The Medium is the Message

This blog post is for the lecture on December 3^rd, 2018.

For this lecture we came to class having visualized a few maps that represent which music is consumed where and the evolution of music flow through Art Tatum. The first piece showed the map of America, and as you clicked on the states it showed the songs that were recorded in that state or by an author from that state. I was not surprised, as I checked the scores from each place I have lived, to find that they all matched generally the type of music that seemed common there, even today. Texas had a more light and soft “country” score, Georgia had the swing uppity “country” scores, and Virginia had the relaxed almost gospel music as the first few scores. These scores could have possibly driven the market to influence the music that people today listen to in these places, and if I were told that I would not be surprised. Texas has always been a hefty consumer of “country” music due to the nature of the state. They are more likely to appreciate a song that talks about campfires and prairies than a state like Virginia. Likewise, Virginia is more likely to appreciate a piece of music that mentions anything about landscape and the color green where as in Texas this would be a foreign concept.

The next article I have something to say about is the map of people that are similar to Art Tatum. When I first looked at this map my brain said “nope.” However, being the avid digital media consumer I was taught to be in this course, I pushed on. This crazy looking map actually turned out to be something quite interesting. While it looked like what I would expect a New York’s sized population of spiders’ nests in the space that would fit under my door, the map actually represented the amount of times that people went from listening to Art Tatum to another pianist that was similar. This allowed the map to show the people that consumers thought was “most like” Art Tatum. The comments section of the article vehemently disagreed that anyone could be like Tatum and, since I have not heard him, I will have to take their word for it. I feel like I kind of have to tie this back to the Pandora argument made earlier. These other people were similar to Tatum and therefore also gained the following of his fans, and this is how people consume music. They think “This person is like my favorite, so I will listen to them as well.” So, sorting music based on how similar the music is to the original artist is a pretty good way to gain a fan base.

As a final note, I have placed here a side by side reference to the map and spiders’ nests for your consuming pleasure (and so we can all question why Jervis cannot tell the difference between frost and said New York population scenario):

“Russell Jervis has Farmed this field since 1944. His neighbors mistook the huge spider web for a weird localized ground frost.”