http://www.audiosparx.com/sa/play/play.cfm/sound_iid.282867
http://www.audiosparx.com/sa/display/search.cfm/style_iid.66/style.1930s
http://www.loopsound.com/home.php?cat=97
http://www.looperman.com/acapellas.php?name=&gid=&ord=date&dir=DESC&Search=Search+Acapellas
http://www.looperman.com/loops.php?type=Wav&cid=24&gid=&tempo=&ord=date&dir=ASC&Search=Search+For+Loops
Although I attended the 1st half of the video art symposium on merely 2 hours on sleep (Halloween was a long night-what can you do) and should have attended the 2nd half instead, I managed to process some information. Honestly, every time they dimmed the lights for a video projection, my eyelids closed accordingly, but, light and images still got in. I took these small glimpses of footage and evaluated their visual aesthetic; I entangled their motions and figured out patterns. From this sleep-deprived state of mind, there were some interesting observations.
Among them, I found Jonathan Binstock’s lecture pleasurable. He played Jeremy Blake’s Winchester Redux and I found a new respect for video art not yet encountered. Maybe it was the lack of sleep, but somehow the meditation of imagery and flow and fade from one picture to the next stimulated my visual field. Navigating through shapes with overlays and converging layers, I sensed a slow and definitive process taking place. A remix. A Culture as we may speak about. Something technologically enhanced hit a button in my brain; the imagery was an explosion of color, and feeling. As if the tones (both visual and auditory) gave off a sense of emotion that seeped into my hallucinatory state and found comfort. Unfortunately I couldn’t relate so much to an intellectual reading of this work but by all means it depicted a transfusion of symbolic relationships between color, shape, photo and sound. Mixing such media with a dialogue between dream-like sources, I felt inclined to enter a realm of the eternal or maybe the realm entered into my sub-conscious state…who is to say.
Another video by Rick Silva titled, A Rough Mix, just stole my attention out of sleep mode. Genius. That was the first word that came to mind. I particularly celebrated the fact that he is playing with sound as much as video. Really, the per-formative nature of this work seems to be a fun-filled game of which nature plays with reality. Or the other way around maybe. Either way, its value becomes apparent at least in the innovative juxtapositions of sound and video. With that said, there is a curiosity involved with how he manipulates our expectations of certain sounds. We know what it sounds like when we scratch a rock, spin through sand, string some snow, but he creates new meanings of this reality through a remixing of audio output and of course the VJ aspect of the work as well. Through this action, a new aesthetic emerges of which I thought made for quite an interesting audio track. I couldn’t pinpoint one particular scene I liked more, but overall he is able to harness the natural world in an effort to create hyper real sounds. Perhaps, I took a liking to this fact the most. There were moments when he struck a harmonious cord that paralleled equilibrium between nature, video and sound. Somehow, I believe these moments are in line with Paul d Miller’s philosophy of rhythm science when the cosmos find solace in the creative spirit of mankind. When the audio meets the visual meets the senses meets the mind. Rhythm.
Liliana Porter’s video was amusing. Bizarre in many ways, but this isn’t a turn off. In fact, the simple settings add a flare of absence. Where could these little figurines exist? What situation do they create for themselves? This world of miniatures allows for the imagination to create the context of their survival. Based on association, I found the scene with the figures dancing to be most conceptually engaging and also deceptive. With metaphorical devices set in place, the figures dance like I do, or try to anyways. Human qualities are innately molded into the miniatures. Their personalities form from the viewers’ pre-exposure to associated images, references, experiences with such playful activities, relevant circumstances, and situations. Thus, remixing historical vantage points with found objects, we can assume that new roles are given to objects (figurines/toys) where human qualities take part in the process, especially when motion picturing blurs the boundary of the functionality of an object. Well done indeed.
So in my blurry state of mind, I found the videos to be quite fascinating though I barely made it through to lunch. Excuse my withdrawn behavior for one second to understand how my lucid viewing of such works was in itself an experiment in remixology. It becomes a different perspective in which to approach an interpretation of art, worthy of its own principles, a style of incoherency, misunderstandings perhaps, and child like qualities.
The following remix incorporates and defines a concept about ’sound’ from Paul d Miller’s book Rhythm Science.
Sound become narrative.
Sound, text and image. Sight and Sound, sign and signification. Sounds that make up the fabric of American daily life. Sound and the electric imagination in youth culture as the manifestation of language as total text. Sound/writing and in an era of rhythm science both serve as recursive aspects of information collage where everything from personal identity to the codes used to create art or music are available for the mix. Myself in Sound, a digital exorcism of the toxic things our culture does to us as it create us. Text and Sounds was not a purely mechanical issue. IN FACT, the first Sound film to hit pop culture’s criteria of mass sales and massive influence was Alan Crosland’s 1927 epic the Jazz Singer. Sound and image tracks of the American Dream. Was the Sound of nervous system.
