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DCI and the triumph of the Simulacrum


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A lot of the electronics mania generated by a simulated pitch bend this year reminds me of the idea that "live" DJs are "performing", when at best, they're manipulating the Simulacrum.

Much in our culture no longer discriminates between true performers and manipulators of sounds, or the Real and Simulated, though, so I'm sure my opinion is invalid and that I'm a cultural invalid.

Have Grammy-award winning rappers like Eminem or Weird Al (who deserves a whole topic on his own here, the guy who satirizes the triumph and fakery of the Simulacrum in pop culture, like Stewart or Colbert in their areas (remember "truthiness"?), and the endless possibilities that satire could bring to DCI, which we've sadly lost with the death of VK and Bridgemen, and DCI by glorifying the Simulacrum has become so much HEAVIER and sickeningly EARNEST, even self-righteous, in the last unsatirical decade as they desperately try to manipulate the Simulacrum to add simulated profundity to show GE just as they try to add profundity to baselines, scrambling to balance out the Simulacrum with Seriousness and Meaning, and thus jumping the shark with tasteless desperation in design all too often), achieved the same level of mastery as musicians and performers as a pianist or violinist? Many in the young generation would say yes. And they'd say that piano and violin music are boring and irrelevant.

We're doing the same thing in DCI, enhancing world-class horn lines with amplification, or using voice samples instead of live narration, and talking about the "performance" if narration itself as if that's impressive or important (because, after all, narration is performance right, and it's just as hard to talk as it is to play difficult runs that would make for a great Arban exercise while marching backwards at 220bpm, and it's just as impressive for Drake to perform a rap as it is for Hilary Hahn to play a Bach Partita).

Same thing substituting and equating body movement with drill in terms of demand and GE. Simulated drill, simulated difficulty, simulated GE. We see body movement as so often ridiculous because it's filler, simulated demand, like lip-synched 'singing'.

We can't even say on these boards anymore that such and such a corps has lower demand, that body movement isn't as difficult as run-and-gun drill, that it's lower level for one corps to play much or most of the time when standing still, versus another corps playing and marching simultaneously for virtually the entire show. To the judges, and increasingly, to the audience, it's the same. Viva la Simulacrum!

The Simulacrum now dominates DCI. As expected, as WGI is recorded-music based, and relies on staging instead of drill, and especially because our culture is dominated by the Simulacrum - photoshopped social media pics, plastic surgery, marketing, corporate everything, national myths, etc.

Recognizing this, I'm waiting for the next step in DCI/WGI "evolution": live DJs. They are our culture's grandmasters of the Simulacrum - sampling other people's compositions, mashups, simulating live performance by pressing buttons on their MacBooks, and earning six and seven figures for simulated "concerts" in huge clubs worldwide.

The Cadets were the first corps to introduce minimalism into DCI, a music that was initially - and still - mocked by the classical music establishment as simplistic, repetitive, and not nearly as rigorous as, say, serialism. The Cadets will retake the title of "the thinking man's drum corps" that they held for at least two decades if they introduce Dub Step into DCI.

To quote Vanguard at the millennium, it's a "New Era".

I'm waiting for the Cadets, or a hip, innovative corps to stage Skrillex. (And I mean stage, because these days, you don't need drill. Corps members could do choreographed and blocked dancing, stop to play when needed, or pretend to play when the amplification takes over, because it is in the nature of amplification to take over.)

So many possibilities to grow the activity and reach out to new audiences.

I'm waiting to see something like this on the field in June 2015:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCawU6BE8P8

No more throwing babies. We'll have heads exploding.

Next year, whichever corps embraces the Simulacrum 100% will be the first corps to top 100.

Let's all learn to love the Simulacrum.

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The poster does have a point that increasingly, superficial sounds... prerecorded and not done live in competition..... can gather one points in competition. In other words, what adults create is increasingly being judged in DCI by other adults.

Prerecordings are self explanatory and should need no further explanations. They are sounds not created live in competition by the competitors, but are in fact just that..... prerecordings, oftentimes with creative, but nonetheless artificial and superficial manipulations thru the use of creative ( and clearly fan friendly it would appear ) clever technological gimmickry.

Its a new day. Embrace it ( or don't ).

Edited by BRASSO
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The use of "simulacrum" makes me want to go over to the thread about show ideas and suggest a Philip K. Dick inspired show theme. And though he didn't mention PKD, I'm not ruling out the possibility that zigzigZAG is making a subtle recommendation for such a thing. (Or did the Blue Devils already do this indirectly with A Glass Darkly?)

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Ooh, hey, this idea about the simulacrum could be the perfect opportunity to bring back symmetrical drill. Except there'd be something horribly wrong with one half of it. (Riff off of Angels and Demons, maybe?)

Edited by ChuckH
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No, the designers are just playing around with shiny new toys. They whined and cried for them so much it would be a shame not to use them, even when they're not really sure how to play with most of them. The meat and potatoes of the activity is still playing, spinning, marching (guess we can add dancing, etc. to that too). That may change some day but I don't think it has next.

I do agree with you that the rise of the cheesecake thematic shows is obnoxious. I agree that drum corps takes itself way, way too seriously and badly needs to step back and laugh at itself a bit. But you're trying to draw connections and create meanings where, IMO, there are none.

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