Free-Loops.com – Crunk Sounds Kit loop

Deitch Projects

Turbulence – We Make Money Not Art

Ubu web – Paper Rad’s P-Unit Mixtape

Abbie Hoffman – Our National Anthem

Arcade Fire – Neon Bible (Television)

Hoogerbrugge – Modern Living – 99 My Way

Blonk Organ

Prosonica – Electronica

Prosonica – Urban

Prosonica – Club

Prosonica – Ambient

Prosonica – FX

Manhattan – Empire Tour

Komar & Melamid – The Most Wanted Song

Komar & Melamid – The Most Unwanted Song

Freesound – “Club” – Rezzo_4.wav, Rezzo_3.wav – “Engine” – Locomotive.wav, rbhtrainfreight.wav

When I look at art I find I am often interested in the Vasarian story of the artist more than in the quality of the work itself or in the efficacy of its message delivery. As an artist, I look at work in order to learn from other artists more than I look at it to be moved. What I am moved by however is often unrelated to the work specifically, but rather to the conditions which were central to the artist’s creation of that work. While Jeremy Blake’s unfortunate death and the circumstances surrounding it could be called poetic, it accounts for a false understanding of his work, risking a sympathetic read of what is otherwise unrelated to the video he created. What is more interesting and more concretely helpful in understanding what he tried to do comes from analyzing the fact of his video’s remixed construction, the three stories he therefore combined into it and the two-dimensional issues with which he was concerned. This video was chilling like a horror flick because of its sound elements. The video was effectively ghost-like, as the various characterizations of actor-images and the subsequent overlappings from disparate video segments made for a confusion of voice that felt like the disjointed rooms of the Winchester house must feel like. Blake’s smooth transitions in and out of overlapped segments and color fields felt trippy and poppy (I’ll call it trip-pop) and so very appropriate for this remix class. The fact that he felt the need to or the ability to take from his prior output and remix himself is interesting and conceited and I like it. I am left wondering what the individual video’s he brought together here would have been like. Would they deliver a message as effectively? But this isn’t something I often worry about, as I said above I’m most interested in what Blake does that can help me make my work. In this instance it is partly about combining the digital with the traditional two-dimensional realm, but more importantly about taking from one’s prior output and reinserting it into the mix. I find myself doing that more and more, as I discover what it is that keeps appearing in my work and the ways I find myself most often trying to produce those ideas.

Rick Silva’s video was the most interesting work (or maybe the most effective work) in his graduate thesis show. Having seen it then and in our class I felt less inclined to sit with it in this exhibition. I have always liked this video, but I also agree with those points of view mentioned in conversations I’ve had about this piece that found the mixing board’s presence to be unhelpful if not trite. Otherwise, the choppy sound elements and quick video cuts feel like techno beats, and the spinning Google Earth images and close-up textures under glass are mesmerizing. My favorite moments are those few times when I find technology and nature do come together in Silva’s practice, those being the flying sand grains catching the light just right, his hand arcing gracefully across the silhouetted bands of branches outlined in the sky and the supplicant moss he mixed on wet rocky terrain. I’m not sure I understand fully his need to push technology and nature together, but since he spent so much time in Colorado and he is interested in DJ culture and the digital terrain, it makes sense that he has done so.

At the symposium I heard Barbara London, Gary Emrich, Chip Lord, Luis Valdovino and Dan Boord speak. Briefly, I thought Barbara London was quite interesting, particularly regarding her mention of the preservation of video works (an important aspect of the work that I had not thought of before, and also one which benefits from extensive notes from the artist especially considering ever changing and specific technologies). Of the video works she showed, Nam June Paik in particular was great, especially in comparison with emergent digital works and the similarity in technologic experimentation that he underwent in the early days of his particular technology. In sharp contrast to Barbara London was Gary Emrich. Being totally unrelated in any way except the topic heading ‘video art’ it shouldn’t surprise to call this contrast severe. I found Emrich’s family history with television and video to be interesting though unnecessary (but still maybe my favorite part of his presentation) and his work to be, unfortunately, a bit dated (where is the stuff he is working on now?) and most egregiously, so…local. I guess this shouldn’t surprise me either, he did say he was fourth generation Coloradan. Work with local flavor can be nice, but what I sensed from his work was that it just didn’t transcend, though the documentary style of his piece about the Platte River could be an effective one.