In the theatre of Sounds, who is who where any Sound can be you? And the Sound and light systems were also outside, scattered on the ice fields. A place where there is literally no Sound. Take the Sound of someone’s operating system. The low frequency pattern was the Sound of his blood circulating in his veins. Sound that returns to the self as the schizophonic, hallucinatory, presence of another. The Sound of thought becomes legible again at the edge of the new meanings. Sound and image divorce and reconfigure before they reunite in the mix. Basic nighttime thought processes generate the most creative Sounds. Images, Sounds, other people- that all of them were extensions of myself, just as I was an extension of them. Sounds come to represent me.
Do you like the Sounds of electronic music? Codes that filter the Sounds is omnivorous. Using whatever computer is around to make sounds. So Sounds and words multiply, become vital agents of an omni-sensory condition, a compilation of local, distant, and virtual spaces, all evoked by Sound. Where any Sound can be you, and where any word you say is already known. With words, text, Sounds-you name it. Music like hip hop and electronica is about theater: how people live to the sounds. Of the Sounds I’ve heard in my mind.
As Sounds move between populations. Sound vector. Sound in motion.
Although the concept of biological narrative or even cyber poetics intrigues me, I have a hard time comprehending the scientific ramifications. Maybe it’s the language used, but the process of decoding biological patterns can not be described in terms understandable to me. At this point, I am fascinated with the results of this experimentation, the cinematic effects are innovative, the visual and audio outputs. With regards to Tim Weaver’s terminology, I understood his concepts better in person than the website. What I got out of his lecture was more than just visual stimulation, audio sensations; I witnessed a form of evolution in the digital form.
Usually when I think about the natural aspects of our information age, I see a relative loss of organic data, an extinction of biological nature. From the transcoding of biochemical patterns, from this remixing of molecular code, we see a language of impossible comprehension. Where do we even begin to decipher this parallel language of reconfigured design? Perhaps, with the dynamics of changing technologies, as we see with this type of work, their will be a platform for which the electronic transmissions can translate into more refined displays of expression. My interpretation of this process is that it bridges many gaps in terms of technological change. With the drastic improvement of recording devices, data collection becomes a tool to connect extinct matter with new age information. As with the differences between the sound samples in Latin American and African forests for example, the audio effects might point to greater discoveries in the fields of history and evolutionary biology.
The first thought that came to mind was that the audio recordings were dynamic and rhythmic. I felt a need to connect the sounds with the visuals in a historical context, which has been manipulated by real time cinematics. Just how does the live performance piece together a bionarrative in new media? Or maybe, with the introduction of real time production, the ability to interpret a predetermined set of codes can include real time transformations from an artist’s intentions. The fusion of artistic chemistry with biological data is the idea. I watched the actions of Tim while the work appeared on the screen and was surprised in what I observed. It reminded me of seeing a DJ working on the turntables. Artistically, the recorded biodata serves as source material for the manipulation, reconfiguration and remixing of sound.
Hence, the language of this sound mixed with video exposes your senses to new meanings. Such as the combination of previously-recorded video juxtaposed with live performance and sound. This multi-media language magically exposes pre-historical data into present tense. The overall hyper real experience feels like a journey through time. Picture a travelogue in cyberspace. Here you see the intervention of science methodology depicted in bionarratives. Evolved into an immediate reaction both on the artists and the viewer’s part, there becomes a continuation of the story. Once again, how do you interpret this story? It’s so new, so profound. I am mesmerized by the possible outcomes of these experiments. Maybe the DNA structure of humans can be recorded and put into sound. Maybe we can design our own bionarratives in the future as the technologies progress and our creative spirit responds accordingly.
To build upon the idea of “open” work, “open source” seems to be a very relevant issue in the history of human beings. The simple idea that rules here is the fact that without free culture and the relative openess of works, ideas, programs, there becomes room for stagnation and control. Those whose view free culture as a positive attribute to society value innovation and creativity which to me, is the building block of life. Comparing the natural sciences and their emphasis on evolution, there is no controling mechanism that inhibits the ability of life forms to evolve, to progress, to change. Withing the structure of open work, we see how people may build upon the past by changing the past, by changing the face of works, by adding and substracting ingredients into the melting pot of creation. The main advantage is the progressive attitude which shows how creativity shall persist in the most effective way if it is shared, and promotes social well-being.
