What is media? What is its impact on classical music? How did Wagner affect media/how has he been affected by media over the last century-and-a-half?

We are joined by Babette Babich, Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University, for a conversation about the philosophy of media and technology and, of course, Richard Wagner. We were especially excited for this conversation because of Dr. Babich's work on Theodor Adorno, Günther Anders, the philosphy of media and technology, and aesthetics.

Wagner had a massive impact on media and the people who fashioned media studies (Adorno, Anders). But we at Wagner's Nightmare are also approaching this from the other end because we released our album as an NFT. For business reasons we think NFTs will serve us better than streaming, but as artists we recognize it is a (potentially) new form of media to grapple with. (That being said, streaming is a very different medium than CDs or even digital downloads, which classical musicians never properly reckoned with.) And NFTs are of course associated with Web3, Virtual Reality, and the "metaverse" - which will shake up the media landscape yet again. What exactly that means for classical music, we don't know. But we are excited to think about it and pragmatically wade into those waters.

Purchase the Wagner's Nightmare Limited Digital Album: https://wagnersnightmare.netlify.app/