Alan Moss <[log in to unmask]> writes:

>...most art is recorded!  A fresco by Caravaggio, a duomo by Brunelleschi,
>a sculpture by Michelangelo, a Shakespeare sonnet, a Tolstoy novel - these
>are all recorded, set down, set in stone, written in black and white, and
>so forth.

Traditionally there was a distinction between the performing arts and the
plastic arts.  Glenn Gould argued that the recording turned music into a
plastic art - an art of final products.

The older order in classical music centered around the process of creating
a performance from basic materials, and hence it focused on performers, as
living people, and composers.  Its hierarchy of art was based on the
symbolic nature of musical notation.

A shakespeare sonnet is not recorded in print, because to be real it must
be read.  The same is true, to a lesser extent of a novel.

Stirling Newberry
http://www.mp3.com/ssn