3-30-11 (Wed)

Last weekend new media artist Charles Sandison was a featured speaker at the Logan Lecture Series at the Denver Art Museum. His technologically driven installation, “Chambers,” was also on display at Blink! Light, Sound, and the Moving Image, also at the DAM. I experienced his intriguing installation prior to hearing his speech and I was then very interested in hearing his thoughts and what motivated his artwork.

In the first part of his lecture he discussed the importance of his Scottish heritage and highlighted other early influences that shaped his artistic style and future. As a young boy and young man growing up in Scotland, he felt a deep kinship for his homeland. The harmony, beauty, and love of this land grounded him with a sense of personal strength and a soul connection which has inspired him spiritually and artistically throughout his life. In many ways his ethereal philosophical outlook and sensitivities seem similar to Taoism, a mystical union with nature.

Sandison also discussed the challenges he faced as a dyslexic student in the typical left- brain traditional school environment. Perhaps his ability to perceive life and his surroundings from a little different vantage point have added to his conceptual ideas. Computers at this time were just becoming common and he found it easier to visually learn digitally. Later, while at art school he experimented with impressionism and photography but eventually found the his true passion in conceptual computer programming.

The second part of the lecture Sandison showed photographs of his work, animated digital projections of light and texts projected onto architectural forms, such as the exterior facade of the famous Parisian landmark, the Grand-Palais. His video projections have also transformed many museum gallery spaces and some non-gallery space from the Peabody Essex Museum, MA to the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, Finland. Sandison specifically emphasized that he is “more interested in the exterior facade of a museum than the interior.” It was very obvious that he has a sense of the nature and spirit of buildings. He stated, “Buildings have souls and life.” He works with these souls and they communicate their emotions and personalities through his art.

His installation, “Chamber,” is remarkable. The viewer is sensorially immersed in the installation in a darkened room except for the projected lights which send abstracted computer coded text pieces through what looks like blood vessels or molecular structures. The swirling internal text pieces are codified and I felt as if I had access to another language and a private world. I felt enveloped, treated, and transported to another realm. Some people have said that the space he created in “Chamber,” was a metaphor of a cave and a fireplace, prompting a primitive instinct. I didn’t have that vision. At his lecture I felt he was calm, composed, and creative, and at his installation I felt a part of his artistic magic.

3-17-11 (Th)

Step 1: move volume down to 40-50% of What can u do ! (before 50sec)

START: http://www.mymusicstream.com/music/songs-genre-beats-and-instrumental.html

What Can U Do ! By Dj X-Spired 2004 – 2009

Beats & Instrumental / Trance / Electronica

Artist: Dj X-Spired

Search: what can u do dj x-spired

Click third link (dj x-spired – music – mymusic stream

Apple+F: what can u do

Click play (to right)

Step 2: click on right when you get the song going (ends: 21-30 sec) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVEflECtfBM

^3rd step: STOP 1:48 : http://balldroppings.com/js/

4^th step STOP 2:45: http://www.ronwinter.tv/drums.html

tap foot to beat

3:12: http://www.toyota.com/vehicles/minisite/newprius/#/interior-refinements/

Step 6: apple thing after you are done with peris http://www.apple.com/ipad/#smart-cover

Step 6: click same time as apple: http://www.flasharcade.com/action-games/smiley-chaser.html

Whenever I am done with smiley I finish: http://www.hypercargames.com/desert-jeep.php

3-16-11 (Wed)

Blink! Light, Sound & the Moving Image at The DAM

It is a little difficult to sit down and write about the large scale exhibition, Blink because

writing about the experience seems so constrained compared to the actual event. This extensive compilation of technology based art all in one area was phenomenal and to say the least, far reaching in its scope. It was a sensory, visceral, intellectual, historical, and exciting event that encompassed the past and present use of technology and art. Going to this exhibition was an art history class in digital art. I went to the exhibition twice and I think to really grasp all that was there one would have to experience it many times. The show was too vast to write about each individual piece so I will highlight a few that I liked.

I appreciated Professor Amerika’s early piece “Codework,” (2003)a digital projection with surround sound lasting eight minutes. Not only because it was an example of the earlier digital art technology, but it remains a creative relevant work of art now.

Since I was there for two classes my main focus was on “Still Men Out There,” (2003) by Bjorn Melhus. It was painful, extensive, and an in depth commentary on war, film and art through the use of sound, color, and light. It was a brilliant narrative delivered as if you were in a darkened movie theater without the movie. Through the use of color and sounds you watched a horror movie in your head. The flashing monitors and looping audio and visual performance was disorienting and powerful. This installation exposes how manipulative the modern media is in our lives.

Columbian artist Oscar Munoz’s “Linea del destino” (The Line of Destiny), (2006) was one of my favorites. It was a single screen projection that lasted almost two minutes. It records a handful of water holding Munoz’s image, holding his destiny in his own hands as water flows through his fingers. Isn’t our destiny in our own hands?