I found the book to be interesting, due in part to the frequent mentions the author made to his obvious depth of knowledge about the subject of cultural rhythms, but also due to the recycling and repeating of similar ideas throughout the book (an element also noted by Peter Halley). Rather than share my superfluous opinions about what might have appeared in the text, I am more interested in making my own mix of the subject through some sort of arbitrary process.

I have selected material to recast here by choosing a number or series of numbers that correspond with the number of clicks I made on each topic heading in Peter Halley’s WebTake. The first bit of text that appears here represents the 5th click of my mouse on the topic “Entropy”, the second paragraph represents the 9th mouse click and the third paragraph represents the 13th time I clicked my mouse on the topic heading. I have repeated a similar process for each of the first five topics listed in the WebTake. The numbers are not random, nor the number of times I’ve selected to make a selection from the text, but are, as I’ve mentioned, arbitrary. This is my mix of a cultural effect as I see it manifest in this book: arbitrary connections.

Entropy: 5, 9, 13
In epidemiology, vectors spread infectious agents, like viruses or parasites. But in the case of sound, memories are the infectious spores, viral modes that pop up in tracks, sifting mechanisms that filter and file memory as sounds move between populations.

Writing may be a little retro, but that’s cool, too. That’s why people still wear bellbottom jeans. You can always squeeze something out of the past and make it become new.

All the issues involved with aliases, multiple narrative threading, social engineering environments, and identity as a social cipher are tropes brought to the forefront of immigrant culture in America.
When the slave experience of cultural erasure encountered the immigrant phenomenon of identity reconstruction in the city, the culture as a whole moved away from the melting pot model to become a frequency centrifuge: cultures in conflict, messages etched and pasted on every street corner, images raining down, thoughts like rain, the city fragments and coalesces.

Code: 5
As for the philosophical or theoretical component in my music, I do know that average kids from the street are probably not aware of the connections between Derrida’s deconstructions and turntablism’s mixes, but it’s there if they ever come looking, and my own writings are a place to start.

Freestyle: 8, 12
Each and every Dj is a walking radio station transmitting his own style. You just have to be open to different frequencies.

African-American culture in D.C. was and remains highly segregated. Class and social hierarchies are etched on the whole zone, the city grid and the monuments themselves. Seeing African-American kids playing plastic buckets in front of the White House defines the District for me. D.C. was mix culture as dynamic palimpsest – the electromagnetic canvas of a generation raised on and in electricity. That multiplicity really prepared me for the present moment when even the basic software modules for America On-Line come with seven of eight pre-fabricated personae to use at will to construct on-line identity.

Technology: 4, 6
The rhythm scientist proves there’s more at work, more in the process, than the computerized musical automation.

The Web is the dominant metaphor for the way we think, it is a living network made up of the “threads” of all the information moving through the world at any given moment. This emphasis on mobility creates a continuity between the techno-hype for the internet and everything from the 19th Century’s obsession with railroads to the Beatnik’s mythological automobiles on the road.

Surface: 3, 9
Hip-hop made from the “streets” of the frequencies that are coming to mean more than the physical world they inhabit and describe.

In any case, the ‘90s were different from the ‘60s, the notion of “avant garde” was becoming obsolete. People simply wanted to get paid, figure out different ways to create a forum for their zone to flow, and then leave it at that.

So I have recast elements from Miller’s book using Halley’s WebTake and my own arbitrary selection process. I’ll leave it at that.

Détournement is a method of remixing (often literature) from existing sources into a new understanding. By combining the suggestion made in Debord’s film, any remix by its nature differs significantly from the original. This does not seem particularly significant (since two have been made one) unless the consideration is made that any representation misrepresents the original, and that any combination of elements provokes a relationship no matter how unrelated the two separate ideas were to begin with.

The suggestion Debord makes is that significant meaning is made any time any unrelated elements are brought together. Suggesting this greatly diminishes the supposed significance of carefully selected groupings (ideas supported by ideas like the myth of genius and the death of the author), as any element in combination with any other provides meaning potentially as significant as carefully rendered ones. Without really trying then, any juxtaposition one makes is arguably as significant as any other juxtaposition that has ever been made. Michelangelo’s images of Adam and God from the Sistine Chapel ceiling are equally significant to a combined photographic representation of Pierre Manzoni’s “Artist’s Shit” with a first edition copy of Joseph Heller’s “Catch 22″.

