How Does Modern Framework Shape Individuals?

Have you ever try to create your own mix music by using the app on your laptop? Do you understand that by doing this you are actually breaking the law of copyright? As the technology became more advanced, music’s impact has spread throughout the globe under a shocking speed and all of us are living in a modern discursive framework. Individual music consumers like you and me are considered as the direct receivers of this impact. Aram Sinnreich, in his book, argued that the modern framework we are in right now is a society where the regulatory institution wants to protect the work of genius but the individuals are trying to resist the regulations. According to Sinnreich: “the institutions surrounding musical production and consumption serve both constraining and enabling roles, reinforcing the discursive framework and serving as a boundary for the processes of regulation and resistance described in chapter 1” *

The modern Discursive Frame work we are in right now consists of  6 binaries (art vs. craft/ artist vs. audience/ original vs. copy/ performance vs. composition/ figure vs. ground/ materials vs. tools). Long before technology became this advanced, the two parts of each binary are separated completely. However, due to the emerge of advanced modern technology, the line between each part of binary gradually becomes blurry. For instance, back in the history, when you are enjoying a piece of music, your role in this whole performance is only an audience. Nowadays, you can started to mix your own music with your laptop. This means that when you are enjoying the performance of your remixed music. You are acutally playing two roles: artisit and audience.

Official regulatory institutions such as governments are trying to regulate this situation. In another word, music regulation is acting as a force that tries to separate the two parts of each binary apart. For instance, separate the artists and audiences. However, the problem is nowadays we can download music without paying to the company that produces them by using advanced technology. Which means that we can basically get access to any music and remix them into a new song without paying a thing. Hence it is harder for regulatory institute to regulate anymore. Under this situation, individuals like you and me are forming a resistant force to against the regulations. We want to find out new ways that we can avoid the regulations while the official institutions are also trying to find out the new ways and to regulate them. During this “tug-of-war” process, music innovations emerged.

Now we’ve got a question. Why would the institutions trying to regulate the music? We can discuss this by looking at an example. Pussy Riot, a rebellious Russian punk band staging a flash protest against President Vladimir V. Putin in Moscows’ main Orthodox Cathedral, was sentenced to two years in jail. The band promoted feminism to the public and the lyric of their songs are criticizing the Russian government. Their sentence has raised debate in US about government’s regulation on music. Because America is a country where people have freedom of speech and according to Kathe Kollwitz and Frida Kahlo, pseudonymous Guerrilla Girls: “we live in a very different culture where art is not as dangerous, and we can pretty much do what we want.” * In another word, Pussy Riot was punished by something that Americans are taking granted from for the whole time.

The possible reason of Russian government is trying to regulate Pussy Riot’s music is that it afraid music and behavior from Pussy Riot will affect the idea of thoes who listen to the band’s music. The government is afraid of losing its control over the country. We can say that it is the fact that regulators believe music has this enormous power to shape people’s ideology that promotes the process of regulating and resisting. According to a graph in Sinnreich’s book*, we  know that a single simple idea can move its way up to affect individual, and then individuals gather together will affect different institutions. Eventually, it will make a change in the whole macro-society.

In conclusion, the modern framework we are in right now is related to everyone of us. We are living in a society where the technology is advanced enough for us to mix the two parts of each binary together. People made up of the whole society and individuals like you and me have the ability to challenge the modern framework which threaten governments and other institutions. The music experience we are having right now comes from the music innovation that emerged from music regulating and resisting. We make up this society and we try to accommodate the change of it. We are part of the mordern framework and that’s how individuals like you and me are fitting in this whole discursive framework.

Work cited

*Sinnreich Aram, Mashed up- music, technology, and the rise of configurable culture, Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2010, Print, page 59.

* MELENA RYZIK, “Pussy Riot Was Carefully Calibrated for Protest”, 9/7/2012: page 2, Print

* Sinnreich Aram, Mashed up- music, technology, and the rise of configurable culture, Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2010, Print, page 36.