I believe that the digital networking systems put pressure on the rights of individual expression and also social control. How can you cite sources for intellectual property? And if you could in material concerns, where does justification come from it the digital arena? Maybe our hardware has become a police state as Lessig points out in his final speech, where any push of a key, every moment of the mouse corresponds to a system of survellance. There is an automatic almost robotic form of control when digital processes are involved. It becomes a matter of having legislation in cyber space, where the parameters of property and the rights given to a work become an infinite search. The human imagination must not become victim to the digitally enhanced system of control. Our right to use public information as a tool for our own intellectual nourishment is as natural as a flower reacting to climatic changes. With control of our very right to manipulate this information to the benefit our ourselves and society, we lose our freedom to live.
I think protection of the artist’s original work is valid, yet conceptually, the artist has no right to own the viewer’s interpretation of its meaning. Clearly, the labor put behind a work calls for a certain level of valuation, but with that said, how can one define the artists creative output as a right to be controled, measured, marketable, authentic? When a piece of art enters the collecive consciousness, it is owned by everyone. If you think about the inspiration, the reference points by which an “original” work derived from, you can see that it becomes the artist infringing upon the public domain in the first place. As an artist responds to the world around him or her, in physical or cyber space, “the work offers convergence of concepts, life views, attitudes, and a wide variety of different ways of being understood(Eco).” The reciprocal nature of creativity allows for a contant flow of info to be passed onward in a state of “perpetual transformation” as in the Baroque Poetics that Eco explains.
As a body of work, the Coca-Cola campaign “The Coke Side of Life”, demonstrates a valuable remix of styles, cultural views, and symbols.
http://coke-art.blogspot.com/2007/10/pixecute.html
All the work in the Coke Side of Life Remix Gallery promotes the artistic and creative approaches to one common idea, “explosions of Happiness” or “positivity”. From this commercial product comes a remix of sources where the symbolism and meaning takes on geographical and cultural phenomena. There is a good and bad side to this expression though. For one thing, the innovation comes from a network of creative minds working together on opening the minds of people around the world to the diversity of perspective, the various ways of approaching “happiness”, then there is the flip side. The fact of the matter is that Coke is using this form of remix to sell a product where creativity is not the focal point but an after-effect. One sees the coke brand, then the ways of re-creating its marketability to the masses. The scary part is how much influence this company has on the world wide market. How does this powerful position affect the public domain’s approach to creativity? Are you to imagine ways of marketing a system of commercial prowess, or to connect to other ways of perceiving imagery and culture?
An example of my personal use of remix, in general terms of culture, can be seen here.
This project relays my attempt towards web connectivity with the ideas based from Tina Laporta’s “Distance” piece. check it out
https://webfiles.colorado.edu/levinsdc/www/daniel_connection.html
Daniel Levinson
“Crazy to Control”
There is space enough in Daniel’s mind for the two of us. I can not detail the exact characteristics which separate our individual mentalities, yet, I feel quietly distinct from the Daniel I grew up with. Herein lies a split in the relationship; I live according to the seasons while Daniel try’s to control them. I have been called crazy but in a good way. When I seek to flow with the winds, he seeks to claim a sense of order. Chaos, control, confusion, these words represent our mutual bond in constant flux. With me, I have realized that inspiration drives me to new heights in this life. I believe Daniel recognizes this as his source of motivation but climbs a ladder of reason. Responding to this approach, I feel between us we divide up our daily tasks and conquer our world.
Within my functionality, I used to exist on the outskirts of reality, a shadow mirroring Daniel’s upbringing of soccer, friendship, and schoolwork. In recent times, I have become very handy in terms of what I can bring to the table. Daniel partners with me for many reasons. Among them I am creative, intuitive, imaginative, and free-spirited. Freedom is the centerpiece of my experience. There is no doubt in my mind that Daniel longs for my attention. Moreover, I resemble the openness that Daniel conjures in his mind. For him, an optimistic ideology carries weight over the river of influence, which in itself drifts into the future.
Daniel Levinson
8/30/08
Remix Culture-America
Exercises in Style
Sportscaster
On a lovely, hot, Sunday afternoon, the excitement builds as the S-bus gets ready to kick off its long overdue ride. The crowds today seem above average; perhaps the lineup on this historical day is one for the ages. Anyways, it looks like the sides are gearing up so get ready for some action folks!
And we’re off, the players rushing towards the platform where the ball is now rolling. One young rookie stands near mid-line about 3 yards shy of the first down. His protruding neck gives him an advantage of seeing over many others, but it didn’t help on this day. What’s the deal with that cord round his helmet, the officials let that one slip. It just so happens on the next play an opponent steps on his toes during the skirmish. The stopping and going nature of this game allows these guys to throw in a punch or two towards their rivals. At this point, our rookie can’t take the heat and runs toward the sidelines where he grabs a seat.
…And we’re back from a break in the action, this time we go off the field to get the inside scoop on this outrageous rookie. From where I can see, it looks like one of his coaches is giving him some advice on how to hold himself together as his judgment has a been a little off today. Maybe it’s the heat, who knows.