I don’t know what else to describe about this other than I’m pretty happy about the Manzoni/Heller remix idea.

I am most encouraged by Timothy Weaver’s method for creating audio based on the visual data he collects. I am unsure which of his audio portions were created using the opensource and shareware MIDI interfaces he describes, and which were created intuitively or sonically, but in either case there were intelligent portions of audio in his various live cinema examples. What I am most interested in here is the potential for inputting data into a system and then dealing with the results. I think it is less effective however when intuitively manipulated sounds are adjusted aesthetically. The combination of systems acquired output and intuitive output for me negates the value of the system. I think it should be all or nothing if he is going to mention it, or perhaps he should allow for more distinctive clarity between the two (I am looking for a bit more translucency in the creation of this work).

With regard for his video sequences, I appreciate the use of the electron microscope and some of the other still images and high resolution scans, but found them to be a bit repetitive in the Hylaea piece without saying much about the impact of these dead and extinct birds. Of all his video work I think I was most impressed with his post-mortem collaboration with his father. This 2004 video, “Bushmeat” offered the most engaging visuals and arguably the most clear narrative of all those I saw. I came closest to feeling empathy for his subject in this piece, for in the others I was taken more by the technical production and not by whatever message was being developed.

I found that while well-intentioned, intelligently investigated and sonically if not visually interesting, these works failed to convey what must be one of the more important aspects of Timothy Weaver’s description: narrative. If there was a narrative it was cryptic, hidden by the science motivating the works, by his description of it and most importantly by his use of technical media. I found it difficult to understand if Mr. Weaver had anything critical to say in these works. Whatever message there was I feel was insufficiently delivered, and my disappointment comes from my desire to see these ideas resolved. He spoke at length about migratory patterns of Monarch butterflies and was obviously very engaged and knowledgeable about the subject, but somehow that did not seem to come through for me in the end product. There are many successful elements coming forth, but I’m not seeing cohesive works that get beyond the interesting technical developments he employs. This problem seems to be one that is patterned on the process of technical development across all art media, similar to the highly technical focus during the development of video art in the 1970’s. As he continues to develop these ideas it would be interesting to see how the technology and the science become more convincingly integrated into visually communicative works.

With regard for Weaver’s notion of these works and his presentation in general as “live cinema”, I found this statement to be misleading, not simply because the works themselves appear to be static and repeatable, but because I would never have noticed that this was being (re)mixed for this audience if I had not been told so by the artist. Perhaps his integration was so seamless, that together with my seat near the back of the facility I may have missed the point. What I did see during the show, however were a few examples of what looked like Mr. Weaver turning a few knobs to adjust something that wasn’t set up right before the show began. This to me has very little relationship to live video mixing or to any notion of performance. The idea of live cinema is potentially interesting, but there is so much of this going on in the DJ/VJ culture that I find it unnecessary to see it here by a practitioner not seemingly connected with this movement, employing it, even if effectively, in a way that remains for me an afterthought.

What I am most interested to understand about Mr. Weaver’s work is his purpose for creating it. He clearly has technological, scientific and artistic interests. He declares an interest in narrative and in lost ecologies. As ideas, these are all engaging. What I have yet to realize is what this artist intends for his work to do. Are these informational films?, explorations of a topic employed for artistry?, visual output of scientific data?, activist pieces for ecologic change? I am seriously interested to hear if Mr. Weaver would describe his intentions about this body of work.

Concern 1: What are the advantages of an “open source” and/or “open content” approach to remix culture in general, and consumer culture at large? Do we really need a “free culture” or is it in our best interests to restrict rights?

Response 1: The advantages of “free culture” (termed “open source” and/or “open content”) relate to the advancement of ideas based on the improvement of existing ideas. Open source not only permits individuals the right to use and change ideas that might otherwise be restricted and protected by individual or group concerns, it promotes one-upspersonship which in turn promotes healthy advancement and improvement of original ideas. The basic idea behind open source is to reduce or eliminate the restrictions enforced by copyright law and to help facilitate the notion that someone else might be able to do better than you have been able to do with an item of your “invention/creation”. A simple example of this is open source software like “Gimp” (a free version of a program similar to Photoshop). While this program may not necessarily be an absolute substitute for Photoshop, it is a workable program that can be rewritten and improved upon by individuals. The incentive to change the program is to make it more functional and to share this improved function with others.

