But that particular theatre organ is a triumphant assertion that music is made and lives in a physical universe. It is just SCALE. I think the digital repudiation of the complex interaction with the body to make music is dangerous, and the overwhelming experience of the Mighty Organ is a pointer to the reason.

They fire the calliope up at Scienceworks in Melbourne every now and again, if you are in town on the right weekend. Not the conference, obviously, because you will be/ will have been when you read this, busy as the proverbial bee.

Hmmm, it depends what you are interested in. Like, I would ask in what context was the piano used? I would be interested in the conjunctive social event enabled by the technology of the piano. This would also require architectural technologies perhaps (a ‘piano room’), social machinery (that produces the family, the club, the whatever?) and so on. What technology serves this function now, that is, to produce a similar conjunctural event? Mobile phones or iPods or something? Technology the enables conjunctive social events? That would include booze! Music-bsaed conjunctive social events? History is too long for cultural studies, I think?

The history of enabled mass-mobility is recent enough for me to engage with it in such a way that doesn’t require too much work!! Otherwise I wouldn’t bother running that line of argument for my thesis.

But I’m going to chew it over - I know there have always been intense confrontations within, say, music (sub)cultures (particularly among musicians) about the mastery of technology vs. automation vs. creativity vs. authenticity ever since the invention of the pianoforte…the ‘digital’ is just another permutation. That’s one way to look at it. The other way to look at it is to say that even though they are both ways to create soundwaves that are read as expressions of human creativity but that are at a remove from the human voice, there *is* something that matters (at least to the intimate user and/or enthusiast) about the difference between mechanical and digital technologies for making music.

p.s. what’s your opinion of automatic transmission, then?

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.03/wheels_pr.html

The difference between hi-tech cars and low-tech cars from an extreme Virilio-esque perspective is meaningless. Both ends of the spectrum involve the singularity of assisted auto-mobility for humans powered by oil-based energy, and that is what matters. Any difference in the technology is superficial, that is to say, cultural.

That is definitely the case with the retro desires around old electronic or digital technologies - Commodore 64s, Casios, gaming consoles, whatever…

But what about old cars, Glen? From the little i know from people who love doing up old cars, there’s a hierarchy of authenticity that’s really complex, not only to do with age, but to do with rarity, make, model, whatever (requiring a historical knowledge of the automotive industry) and *surely* to do with pre-electronic engines and stuff - the thing I hear people say a lot is that newer cars are shithouse because you can’t get in and do stuff with the electronics, whereas with older mechanical engines you have total control over the whole “body”, so to speak…

Would love the benefit of some of your knowledge, if you don’t mind giving it away for free

Although, with some of the technolgies you are discussing I think there may be rituals of reclamation based around relations of investment that contradict the brutal march of planned obsolescence, also going on in the car enthusiast circles, ie age-based scarcity becomes valued, rather than market-based scarcity. So they are counter-market-based identities, and the investment is determined ‘purely’ by interest-excitement affect. (Which then produces the sign of counter-market identity)