Comments on: Score Not Code http://www.neoteny.org/2010/02/04/score-not-code/ The American Left, Societal Transformation, and Biological Evolution Sat, 04 Feb 2012 06:35:11 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: Andrew http://www.neoteny.org/2010/02/04/score-not-code/comment-page-1/#comment-2605 Andrew Thu, 04 Feb 2010 20:20:21 +0000 http://www.neoteny.org/?p=632#comment-2605 Indeed! Evolution is nothing but a dance! Perhaps DNA are only the footsteps left after the dancers have moved to another party. Your jazz interpretation feels right. Indeed! Evolution is nothing but a dance! Perhaps DNA are only the footsteps left after the dancers have moved to another party.

Your jazz interpretation feels right.

]]> By: Mark Stairwalt http://www.neoteny.org/2010/02/04/score-not-code/comment-page-1/#comment-2604 Mark Stairwalt Thu, 04 Feb 2010 20:12:17 +0000 http://www.neoteny.org/?p=632#comment-2604 I'd suggest that immanence is even more a feature of jazz improvisation—especially the polyphonic sort heard in New Orleans and later in the avant-garde pioneered by Charles Mingus—which is described by nothing so staid or authoritative as a score delivered from an absent composer, but rather a melody and its harmony being interpreted without a leader, via a shifting set of realtime feedback loops which provide for endless night-to-night variation, all within a self-sufficient, living tradition that unfolds over decades. (As I think saxophonist Phil Woods pointed out regarding the need to at long last move beyond the conventions of European Art Music, "George Washington *won* the war!") Anyway, the score analogy de-literalizes DNA somewhat the same way jazz de-literalized the melodies, harmonies, and lyrics of Broadway show tunes -- and that can only be a good thing, I say. I’d suggest that immanence is even more a feature of jazz improvisation—especially the polyphonic sort heard in New Orleans and later in the avant-garde pioneered by Charles Mingus—which is described by nothing so staid or authoritative as a score delivered from an absent composer, but rather a melody and its harmony being interpreted without a leader, via a shifting set of realtime feedback loops which provide for endless night-to-night variation, all within a self-sufficient, living tradition that unfolds over decades. (As I think saxophonist Phil Woods pointed out regarding the need to at long last move beyond the conventions of European Art Music, “George Washington *won* the war!”) Anyway, the score analogy de-literalizes DNA somewhat the same way jazz de-literalized the melodies, harmonies, and lyrics of Broadway show tunes — and that can only be a good thing, I say.

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