Bruce Nauman’s “Double poke in the eye ii,” (1985) a neon sculpture made of aluminum and neon lights, is an example of a period piece because at that time artists were exploring neon as medium. A black backdrop with two heads outlined, each poking the other in the eyes. A lot of finger pointing is going on.

William Jude Rumley, “Recognition,” (1990) is an interactive work and visitors participate and are part of the performance. As a participant you sit in a chair and a voice is activated. The voice thanks the person and says, “Without you, none of this would be necessary,” and includes applause. Watching the piece is like watching a game show, they appear embarrassed and you are embarrassed for them.

Alan Rath’s “Looker,” (1990-91) utilized old parts of TVs and other pieces of electronic equipment that suggests a pair of eyeglasses. It looks like a pair of glasses gone bad, the video eyes in the glasses do not confront the viewer, and both stare off elsewhere. The eyes function independently. Rath references the historic elements of digital art.

The entire electronic exhibition exemplifies how profound the field of digital arts really is.

Reynolds 3-2-11 (Wed)

My theory on remixing is that it is a technological method and medium for “sampling,” “re-pairing,” “blending,” and “recontextualizing,” cultural images, music, literature, belief, concepts, visual art, and thoughts into new forms, based on the personal preferences of the mixer. Cultural pattens, both past and present, have a subliminal and universal connection conveyed on the global sea of collective unconsciousness and now they are also carried via technology, the Internet.

Paul Miller , Dj Spooky, AKA that Subliminal Kid uses the art of DJing in his book Rhythm Science as a means of communicating his cultural ideas and issues regarding remixing in this digital age. Technology is the instrument and the vast and almost limitless information and choices on the web can be altered or added to by any artist’s design. Spooky considers literature, digital art, and music, out pourings of interpersonal interaction and cultural multiplex. In his book he sites many sources of classic and definitive artistic and philosophical works, and personal heros that have influenced his theory of remixing. His CD, a musical remix prototype is comprehensive, it captures the essence of multiplicity of sound, thought, and feeling.

There are themes and issues that arise over theories of remixing. Again, Miller directly and sometimes indirectly folds and recontextualizing these themes and issues into a remix. One basic and controversial theme of remixing that Miller addresses is that of “Who owns memory?” We all own our own memory but we share thoughts and build on others ideas, adding too and taking away. Our cells are filled with retrievable feelings that are the same feelings or thoughts others have but because we are unique we put our own spin on it, we add individual genetic and conceptual responses to create a new memory. “How does property intervene in the flow of information between the material and the ethereal?” Technologies allow us to access almost anyones culturally produced ideas and then the ability to remix them to define our own tastes. This creative exchange of information may or may not acknowledge the “original” creators contributions. Legal concerns regarding ownership of “original” material then become moral and ethical questions for debate. Is there anything that is truly “original?” Probably there is a beginning kernel of thought, a novel idea maybe like the pearl oyster. “In nature, pearl oysters produce natural pearls by covering a minute invading parasite with nacre, not by ingesting a grain of sand. Over the years, the irritating object is covered with enough layers of nacre to form what is known as a pearl. There are many different types, colors and shapes of pearl; these qualities depend on the natural pigment of the nacre, and the shape of the original irritant.” To me, like the pearl, in the purest sense, remixing and recontextualizing of materials creates a new entity or body of work. I still think there are instances where we need to acknowledge and give credit to other’s imaginative creations.

Reynolds 2-16-11

Debord & Bourriaud Blog

Social theorist and Situational International founder Guy-Ernst Debord’s heady and intellectual in depth essay Methods of Detournement was challenging. It was necessary to research his ideas to understand his theories. The dictionary defines Detournement as, “a variation on a previous media work, in which the newly created media work has a meaning antagonistic or antithetical to the original. The original work that is detourmed must be somewhat familiar to the target audience, so that it can appreciate the opposition of the new message. The artist making the variation can reuse only some of the characteristics of the originating work.” In English the word means “turnabout” or “derailment”. After reading this definition what came to mind first were memes and Culture jamming. Memes can be antagonist to their prototype and in a round about way socially motivating, but not always. Culture jamming is definitely derailing and cultural activism, and activism was precisely Debord’s goal. Debord’s Situationalist work is Marxesque and serious, with intent to wake-up the capitalist public from being duped by government or large corporations propaganda through their use of the “power of the image to persuade”. He felt as human beings and individuals we just watched these images of supposed truth as spectators, then as good consumers just swallowed. He felt that the obedient public, the spectators, should take “control of the images” and use them as a counterattack.

In his essay he defined the usage of minor detournements and deceptive detournements. Minor detournements are factors that are not necessarily considered important by themselves: press clippings or a picture taken from a camera however used in a new context they can be effective in changing peoples minds. Deceptive detournement utilizes already significant factors such a well know political text, famous art work or literature which become even more powerful in a new context.

