Wednesday, October 24, 2007
teaching across the continents
The yamaha digital piano allows teacher to teach across any continents. They tested this remarkable feature on Oct.9. and is currently not availbe to the public yet. The instrument they used was called the "Disklavier." I think this is really exciting. From my own experience, it is a great opportunity to seek out the best teacher for yourself. And for those teachers who travel alot, or who needs to conduct master classes but, couldn't travel for which ever reasons, then, they can still attend the master class via internet. In this age of technology, it opens up so much opportunities to students who are disable; students who wanted to have trial lessons with teachers who worked for different academic instutions across the globe. It is really a turn of the century phenomeon, and I think it would take another 5 to 6 years for it to flourish, if not sooner. There are a tremendous growth of international students (especially from Asia), who can take the DisKlavier as an advantage. Although sometimes, I think the internet is inpersonal, but,this brings people together --- in this example, the disklavier is connecting musicians together around the globe. What we can do is to learn from each other, and to make music together. What I can see from this is having all musicians across the glove to perform via video conference, and broadcast it to the world, without the costs of traveling, jetlag, anxiety, bad hotels, bad food etc. I really can't wait, how the "remote teaching" is going to turn out. If anyone would like to see a live demonstration on the new yamaha disklavier "remote teaching" you can go to the site below. For more information, I will posts an article about this "remote teaching" phenomon on wikipedia once I get my user page.
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Reading about the DisKlavier, I am reminded about something I have thought about Youtube. Though the direct communication between keyboards is undoubtedly valuable, rather than waiting 5 or 6 years, we may be able to take advantage of the existent streaming video technology Youtube's enormous user base now, which I think has still a long ways to go to its full potential. The news providing and truth exposing aspects of Youtube have been widely recognized (just one article about it: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3676) but the possibility of video dialogue between users, while utilized somewhat by people through video responses, has yet to be realized.
The following contains many of the ideas from Hayakawa's "Language in Thought and Action":
Previous progress in various disciplines has been made through written journals, or by in-person presentations. They are all through the use of language. Language is symbolic, meaning that we use symbols to represent certain real life things, but the symbols themselves are not the things, and it is impossible to symbolize any natural phenomenon completely, hence mindbenders like the Taoist notion that "a white horse is not a horse."
Symbols also have different meanings for different people. For instance if I say "black cat," the notion you associate with that symbol might be some generic black cat that brings bad luck, or it could be your friend's cat that happens to be black. So what we say through language (the "intrinsic reality," our own notions in our mind) is always going to be different from what we are referring to (termed an "extrinsic reality," the real life phenomenon). Thus, video communication is really powerful because it can come a lot closer to representing the extrinsic world. We already know that a picture is worth a thousands words, that instructional books and videos are good but no substitute for real interaction between people, but the strength of Youtube is the gigantic use base and the possibility of dialogue. According to Hayakawa, the strength of the human race stems from its ability for advanced communication between members of the species. We in effect supplement our nervous system with the nervous systems of others, producing in effect a giant neural network.
That's why I'm so excited about Youtube but dismayed that people haven't realized this aspect of its potential yet. There are already many amateurs posting videos of their own performances, and there is actually already a large community of skilled musicians providing advice, but often, the posters are somewhat defensive. And then there are the flamers who receive an undue amount of attention from everybody. But I believe people can take better advantage of this community and that Youtube can also be taken advantage of by professionals, not just for promotional media, but also as a way for exchanging ideas with other professionals.
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