Hacker News Reader

Comment by pak | Hacker News Reader

No, he is using it in exactly the sense the article goes to great lengths to illustrate: approaching any situation by thinking outside of usual conventions. As far as clothing goes, you can't argue Lady GaGa doesn't think outside of the box. Some of the items she has turned into clothing probably took a lot more creativity than finding a way to use three chopsticks in one hand.

rms' definition of hacking doesn't necessarily involve technology. That was the whole point of the chopsticks story.

View on HN

> As far as clothing goes, you can't argue Lady GaGa doesn't think outside of the box.

Her outfits draw heavily on the prior art of performers like Grace Jones, David Bowie and Madonna. There's a very extensive history of music performers wearing crazy outfits. Some further examples are Elton John, Jayne County, Kiss, Gwar, Divine.

True, but there is no denying the conventionality of her actual music; she's a product of the same old awful music industry machine, producing meaningless trash, whether or not she 'hacks' weird outfits which get her attention.

There is a sense that RMS has dropped that one in to seem more 'down with the kids' than he really is, which doesn't speak of pride as a hacker...

He said "Lady Gaga's approach to clothing seems like hacking to me.". There no mention about music and whether it's conventional or not is irrelevant. I can eat food conventionally (without using six chopsticks) and still be a hacker.

Actually, fair enough - I suppose I feel there is an an ethical aspect to hacking - you do it because you love it, not for any other compromised reason, I like to think it's better than that. I get the impression the music is just a means to an end, as it seems so generic + soulless to me (of course that's imho), however with regard to her fashion - that is probably just as sincere as it appears.

Apologies - allowing my prejudices to affect my judgement.

I always find it a shame to focus on her clothes; she is first and foremost a music hacker. And a really really good one.

A contemporary and more fitting example of a musical hacker would be Imogen Heap.

I've seen videos of her constructing songs from audio loops of her own voice in real time.

Wow, that's quite amazing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25VGdNU3nrU

I don't know to what extent some of the stuff is preprogrammed (presumably the loop lengths are), but it really seems like all the sounds were made during this one recording.

That is a matter of taste isn't it? I find her music horrible.

Oh don't get me wrong. I dislike it too.

But it's possible to appreciate the hacker aspect and skill. It is easy to dismiss her music as silly, unoriginal or poor because we don't like it, but that can be unfair :)

Well... it's possible to notice it's silly and unoriginal even if you do like it, and saying it's poor seems like another way of saying that one doesn't like it.

If her goal is to get famous and have hit songs though, I suppose we do have to grant that she accomplishes this expertly. It might be nice if she had loftier goals, like creating something with actual integrity, but I have to admit she's at least effective.

Hmm, well my point was more that her music is technically very good. From a sort of academic perspective the music is very clever and carefully designed. It hacks for popular listening.

Although I realise such a point of view is probably the by-product of having a brother who's finishing up a music degree and so I get bored to death with lectures about this stuff :)

No. Drummond and Cauty hacked the popular music industry in the late 80s, then literally wrote the book on how to do it.

Compared to them Gaga is a script kiddie.

Take Gaga's attitude and bluster away and you have Dale Bozzio. Interesting -- her stuff was more listenable and she looked cuter in those ridiculous outfits.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com