Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
VJ-Play and more
My recent explorations with live video remixing have been fun. I have enjoyed the playful experientation that takes place in this practice of digital arts. I am still unsure of how this medium can be used appropriately in my work, so that the concept fits this process and it does not come across as "eye candy."
I found Phil Soloman's work with machinma extremely powerful. It held a poetic beauty that worked withthe medium in a conceptual way. His work was also beautifully crafted. I enjoyed his presentation immensely, as he reavealed a narrative that gave further insight into the emotional intensity that speaks through his machinma works. Even without the explanation, the work spoke clearly. The work is accessible without knowledge of the technology that is used to create it. While this holds relevance, I think that it is even more powerful that it stands out in its artistic form without attachment to it place in the machinma realm.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Remix Short Essay
A form of open content is valid in today’s society. This alternative to copyrighting has the potential to allow for an honest approach to appropriation. I am most certainly in favor of this idea of the democratization of knowledge. The copyright seems to limit a collective, creative consciousness. It creates boundaries and gives permission to only an elite few who can pay for this privilege of use. However, taking away all personal, intellectual rights devalues individual creativity. Utilizing the space in between these two extremes of individual and collective ideas, allows for respect of the individual and openness to collaboration.
Many times people are unconsciously influenced by a song, image, or phrase. These are forms of communication. The spoken tradition of storytelling brings us back to the roots of sharing, which is found in these like writing, music, and visual arts. This experience of sharing ideas is common to people of society.
I have observed that it is very common for young people to be unaware of the volume of borrowing in which they engage. In addition, there is a lack of consciousness to the history, which influences their claimed identity. I believe that all people should be privileged in having access to information and an understanding of history, as it encourages respect of the individual. Open content has its challenges such as promoting a weak work ethic and a lack of education. I think that people should recognize the history of the lyrics of a song, or iconic images and pay due respect to the original creators. Breaking the laws, and piracy are becoming more of the norm, like that of prohibition. It seems that there needs to be a shift in this system, which would allow for more freedom, honesty and an understanding for the past. This would promote remixing or reusing in a genuine way.
While open source devalues the monopoly of one individual, or closed organization, it allows for collaboration and empowerment of people through accessibility. Restricting freedom leads to breaking laws and dishonesty. Alternatives such as free culture allow people to make honest choices. The rise of the Internet and consumer culture already permits accessibility, which contradicts the restrictive nature of copyright and intellectual property. Originally copyright was put in place to protect the artist from another claming their work to gain recognition or earned income. Executives need a means for control and got carried away because they felt their power slipping away with the accessibility of media.
This open context of intellectual property does pose challenge for the artist to take credit for their labor. Stolen property is not the solution, but respectful borrowing of ideas should be acceptable. This would take a redefinition of antiquated copyright laws. Redefining what is acceptable in terms of copyright is appropriate. Creative Commons provides a good balance between these polar opposites of open content and copyright.
Imitation is a sincere form of plagiarism. It allows for creativity to sprout with respect to what is being imitated and allows for growth beyond this initial creative inspiration. It is like looking up to a role model, or learning from the past. In my mind, there is still much to be learned from the past and applied to the present.
Shepard Fairey’s work is a great example of appropriation. He began by using Andre the Giant as an authoritative figure in his work that critiques propaganda. This iconic figure is connected to a message that reads “Obey.” His images draw from the past and are placed in a new form within a contemporary framing. In this way he reminds us of the history of social issues, such as war, and places them in society like past propaganda art that promoted war. A difference lies in the message to the public. Fairey is asking society to question the acceptance of issues like war through his appropriation of war images. This is unlike the politicians’ who use propaganda as a brainwashing technique to bombard the public with images that promote war.
Through another lens, Fairey’s iconic images recall the message of Lessig, as he suggests that people make art, not war. This message echoes the idea that instead of fussing and fighting over territory, (literally speaking or metaphorically speaking in terms of an icon on cyber space), it would be more productive to allow others to creatively remix or collaborate. Creative expression is freedom. This freedom is empowering and this power creates a struggle for control in the war against open content.
Remixing in my creative work has occurred naturally. Just as any creative being, I am influenced by other artists. Recently, during two separate occasions, I was given opportunities to work closely with some of my favorite artists. We shared fundamental values and thematic issues in our work. On both of these occasions, these artists suggested for me to reuse their approaches in my work, which felt uncomfortable as first. Then, I remembered times when I observed a peer remixing ideas that I had shared into their own work. On occasion, I heard, “I guess, you inspired me.” This acknowledgement melted my bitterness away. This is the best response and the intent behind my creative endeavors. To inspire thinking is a great achievement and a goal of my work as an artist. I rather not take another person’s creative endeavors or achievement personal, even if it hits close to home. Even if we try, we cannot be anyone but ourselves. Sharing ideas and values with another can be an empowering experience when treated with respect and integrity. This openness permits innovation.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Remix Inspiration
In response to the writings by Bourroughs, DJ Spooky and Kathy Acker, I have composed a written piece pertaining to my work. I find the freedom of these creative wtiting practices to be profoundly inspiring. I have remixed research information and my own ideas in the following piece.
