Fieldnotes on Lifeaquatic.blogspot
I’m assuming blog takes it’s name directly from the Wes Anderson film, The Life Aquatic feat. Steve Zissou
- is this an aesthetic borrowing? Elements in both saturation/nostalgic color editing, evocative of half-existing places, appeals to a similar subcultural sensibility
- what does the underwater aesthetic of the title have to do with the music?
Major themes/Questions:
1.the way in which aesthetic is converted into music/defines the music (reflexivity between aesthetic and music)?
2. How does this blog conceive of itself and its role in relation to a larger blogosphere/online community?
3. Is a blog as virtual and placeless as it might seem?
Formal Aspects
- What vocabulary is used in the blog descriptions?
- Words/themes/aesthetics that come up often in description?
- What level of technical description is necessary for the blog?
- Common technical words: 808s,
- What is the way in which the site seeks to incorporate other music sites/communities (bandcamp, soundcloud, etc…)
- What level blog is life aquatic?:
- What size is the readership?
- Which blogs follow life aquatic? Which blogs does life aquatic follow? (*How does the blog incorporate it’s twitter presence?)
- How close to the bedroom are the producers?
- Are the AU producers more small-scale than the foreigners?
- What is relationship between Life aquatic’s fledging label and it’s music? (Is the self-conception of life aquatic something beyond a simple tumblr-blog)
- Interesting point: do the labels anchor the the blog down to a certain place (the labels tend to be geographically centered e.g. mine is mine records)
- Is the tumblr-style & host an issue of convenience or aesthetic?
- How does this aesthetic take hold?
- Observation: sometimes Beeler seems to impose photos on work that already has different artwork on the band/artist’s bandcamp
- What is the history of this aesthetic?
- Is the blog meant to give legitimacy/attention to the local beat community (how wide is the net of this community (Sydney? New South Wales? Australia? Oceania?)
- Cities in Australia:
Melbourne (Andras Fox, flashforest), Sydney, Adelaide (Slamagotchi), Sydney burbs, Perth (Maxxy Bills, The Blank, Taku), New Zealand (Ben Jamin), Canberra (One Talk)
- Observation: beatmakers outside of Australia usually don’t have their location mentioned in posts (exceptions to places of wider beat note, established electronic music presences/histories/lores etc… (e.g. Berlin, Brooklyn, UK)
- Point: lifeaquatic plays an interesting role in asserting the musical space of Australia (+ NZ, Tasmania) into a larger context
On the music?
- What musical motifs are most present?
o Ideas: wash synths, chopped female vocals, field recordings, vinyl haze/fuzz , fading, off-kilter beats, euphoric repitition, slight flaws/glitches
- What disparate musical elements are combined in the blog?
- What tropes are being refererred to?
- Is there an attempt to explicitly mimic/riff on/emulate/improve certain artists?
- Panda bear, J Dilla, post-dubstep,
- Anti-Downtempo? A more personalized, affecting downtempo (off-kilter beats as opposed to precision breakbeats)
- What is the process of curation for the blog and how does this relate to the maintenance of the blog aesthetic/cohesion? (Discuss with Jarred)
- What more established bands are referenced in other descriptions?
- Mount Kimbie, Washed Out
- To what degree does the blog attempt to give the music submissions genres?
- Is this a necessary organization tool?
- Are artists making their music with the blog aesthetic in mind or does lifeaquatic seek them out (questions of directionality, reflexivity)?
- What is the age/demographic/location of these music makers?
- Several instances of younger beatmakers (16 years old)
- What is the process by which one finds out about the blog and submits their music (via soundcloud, megafire, dropbox, email, etc…)?
-Some look to have been sought out or heard about then posted (this distinction is not made explicit by Jarred on the blog)
- What is the role of the blog in music distribution?
-Note: every single post has free downloadle MP3 (hosted on site)
Most posts have links to either downloadable bandcamp albums (majority cost the price of an email), or otherwise megafire mixtapes, soundcloud sets, etc…
- What is the role of remixing on these blogs? How much emphasis is placed on the intra-artist referencing?
o Does remixing the other artists have an impact on creating cohesion in the scene or is this nonsense?
