix all time traveling paradoxes with only the not-so-impossible concept of an irregular calendar:
x
Instead of moving according to a given time system, Scrooge could change Christmas by overcoming linear thoughts about time. Most people believe in a tangible future, but a concrete past. But both are not physically present. As seen in ‘A Christmas Carol’, both are mere ‘shadows’ and rely on human speculation. As such, they are adaptable. The past can be rewritten and reinterpreted, getting different meaning according to specific contexts. Altering the past could have benevolent effects on the present and help create satisfactory changes, just like happened in the case of Scrooge. A not so perfect Christmas Day in the speculative Christmas Present turns into a great one by moving the clock around and letting Scrooge re-enact that day differently. Let’s turn past and future around for a bit:
X
In this schema the past moves upwards, crosses the present and moves away into the future. To live according to this way of thought, one merely has to re-enact certain specified time based events again. Consider time as an hourglass filled with the same events, running the other way around when the glass gets turned:
X
Living within the borders of certain rules and set out goals might seem preposterous at first, but this is exactly what individuals already do while gazing at ‘the future’. Every sort of planning and scheduling is a sort of speculative time travel, much like that of Scrooge when he journeys with the ghost of Christmas yet to come. What he sees did not occur in the end because he altered his ways in the present. One could say that Scrooge returned to the past when he travelled to the future and back. By returning to this time the future has no negative consequences.
The past shown by the ghost of Christmas past stays the same however, something Scrooge would rather change. Let’s consider him moving backwards after returning to Christmas day and changing his misdeeds throughout time. His misconduct would be far less severe the second time around and society would improve because these unfortunate circumstances can be undone. With the knowledge of events, it is possible to re-enact them differently while filling in the blank spots and drawing butterflies on black pages. Moving around the hourglass of time will make history clean again, provide new chances and provides a chance to change things. If it is possible to stick with one date for three days, it is also possible to create a systemic time logic in which the past can be altered. Scrooge should think bigger!
The Greatest Recursive Disco Medley Of The World
Back To Music
i
It seems already quite some time ago that Simon Reynolds published his overtly discussed book ‘Retromania’ in 2011. Much has been made of this analysis of popular music in the three years since it’s released and it has to be said that its stream of thought got appropriated and accepted by music journalists with an enthusiasm that they rarely exhibit for the records they review. In ‘Retromania’ Reynolds tries to illustrate the idea that popular music has become a self-referential medium, obsessed with its own history and not moving towards any particular 'future'. With a touch of melancholic drama he recalls the days when he felt music still held promises for the future and he wonders if contemporary music will ever bring back that feeling to him again.
Only two years after Reynolds published his stream of thought Daft Punk released an album that almost seemed to be tailor made to illustrate his ideas. The album was fittingly called ‘Random Access Memories’ and the title of the first song showed the almost impossible high goal they were aiming for: ‘Give Life Back To Music’. They call the listener to arms by crooning the following in the opening song:
“Let the music in tonight Just turn on the music Let the music of your life Give life back to music”
There are two kinds of ‘music’ present in this short stanza; Actual music, presumably blasting through some sort of degenerate stereo set and ‘the music of your life’ which appears to be vague metaphoric fodder for whoever wants to read more into the lyrics than there actually is. Whatever the case may be, this 'music of your life' appears to be the thing that brings the actual music you listen to life. Without this, it is actually devoid of meaning. Perhaps Daft Punk just try to make a meaningless general assumption that life should be lived, but the album seems to take the lyrics described above quite literal. The original makers of the music of our lives, the 'oldies and goldies', are actually present on 'Random Access Memories' and collaborate with Daft Punk. Giorgio Moroder, Pharrell and Niles Rodgers all got phoned in to show their skills once again. As such, the music of the past is present on the album to give life back to contemporary music and as such, contemporary life and emotions. Daft Punk use a pre-existing musical framework to create ‘new’ music that fits our day and age by actualizing past music.
ii
The idea of borrowing from the past to create something new is by no means particularly fresh. In fact, there are many predecessors to the retro obsessed age that Reynolds describes, even in the 'futuristic' years he writes so nostalgically about. There are minor differences within the approach to historical material between ages, but the contemporary quality of music is something that was always defined by technology and industry. Thus, 'retromania' was always present, only differently defined. A very obvious example of this is the bootleg disco culture in the late 70s and early 80s. In 1978 a Dutch popstar called Theo Vaness decided to release his first disco record. It was called ‘Back To Music’ and turned out to be a sort of dark. The record starts quite unusual with machines rattling and beeping in the background while a voice declares:
“This is the year 2501. Our world is no longer a place where you can dream of the future. Only of the past. We use our time machine now and then to go back to nature, back to music.”
