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Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

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Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#81

Post by sassyonsunday »

gertrui wrote: post #63
sassyonsunday wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

edit In retrospect this was sort of mean of you to say: > It doesn't help either when males who opt-in to this beauty standard Do you go around telling girls they have to try to look less pleasing to men and more pleasing to your own sensibilities? Aren't you just taking the place of the "male gaze" at that point and replacing it with your own gaze and your own demands to be satisfied? I like looking a certain way. I…

> Aren't you just taking the place of the "male gaze" at that point and replacing it with your own gaze and your own demands to be satisfied? No, women should be free to present however they please, that's my point. We shouldn't feel pressure to conform to imposed ideals of femininity, to be praised for it or knocked for not complying.

> No, women should be free to present however they please, that's my point. We shouldn't feel pressure to conform to imposed ideals of femininity, to be praised for it or knocked for not complying.

I agree with you 100%. When I was in middle school I wanted to look very neat and proper and it caused me problems with boys. I can remember getting picked on for looking too... well groomed? I feel like the opposite pressure exists for people assigned female. I was born with the default option of not needing to look "pretty" in the sense of enhancing my feminine features with clothes and makeup but I enjoy life a lot more when I'm allowed to. I feel for people who have the same problem but from another direction.

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#82

Post by somebody78978 »

gertrui wrote: post #23
sassyonsunday wrote: post #2

I visited the Moog museum this summer with a friend while visiting Asheville, NC. I asked if they had any Wendy Carlos related memorabilia and they didn't seem to. I think may be there was a Switched on Bach vinyl up on a wall in the back.... It made me feel a little sad. I think living with gender dysphoria hurts people's self-esteem tremendously. She also lived in a time when April Ashley, who was the image of femi…

Quoted post unavailable.

> This is unfortunately yet another gendered imposition, with women feeling like they have to adhere to a beauty standard that comes from the male gaze.

Beauty standards are set and enforced by both men and women. A lot of women dress up to impress other women, not just men.

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#83

Post by Blackthorn »

danidiaz wrote: post #25

Adult Swim's "Lords of Synth" comedy short contains a homage to Wendy Carlos in the form of a certain "Carla Wendos" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXgNo5Smino There's also the documentary "Sisters with transistors" about women pioneers of electronic music https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7r-3hlzpV7M

I love that Adult Swim short for many reasons, but especially that blink-and-you'll-miss-it statement that trans women are, in fact, women.

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#84

Post by DoreenMichele »

Now 83, she supposedly remains active in music, but is still an elusive figure who fiercely protects her work...

Her self-imposed seclusion is a cautionary tale for us today, something that she admitted in the 1979 People interview. “The public turned out to be amazingly tolerant or, if you wish, indifferent,” she said. “There had never been any need of this charade to have taken place. It had proven a monstrous waste of years of my life.”

It's really hard to say how things might have gone had we taken some other path and she remains a reclusive figure. Some things are intractable problems, like it or not. (And I definitely don't like how hard the world makes it for trans individuals.)

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#85

Post by zoklet-enjoyer »

howinteresting wrote: post #66
thefounder wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

> I wonder, who was raised to think well of trans people? Well, we should all try and make the world better, right? Many kids and young adults today have been raised with a sense of curiosity and empathy rather than one of scorn and judgment, and that includes fully supporting trans people. That is surely true of older adults as well, especially those whose parents are trans themselves or have close friends/relatives…

My girlfriend's kids were

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#86

Post by jacquesm »

thewebcount wrote: post #33
jancsika wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It was an oddity, but trans was perhaps not the cultural flashpoint like it is now. That's a wonderful wish, but I don't think it holds up to the evidence. Off the top of my head: 1. If you watch HBO's Lady and the Dale , you'll see that in the mid 1970s a local reporter was hounding the company not because he suspected fraud. (Apparently the entire company was fradulent.) Nope, he wanted to reveal that Carmichael…

> in the mid 1970s a local reporter was hounding the company not because he suspected fraud. (Apparently the entire company was fradulent.) Nope, he wanted to reveal that Carmichael was really a man who was dressed as a woman. That local reporter was Tucker Carlson's father, Dick Carlson.[0] Let's just say the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Carlson

Like father, like son, apparently.

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#87

Post by renewedrebecca »

mt_ wrote: post #73
bane wrote: post #19

I grew up in a very religiously conservative household and was raised to not think "well" of trans people. Simultaneously one of my favorite soundtracks of all time was the music to the original 1982 Tron. I had never heard anything quite like it compositionally, or sonically. Sweeping orchestras blended in with synthetic beeps, and bold vistas. It fit the aesthetic of the movie perfectly and was such a daring film p…

Create art about whatever you want but if you bind it with your identity and sexuality you're more an idealogue than a craftsman.

Ridiculous assertion. You're guilty of engaging in ideology just by suggesting it.

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#88

Post by _cenw »

drannex wrote: post #34
lordfrito wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tron 2 soundtrack was such a huge disappointment from me, and I'm a die hard Daft Punk fan. Listened to it once, never went back to it. The original Tron soundtrack is such a joy, totally underrated... Amazing how she blended electronics with orchestration... in my memory it feels like a purely electronic soundtrack but it's not at all. The artistic impulse would be to go full electronic with something like this, she…

Marginally off topic here, but Occams Laser created a 'sequel' album to the Daft Punk score, and I feel it more closely feels like an updated original Tron soundtrack. There are two complete albums they've released: The Grid[1], which is a concept album based on the 1982 original, and Return to the Grid[2] which is a reimagined concept album for Tron Legacy, both that I absolutely love listening to. 1. https://occams…

I would also recommend the Tron 2.0 (which was a video game released before Tron Legacy) soundtrack. It reimagines a few tracks and otherwise expands in a similar style to the first movie.

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#89

Post by renewedrebecca »

jancsika wrote: post #80
howinteresting wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the issue is that a lot of the trans research that had been conducted by then got burned by the Nazis. The modern idea of gender identity which is now widely recognized as the best possible explanation for the empirical outcomes we see was just being formed, and the dominant players in the field were still "sexologists" who decided whether someone was trans based on how attracted they personally were to their p…

You have a bibliography on the subject? I know Robert Sapolsky did a talk on essentially this subject, but it looks like he's on sabbatical writing a book atm.

I actually had an endocrinologist who interned with John Money and was horrified by his actions.

Money's main failure was his belief that gender is more or less exclusively a social constuct. Gender roles certainly are, but one's innate sense of their own gender is not.

Anyway, it's pretty easy to look him up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Money

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#90

Post by jacquesm »

Karawebnetwork wrote: post #70

We can't discuss Wendy Carlos without mentioning the still online old school "Wendy Carlos Homepage" that is straight out of 1996. https://www.wendycarlos.com/

Thanks for that link, it prompted me to send her a thank you note, which was really long overdue.
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