In Chapter 2, Sturken and Cartwright mention a project by Komar and Melamid to find the "most wanted" and "most unwanted" paintings in different regions, and I just wanted to alert everyone that they did the same thing with music! And the results are pretty amazing.
According to Komar and Melamid about 72% of the world is supposed to like the most wanted song, while only 200 people in the entire world would warm up to the most unwanted.
What is so interesting is that nothing in the "most wanted" song is anything close to the pop charts of when this was made. Sure, it has elements (synths, lyrics about love, a catchy melody) that make up a pop song, but it obviously didn't become popular. It seems outdated, and really cheesy to everyone I've shown it too. However, and this is discussed in the reading as well, I come from a pretty privileged background, and most of my friends have "high class" taste. The common taste is predominantly fueled by lower-class ideology who would hate most of the pretentious crap I listen to anyway. Does anyone here like it? If so, why? Is anyone one of the 200 who likes the most unwanted?! The discordant part with the orgain in the middle is pretty cool, eh?
Will a Robot Take Your God?
2 months ago
This is so cool! Actually, I can only understand the most wanted song by comparing it to the most UNwanted song. I don't like either of the two, but I did listen to the unwanted song more.. so random.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure whether it brushed over it in the text or not, but in case it did (and it probably did on some level) I wanted to talk a little bit about the ideological context of Komar& Melamid's work:
ReplyDeleteOperating under the hospices of "institutional critique" the pair who emigrated from the soviet union shift attempt to reconcile the dialectic tension between Soviet populism (propaganda ect.) and post-modern elitism (in western art) by employing a populist (bureaucratic) system of appraisal (the poll) to explore post-modern issues (authorship/ audience.)
In this sense their work spans beyond the parameters of institutional critique to a wider inquisition into historiography and the cannon of intellectual development.