Guerre // See The Birds (Albatross Remix) ( June 10, 2011)
Slamagotchi + Panorama + Galapagoose // Sleeping Pill
-announces a Galapagoose show (info on facebook)
Research Methodology Brainstorm:
1. Direct contact of life aquatic people
a. Jared Beeler
2. Thorough website analysis
A. d notion: thorough extensive categorization of “Friends”
-goal: create blog-spatial profile of Life Aquatic Blog
B.. notion: investigate comments
- see who is posting (other musicians, frequent readers, both, etc…), what they are commenting about (which tracks are praised, what is the tone of the dialogue, technical jargon, vocabulary used to indicate approval/censure?)
C. notion: collect all post description & analyze
- run through word aggregator to pick out recurring ideas
D. notion: Photographic analysis of photos
- collect information and categorize different elements of aesthetics in each photo
· type of filter: warm, saturated, (Eggleston?), “hipstamatic” canon
- meant to evoke nostalgia?
· content of photo:
- barren landscapes, semi-notable landscapes, bedrooms, women (unsexualized & sexualized), Architecture (uninspiring tableaux), lagoons, smoking (kept to a minimal), obscured & obliqued shots, land-water points (beaches, docks, coves, ponds), underwater shots, making out, ostensibly nothing, people gazing, Francis Bacon style facial warping, fetishized relics & household items (mooseheads, tool walls), balloons, low-key party residue, people-less road trip shots, airplane shots (views from the wing), chandeliers, snow, skies, thighs, palm trees,
· connection between mood of photo & music
· notably absent: bold ironic statements, aggressive/upsetting subjects/tones
3. The Ethnographic Element
a. Questions: How to gain an insider perspective into this online community
i. Is it necessary to access as a musicmaker
ii. Participate by commenting, reposting, etc… through multiple means (site, fbook, twitter, bandcamp)
iii. Interviews (moreso discussions) with Jared Beeler, immediate circle of blog friends, contributors
iv. Music listening (further hashed out in # 4)
4. Listening to the music
a. What approach should I take to listening to the music (listen to whole catalogue?)
b. Establish a definitive list of musical motifs and repetitive instruments
Wow, Houston! You seem to have done quite a significant amount of thinking about your approach to this project and how you wish to go about studying different aspects of the scene created and portrayed on Lifeaquatic.blogspot.com. One thing that you might want to do, if you do think there is an “aesthetic borrowing” of the title from Wes Anderson film, you may wish to explore that film and compare/contrast what you find there with what you see on the website.
ReplyDeleteI think a good next step for you might be to do some “digging” to try to find answers to the numerous questions you posed. Depending on what you find, I imagine that you might find it beneficial to narrow the scope of what you ultimately focus on for your project. As far as your methodological approach: I think it would be really beneficial if you could talk with Jared Beeler. I encourage you not to fear coming across as “lame, condescending or aggressive” – make sure you prepare in advance and be quite open in your active interest/desire to “learn what life aquatic is all about.” If you present yourself as wanting to hear about Beeler’s experience, what drives him to be involved etc, I think he would be more open to you. You also may want to try to contact him sooner rather than later…. Good luck!- Misa
This is an exemplary set of fieldnotes -- they really shed light on your thought process, strategizing, emerging themes, and (most importantly) the range of questions that are occurring to you as you work through the material. One note of caution: you should think carefully about whether/how to pursue participant-observation "as a musicmaker" if you don't have your own tracks to contribute and don't plan to reveal your identity as a researcher. This is a sticky question, since of course many people use pseudonyms when they participate in online communities -- but passing off someone else's music as your own [even with that person's permission] is something else again. This can be a very sensitive issue in this kind of scene (see Lysloff's chapter on modders in Music and Technoculture, which I think we already recommended to you). If you were proposing this methodology to an IRB, they'd almost certainly tell you that you shouldn't be participating in the community at all without highlighting your identity as a researcher. In general, most web-based researchers agree that "lurking" is an acceptable methodology in most publicly accessible online scenes, but actively participating without revealing your aims is not.
ReplyDelete