How does this advantage remix culture? Open source advantages remix culture by providing information, code and software to individuals able to manipulate the sources for advancement and improved functionality. How does this advantage consumer culture at large? This is a bit more tricky, since consumer culture implies capitalism (in effect, the exchange of goods or services for money). Since open source often means “free”, it would seem a different model is in play than straight consumerism. For the consumer, more programs or ideas are available, often without cost. Healthy competition for creating the best programs or ideas is a possible consequence of open source or free culture, which has the potential to benefit the consumer who will use the programs or ideas.

Do we really need a “free culture”? Probably not, but restrictive ownership is a limitation on the advancement of ideas. Restricting rights advantages the individual, not the culture at large. The question to be asked is, “Which is more important, the individual or the greater public?”

Concern 2: Does the idea of copyright and intellectual property become more obsolete in digital/networking culture? Must the effort to protect intellectual property be valiantly fought in cyberspace as in other (more material) spaces? Why or why not?

Response 2: It seems a popular sentiment now to forego copyright and intellectual property on the net, at least with regard for individuals disseminating their ideas. The opposite is happening with mainstream record labels (for example) in their attempts to regulate file sharing. Most individuals in the networking culture seem to prioritize idea exchange over monetary exchange, and while corporations want to take advantage of the networking possibilities within the digital culture, they still prioritize financial gain and adamantly protect their right to make money. The question then is not whether intellectual property is more obsolete, but rather, “For whom is intellectual property obsolete?” The concern for intellectual property boils down to making money, at least outwardly. All corporations and most individuals are interested in making money, but the networking culture, if they are in fact interested in making money, want to do that in indirect ways that do not infringe on the rights of others to share information. Corporations want to take advantage of the vast quantities of people using the net, but monetary gain is not easily regulated in such a culture, and their self-preservation hinges on their right to own and sell intellectual property.

Concern 3: What about an artist’s labor? Where is the balance in protecting ones “original” creative output versus opening up the collective’s creative output imagined by some as freely accessible source material for active reconfiguration?

Response 3: Artists who freely participate in free culture are not prioritizing the protection of their “original” creative output, at least not in the traditional format of copyright. The copyleft movement allows these artists to receive credit for their ideas while allowing mutations and improvements to occur (as long as they get credit for their source contribution). Users of copylefted material then have the “left” to do what they want with this information by actively reconfiguring it.

Concern 4: Give an example of a work of visual or media art that you personally value where the artist(s) were clearly remixing / postproducing / reconfiguring source material from other visible sources. Was the final result for the betterment of culture in general? At what risk/cost?

Response 4: I’ll have to go into the wayback machine for this one and bring up Eduardo Paolozzi’s collages, particularly “I was a Rich Man’s Plaything”, 1947. This work predates the pop movement but arguably induces the movement’s first textual mention in a work of art. This collage uses images from popular culture exclusively, all of them from different sources including advertisements, comic books and pulp fiction texts. By taking images from existing sources and reconfiguring them, Paolozzi “remixed” popular culture to arrive at an “original” image. In my opinion this collage advantages the work to be done after 1947 by introducing such possibilities to the populace (not that this one was the first or the only artwork to do this). The risk or cost of this kind of art is that from this point on, works sourced from “low culture” are elevated to the level of traditional forms of working, those forms said to be “high art”. The possibility exists as well that the originators of Coca-Cola and Real Gold advertising images and pulp fiction cover artists are not credited for their contributions and are forever implicated in the works of art that use their imagery without their permission. In these forms of art however, we have not heard these arguments (to my knowledge) but we certainly have heard them in the digital realm.

Concern 5: Give an example of how you recently sampled and remixed source material from the general culture into something that you felt was an original form of expression (not including what you have created for this class).

Response 5: Initially I respond this way: that I don’t really do this in my work, not consciously anyway. What I most likely do is create things I think are new and then find out that I’m working 50 years ago. To attempt to answer the question however, a version of remixing source material (which, like my reference to Paolozzi is completely non-technical) would be a drawing titled “Project for: Projecting an Image on the Surface of the New Moon, A Rough Draft”. All that I’ve really done here is source images from a visual dictionary in order to make drawings of them in new configurations for somewhat backwards inventions.

You can find examples both, here and here.