Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of Illustrations
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction
- SECTION ONE: FANDOM AND MUSIC VIDEOS
- 1 Reframing Fan Videos
- 2 Case Study: Anime Music Videos
- SECTION TWO: VIDEO-GAME MUSIC
- SECTION THREE: PERFORMANCE AND PRESENTATION
- SECTION FOUR: PRODUCTION AND CONSUMPTION
- Index
2 - Case Study: Anime Music Videos
from SECTION ONE: FANDOM AND MUSIC VIDEOS
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of Illustrations
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction
- SECTION ONE: FANDOM AND MUSIC VIDEOS
- 1 Reframing Fan Videos
- 2 Case Study: Anime Music Videos
- SECTION TWO: VIDEO-GAME MUSIC
- SECTION THREE: PERFORMANCE AND PRESENTATION
- SECTION FOUR: PRODUCTION AND CONSUMPTION
- Index
Summary
When on 1 August 1981 at 12:01 a.m. the Buggles’ ‘Video Killed the Radio Star’ aired as MTV's first music video, its lyrics parodied the very media presenting it: ‘We can't rewind, we've gone too far, … put the blame on VTR.’ Influenced by J. G. Ballard's 1960 short story ‘The Sound Sweep’, Trevor Horn's song voiced anxiety over the dystopian, artificial world developing as a result of modern technology. Ballard's story described a world in which naturally audible sound, particularly song, is considered to be noise pollution; a sound sweep removes this acoustic noise on a daily basis while radios broadcast a silent, rescored version of music using a richer, ultrasonic orchestra that subconsciously produces positive feelings in its listeners. Ballard was particularly criticising technology's attempt to manipulate the human voice, by contending that the voice as a natural musical instrument can only be generated by ‘non-mechanical means which the neruophonic engineer could never hope, or bother, to duplicate’ (Ballard 2006: 150). Similarly, Horn professed anxiety over a world in which VTRs (video tape recorders) replace real-time radio music with simulacra of those performances. VTRs allowed networks to replay shows, to cater to different time zones, and to rerecord over material. Indeed, the first VTR broadcast occurred on 25 October 1956, when a recording of guest singer Dorothy Collins made the previous night was broadcast ‘live’ on the Jonathan Winters Show.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Music, Sound and MultimediaFrom the Live to the Virtual, pp. 29 - 48Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2007