After this a disco beat starts and a countdown begins. Year after year passes, until we reach 1978, the year the record was made. The journey through time is far from over, however, as Theo Vaness starts singing the Beatles ‘Yesterday’ and the tune suddenly turns into a medley of Beatles songs and popular hits from the 50s, 60s en 70s. After a couple of minutes the song reaches a sort of climax and the listener is safely transported back to 2501, the year where there is no future and people go back in time to experience music. This epic 12" can be seen as a mere piece of science fiction, but Vaness' thoughts on how music could be perceived in the future isn't so far off from what Reynolds speculate on and what Daft Punk illustrated. There is definitely a form of consumerist 'retro fetishism' going on here.
The actual song that tells this story is very different however. While Daft Punk made a meta-album with ‘classic’ artists in a contemporary environment and attempted to make a 'new' historical record in this way, Theo Vaness made a futuristic disco record about a speculative future. Both records appropriate popular melodies and styles, but the actual music in which this is done is vastlydifferent. Daft Punk truly hark back to 'past styles' and try to recreate these, while Vaness conforms the past to a contemporary disco-style, which was the popular commercial standard at the time.
iii
In the summer of 1979 Willem van Kooten, managing director of Red Bullet Productions by chance heard a disco bootleg record by Passion called ‘Let’s Do It In The 80s Great Hits’ that featured a sound byte of Shocking Blues’ Venus. Van Kooten owned the copyrights to this song, but he was not paid any money for this bootleg release. As a sort of childish response he decided to bootleg the bootleg and got one Jaap Eggermont to produce the first record of what later would be known as the 'Stars On 45' series. These bootleg disco records feature soundalikes who sing bit parts of popular songs and artists. For instance, 'the greatest rock and roll band of the world' features 17 Rolling Stones songs accompanied by a relentless disco drumbeat that goes on and on. This normalizes and unifies all the songs and takes them out of their context. Its a rather brain-numbing affair.
These records were by no means critical successes, but made a lot of money. The lengths the producers went through to make them sound ‘alike’ are quite extravagant compared to todays standards. There is definitely some sort of art involved in making inconspicuous covers, but with current sampling technology this whole process has become so easy that sounding alike is not such an interesting feat anymore. While Vaness is actually present in his own medleys and singing the songs himself, the artists on the 'Stars on 45' releases are mere sound effects and such the releases are anonymous. It could be said that this commercial, mindless appropriation of a musical past is the true precedent of shuffle culture and spotify and youtube music consumerism. As opposed to Vaness there's no personal flavor involved in traveling back to musical times. The past is relentlessly normalized, decontextualized and stripped of any meaning by the beat. As such, the music becomes the container of everything we want to, much like 'the music of our life' Daft Punk sing about, an empty container for our personal fetishes. Listening to songs on shuffle has a sort of similar effect.
Daft Punk know are part of a commercial apparatus and as such their approach to music isn’t unlike that of the stars on 45. Even though stylistically they don't appropriate a singular style, they are still part of a recursive industry by inviting the very people over who invented it. The guest appearance of Paul Williams in ‘Touch’ doubles as an ode to ‘Phantom Of the Paradise’, a 1974 satirical movie directed by Brian Da Palma in which the music industry is portrayed as a recursive monster that appropriates past styles again and again to gain money and success. In the movie is run by (actual) monsters who can’t stand getting old. Daft Punk would have fit right into the picture and ‘Random Acces Memory’ might function as a sort of alternative soundtrack to that. Paul Williams was always part of the recursive smoke & mirrors industry they try to bring back to life. Apparently they hope to bring back these mirrors themselves instead of their effects. The way this is establishes to industry and technology is by no means a new thing and Simon Reynolds merely seems to have struck a contemporary chord in linking this to a specific type of music that defines the alternative market. Theo Vaness envisioned a disco utopia that was destroyed when disco backlash peeped around the corner. In the end he was a thing of his time, much like Daft Punk and Simon Reynolds will be.