Watching the black and white 1973 film clip of The Society of Spectacle was eerie and fascinating. It was strange to go back in time and feel the energy of the 70’s perspective. Listening to the French language lent it more authenticity. It seemed so automatized and stylized, at times staccato then flat. It felt unreal, superficial, and the essence of blind consumerism, the consumer is being consumed. You are what you eat, you are what you buy and its all twisted together to form another reality.

Postproduction. Culture as Screenplay: How Art Reprograms the World is an essay by French writer and curator Nicolas Bourriaud. Basically, Bourriaud’s essay is about remixing, alterations in multidisciplinary media. He says because of the tremendous amount of artistic material it is almost exponential as far as the creation of new media art. In this following website I found a very concise and easier to understand synthesis of some of his thoughts regarding Dadaism, Marxism and philosophy.

http://dada2data.blogspot.com/2008/01/nicolas-bourriaud-postproduction-page.html

He comments on the art of DJing and how the mixing of music is like the mixing of artistic expression.

Reynolds 2-9-10

According to Wikipedia and simplistically abbreviated by me, “open content” allows for an alternative to the use of copyright which translates to monopolies vs. a monopoly and the “democratization of knowledge.” “Open source” means “practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials.

The advantage of an open source/open content approach for those who experiment with the art of remixing is having endless sources of material to tap from with reduced legal restrictions, at least at this point anyway. In many instances an abundance of wildly expressive creativity has been born, or should I say reborn? Remixing borrows, blends, adds, subtracts, and in the end the artist makes it his/her own. Is it appropriation, or does remixing create something brand new? Lawrence Lessing refers to remix culture as: “a rich, diverse outpouring of creativity based on creativity.”

http://www.oreillynet.com/policy/2005/02/24/lessig.html

Remixing is everywhere and the Internet has been a catalyst. It’s in all disciplines across the board and consumer culture seems to be eating it up. It wouldn’t be everywhere if people weren’t interested. Free culture is important to some extent, but in the big picture,there has to be a balance between protecting ones “original” creative output versus the “collective” freely accessible use of original work.

Umberto Eco wrote in “The Poetics of the Open Work,” “Openness is an interpretive freedom. Openness is a fundamental part of perception. We can observe and interpret, but essentially never exhaust.” http://www.altx.com/remix/eco.pdf. There does seem to be an inexhaustible supply of artistic remixed sites. In the first part of his article he talks about contemporary avant-garde pieces of music that differ from classical works by leaving considerable autonomy of the performer in the way he/she chooses to play the work. The following is an example of this as seen on YouTube, in b flat, http://inbflat.net/ “a collaborative music and spoken word project conceived by Darren Solomon from Sciece for Girls.” This site is a variety of people playing music from different mediums simultaneously resulting in an extraordinarily innovative and creative remix exemplifying Eco’s point above.

Yes, the idea of copyright and intellectual property becomes more obsolete in the digital/networking culture. It would be extremely difficult to fight intellectual property laws regarding cyberspace because part of the nature of digital technology is to remix and reconstruct existing art, and that it is itself, is a creative endeavor.

Like Lessig I believe that amateur remix free from regulation encourages inventiveness and innovation. Some of the rigid copy right laws need to be modified and changed in this new technological society. Intellectual property becomes somewhat blurred as well, and again in need of amendment and revision. However, it seems if an amateur remixed an original copy and started making money on this art work that the original creator should be monetarily compensated because the amateur is no longer an amateur.

I personally value the media art of Paul Miller’s AKA Spooky that Subliminal kid.

http://www.djspooky.com/ His website and his book is a perfect example of remixing at its best. His AKA Spooky that Subliminal Kid started out as a conceptual Art project. The name Spooky refers to the eerie sounds of hip-hop, technology, and ambient music, a style of instrumental music with electronic texture and no persistent beat -used to create a mood or atmosphere. He is a DJ and he writes about being a DJ. He writes like a DJ using mixing, remixing and sometimes scrambling to express his ideas about culture and digital art. In his work he asks questions evoking thoughts such as, “Who speaks through you?” “Who owns memory?” The final result of his remixing is unifying and it became and originally creative endeavor. At what risk? It’s questionable because it’s still a part of the philosophical debate.

I recently sampled and remixed source material from the general culture into an assignment that became an original. I remixed some of Yael Kanarek’s material from the “World of Awe” http://www.worldofawe.net/ in another class project with some of my personal and philosophical beliefs. My project in itself was original, but I also used her original work from the “World of Awe” to illustrate one my philosophical thoughts, which is a remix.

“The questions Umberto Eco raises, and the answers he suggests, are intertwined in the continuing debate on literature, art, and culture in general.” In other words, in all realms of culture everyone is remixing. Remixing is everywhere and it’s hard to discern where exactly the thread began.

Reynolds 2-2-11

http://jackiereynolds.com/flusserremix/