The Beat

Welcome to The Beat, Decential’s weekly exploration of music, culture and the new Internet – featuring all the friends we’ve met along the way.

On the culture-tech byway, things move at breakneck speeds. From web3 to AI, copyright to collective ownership, art to psychedelics, The Beat is an exercise in association. We all contain multitudes, and within them, vast differences. But there is some connective, fundamental essence to be found.

The Beat is dedicated to that essence; the rest, as Alex Ross wrote, is noise.

Why Art Does

“Why do I want to listen to one specific record again and again and again…”

That’s one of the questions posed in What Art Does: an unfinished theory. The short book, co-written by Brian Eno and the artist, Bette A., will be released in physical form next year. For now, a limited edition PDF is available on Metalabel.

I’ve always been fascinated by this question. It’s why I named my company ‘Grey Matter.’ In our brains, grey matter helps us process the feelings conjured by music (and everything else). Different melodies, harmonies and rhythms create unique reactions in each and every one of us. It helps us feel, makes us distinct and brings us together.

And today I want to focus on that last sentence – all of its bits are addressed in What Art Does, manifested in playful and pithy dictums that help us understand what art is and who art is for. 

And it’s for all of us, of course, because as my favorite extract reads: “Art is a way of making feelings happen.”

What Art Does

Across 10 chapters, Eno and Bette A. tussle with questions surrounding art. What is it, exactly? If art is something but not everything, it must have contours – some end and beginning that’s at least halfway definable.

“The less functional a thing is – the less it has to do something in particular – the more space for art there is in it: the more freedom there is in it,” they write. “The art engagement begins where the functional engagement ends.”

But then, “The fact that something is generally seen as an art object does not dictate that we will have an art engagement with it. And the fact that something is generally seen as a functional object does not dictate that we can’t have an art engagement with it.”

Art is for all of us, then, but not all art is art to all of us, and some non-art is art to some of us. It’s a perilous path to define such a mythical thing. And on that road, What Art Does offers a great many provocations for us to ponder – like, art is “all kinds of things where somebody does more than is absolutely necessary for the sake of the feeling they get by doing it.” And “play is how children learn and art is how adults play.” 

There’s even a lovely section on haircuts, an art form most of us engage with without thinking of it as art. It’s but one of many things that help us say: “This is the person I would like to be” or “this is the person I would like you to think of me as…”

It’s in these expressions that we begin to shape ourselves – and the world around us. And it’s the act of beginning that really matters. “You don’t finish a building: you start it,” Eno and Bette A. write, borrowing words from the writer Stewart Brand. “And that is the way we could think about artworks and, probably, our lives. As artists, we don’t finish it: we start it. It goes on to have a life without us, a life we didn’t predict. Let’s start admiring gardeners as much as we admire architects. It will always be unfinished.”

And near the end – but not finish, of course – of the book, they leave us with an approximation of the old adage “be the change you wish to see in the world” (which, in truth, is a summation of a longer Gandhi quote that’s been conveniently diluted to bumper sticker-size): “Live the world you want. Let’s begin new worlds that we like.”

Network Archives

Those words are something of a totem for web3 builders. “Worldbuilding” has become a kind of catch-all in blockchain land, an embodiment of potential, imbued in features like immutability and interoperability. Conceptually, they are the ultimate freedom agents, unshackling artists from exploitative and siloed platforms. It’s an idyllic thought, and not one fully realized, but there have been many to invoke the technology to begin new worlds.

For the past several months, Jamie Reddington – who makes music as Sound of Fractures – has been curating Network Archives 001: A Directory of Inspiration (also on Metalabel; it was produced by Jade Garcia, designed by Ana Carolina and executive produced by C.Y. Lee). “I set out to curate something that captured what’s happening at the ground level,” he writes in the foreword, “where creators are not only documenting their work but also sharing the processes and challenges that shape it.”

An introductory section titled “Who is This For?” reads: “This idea is not to provide templates for use, but inspiration for creators to try their unique ideas as technology impacts the world around us.”

As I mentioned a few Beats ago, FOLK was amongst the projects included – as were a couple dozen others from the brief and turbulent history of on-chain music. To unite them, Reddington offered the tagline: “Creativity thrives when shared.”

One of the collection’s essays is by Wild Awake, “an experiment in scene building through a common cultural ethos.” The project was conceived by Reddington and Maarten Walraven – whose Music X newsletter I frequently cite here.

Amongst other things, the co-founders write, Wild Awake is a game. It seeks to invoke a sense of “open-world gameplay” by instilling “delight and surprise” in its community. And in a section titled “Who is this game for?,” they say: “For people who want to develop creative freedom and explore the unknown.”

And, indeed, what’s more indicative of creative freedom than an ability to begin new worlds?

It’s those brave pathfinders – the Gandhi’s amongst us, if you will – who we remember and quote, referencing them as harbingers of some new way. They’re the people who observed that this current iteration of the world is not for me, but at the same time, I am not alone, so I will begin another for others who feel like I do.

From his conception of ambient music to, today, making “sci-fi Irish folk music” with U2, Eno is one such person. 

And in Chicago, Steve Albini Way was just christened, honoring the late engineer as another: for castigating the music industry, working with anyone who called – as long as they were serious about making a record (not a common trait amongst renowned engineers) – and refusing to accept royalties.

And new worlds can begin in small packages – like with the tools and apparatuses that help us build and protect them. Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker, for instance, just invented a new instrument – and Gibson, the iconic guitar maker, just issued Trump a cease and desist for infringing on the design of theirs (for a Make America Great Again acoustic made in China, no less). 

And as we hand that man the nuclear codes, there’s never been a more important time to begin new worlds – and to protect the art of this one. I’d like to borrow Walraven’s coda in the most recent edition of Music X:

Making and appreciating art, whatever that means for you, certainly falls within that sentiment of defiance and care. And that’s truly the magic of what art is and who art is for. “The things we care about are the things we make art about,” write Eno and Bette A. “We frame them with our attention. Art is proof of care.”

Coda

I studied music at Carleton College, a liberal arts school in rural Minnesota. It’s a quirky place, known for folks like Daft Hands and Beard Guy, and for nerdy pranks – like transforming the campus observatory into R2D2. And there’s Oregon Trail, too.

Back in 1971, the seminal computer game was invented by a trio of Carls. The game was initially designed to teach eighth grade schoolchildren about the realities of 19th-century pioneer life. 

Worldwide, tens of millions of copies were sold, and now it’s being made into a film. And there’s something universally appealing about venturing into the unknown – about a willingness to endure the harshness of a frontier in the hope that something better waits on the other side. 

Though I’d spent hundreds of hours playing Oregon Trail as a kid, at Carleton, I only played it once. I found some emulator as a freshman and played it for an hour or so in my dorm room. I wanted to channel the spirit of the inventors.

But what was most abiding about that moment was not the game itself. I used that hour of play – that brief reprieve from work – to listen to the album, The Campfire Headphase, by a band called Boards of Canada. It had been hocked to me by some enlightened upperclassman, and that music is what brings me back to that moment. It made me feel a certain way, so I kept listening to it, chasing that feeling. Years have gone by, and I’m still listening to it, again and again and again…

Now go outside and listen to music – it’s a beautiful day.

My name is MacEagon Voyce. For more music and less noise, consider subscribing to The Beat. And if you already do, consider sharing with a friend. Thanks for being here.