Only the forest can heal itself
Safe open space
The light shines from within
The honey bee is linked to the health of the entire environment
Ready to go to work from the day they are hatched
Mountain pine beetle is native to the forests of western North America
These neighboring countries exist in an interdependent relationship
Bees are necessary to food production
Branching
One of the things that is going on in Colorado is our forests are ready to regenerate.
llegal immigration may be prompted by the desire to escape civil war or repression in the country of origin
Someone cares
A queen is a slave to her duties
Nurturing nature
Youth voice engaged in community organizing for social change
There are choices
They are old
Reaching
Illuminating outward
Survival
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Rhythm Science Remix
Once you get the flow of things, you’re haunted by the way things could have turned out. This is our beginning and there is our narrative path. In the space of one random error murmur to yourself and hear the voices in your head whisper back. Memory, damnation and repetition: That was then and this is now. As my mom used to say, “Who speaks through you?” There is always more than one map to the territory: You just have to intuit the terrain. The eyes move. The body stays still. People really don't think about the absolute wonders that surround us and make this life livable and our way of thinking sustainable. No past, no present, no future. As George Santayana said so long ago, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” We have machines to repeat history for us like a self-directed swarm of birds. These are the tales told over and over so many times and in so many ways while they hum with the speed of a thousand and one nights. Who speaks through you? Identity is about creating an environment where you can make the world act as your own reflection. The flocking instinct holds the geometry of the ideas together. Move through this environment collecting examples of simultaneity, marking and registering coincidences with mathematical precision. They are global. They are universal. There are rhythms that hold everything we know and can understand together. Dreams and basic nighttime thought processes generate the most creative sounds. Without imagination everything is empty. Art is our guide to the new terrains we have opened within ourselves, in pursuit of techne and logos. Blues musicians speak of “going to the crossroads” – that space where everyone could play the same song but flipped it every which way until it became “their own sound.” Every story leads to another story to another story to another story. New contexts form old. That’s why people still wear bell-bottom jeans. You can always squeeze something out of the past and make it new. The one in many, the many in one we find ourselves caught in a complex web of visual and psychological cues, a form of kinesthethesia that pervades everything we do, an uncanny cipher regulating the traffic of plural meanings that bombard us at every moment. Art and the imagination- the physical and mental- join together the first installment of a loan made from the future. Who speaks through you? In jazz, it’s the fluid process of “call and response” between players of an ensemble. The environment that I had grown up in, which accepted diversity was a basic way of life, made most of America seem pretty remote. Being at the crossroads and questioning how far to push, uncertain which direction to move, is actually a good thing because it forces me to go back to the basic issues. The observer always alters the picture, the map always changes the routes traveled. Travel. It was dark, a surreal, gray dawn. Sometimes stories work better. Who speaks through you?
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Kathy Acker
Kathy Acker's writing is extremely inventive and creative in its form. She employs poetry, narrative, and dialogue among many literary techniques. The influence of Burroughs is obvious throughout the book in her use of the cut up method, which her layering of writing becomes is highly descriptive and allows my mind to carry off into a imaginative visual of surrealist painting or collage. I could not help but wonder how mush of this narrative was true in a biographical sense. As she addresses sexuality and intimacy in such a free manner, it seems as though there is presence of stream of conscious writing in her work as well.
The direct use of her strong voice reminds me of performance works that explore the female identity through ritualistic acts such as:
Carolee Schneemann.....
Rebecca Horn
and
Ana Mendieta
Images of Barbara Kruger were conjured in my mind as I read Acker's cut up style text.
In her feminist approach, I recall the activist works of the Guerilla Girls.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Remix:Borges and I
It is to the other, to She, that life occurs. I quietly wander a familiar path of comfort, frozen, one could say hypnotically to observe the world through a haloed lens. Of She I hear songs of praise. I like vintage optical devices, nests and hives, botany, the taste of freshly picked produce, and the musical words of foreign languages. She would agree upon these choices, but in a naive way that turns them into attributes of a saint. It would not be an exaggeration to claim that our relationship is filled with confilct. I live, I let myself live, so that she may dance across the world connecting with people in the name of art and this circus act justifies me. It poses no great difficulty for me to admit that her nurturing services have produced some interesting creations. Yet, these humanitarian acts can not save me, perhaps because all that is true does not belong to anyone, not even to the other, but to the natural and historical. Nonetheless, I am destined to lose all that I am, as I shrink in my existence within this multifaceted crystal. Fleeting moments, nostalgic memories allow me to live on in the other. Slowly, I continue to give in to her, even though I am aware of her polar dreamlike tendencies to fly away; chasing butterflies and healing the wounds of the war. Buddha understood that all beings are connected; a lotus blooms even with its roots in the ugliest water. I will not remain in her, not in myself, but I see myself less in her creative endeavors than in those of many others, or in the soil of my Grandmother's enduring hands. Years ago, I tried to free myself from her, attempting to move on from this heroine that sacrifices part of me each time. I attempted to return to where I belong, remaining in one place, isolated from society. But, that She too has taken and I will have to conceive of new ideas. In this way, my life is a disappearing act of a magician and I appear as a faint ghost of the past.
I do not know which of us is writing this.
Remix: Gertrude Stein
In the moment there is fleeting, in the end there is time, in the clock there is ticking, in the stillness there is peace. In the stillness there is peace. In peace all are breathing, in peace all are resting, in peace there is resembling, in peace there is recalling and entirely mistaken there is truth. All the bodies have veins and all the limbs have roots and all the green has soil and all the cycles have cycling. This makes freedom.
Remix: 100th Exercises in Style
Through Rose Colored Glasses
The energy bustled throughout the S bus. A unique young man wears a hat with a lovely ribbon tied in a bow over his head that was carried by an elegantly long neck. Intriguing strangers depart from their bus rides. That same unique man becomes flirtatious with another handsome gentleman standing next to him. He winks and smiles each time another passenger strides by. They exchange phone numbers. He moves on, eagerly pursuing an empty seat next to a charming looking lady.
Later that fine day, serendipity finds me and the same man in the Cour de Rome facing the gare Saint Lazare. Amusingly, he is accompanied by another. This companion is encouraging him to put more dazzle on his fancy coat. He enthusiastically suggests decorating the lapels and explains that it will make him stand out in the crowd.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)