particularly enchanting for me was the image of beethoven, as a knight in shining armor, being hailed into a certain creative-genius-as-hero archetype, and staring a hostile cast of problems and woes facing humanitiy.

recently, i began a study of the frieze by re-intrepreting it for the digital age. drawing over the frieze, i have re-imagined the symbols and characters of the narrative, even interpolating the digital artist/designer as a new creative hero. take a look at this early draft. i have a lot of work still to go, but i think this should turn out as something interesting to print out at massive scale. if not, it will still look good as a small printed fold-out like the one i bought at the secession building gift shop.

the five coolest things from last week

this is rundown of the coolest things i came across last week. it includes a remix, a video game, two trailers, and an essay. i am going to try to do this more often, as it will give me a larger outlet for the fun stuff i discover on the ‘nets.

5. DJ Tiesto’s Remix of the Killer’s Spaceman

4. The trailer for Ponyo – which I will hopefully see soon.

3. The trailer for Terry Gilliam’s upcoming film – The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus- which features the last footage of Heath Ledger (and the subsequent replacement of Ledger by Depp, Colin Ferrell and Jude Law collectively)

2. a gorgeous essay on my beloved orange line.

1. a video game adaptation of dante’s infero? TELL. ME. MORE.

Bonus: the paradigm collection – cool art versions of video games that imagine a criterion collection for gaming.

there were no less than five encores at the franz ferdinand concert last concert night. each built on the energy of preceeding encore, and each song somehow bringing the energy of the show even higher than it had been before. in fact, before playing the fifth song of the encore, franz ferdinand brought the born ruffians out and proceeded to play a five-minute electronica jam out with everyone on stage tweaking out a synth, playing an electric bass or drumming away at one of three drum sets (including an electric drumpad) on stage. by the time franz decided to play their way out of providence and the united states (this was the last show of their north american tour), they had the crowd in a f***ing frenzy. to the raucous chords of “this fire,” alex kapranos credited each member of the band in the tradition of a jazz outro (“over here on the bass we have mr. bob hardy!”). totally high on the energy of the crowd, kapranos leapt off the stage at the end of the song, striking out the final chords as he was floated around the lupos dancefloor. he fell, but was soon resuced by the concert staff, and got back on stage to join hands with his mates and take a curtain call.

it was unbelievable.

the show was without question the best live musical act i have ever seen. that includes trumping the flaming lips on brown’s main green in the spring weekend of 2007.

no, nothing holds a candle to the indefinite energy of franz ferdinand. for instance, despite being hobbled from an injury in the previous show, rythm guitarist nick mccarthy threw aside his crutches, and jammed out.

the show started with “jacqueline” a classic rock ballad with a great pick-up. starting slow and building into the signature lyrics “its always better on holiday, that’s why we only work when we need the money,” “jacqueline” set the bar for the quality of the show. i had been fearful that the concert would be all about promoting new album, and indeed the encore began with the new single “ulysses” and the second of the set was “no you girls.” but outside of that, the entire show was classic ferdinand, with all of the old favorites from the eponymous 2004 album in stunning live recitation. “michael” “the dark of the matinee” and “take me out” all made appearances in the 1:10 long set. “walk away” one of the best songs off you could have it so much better was also included in the set, and it was probably the slowest song all night, which says something about the pace of the show.

the last song of the regular set was a gorgeous rendition of the beloved ” 40′ “, with Kapranos begging the crowd to sing along with him, and even stopping the melody to hear that we were all singing along.

of course we were. lupos was on fire with the energy of franz ferdinand.i had long suspected that the glasgow boys might be a good, high energy show, but i never expected them to be quite this outstanding. it was a hell of a way to spend a friday night study break during the height of my finals.

ok then, back to this paper.

because we’ve never actually been to the opera, but we’ve been to innumerable mediations of the experience, and unfortunately, we’ve let that stand in for the aura of the opera.

i’m appealing of course, directly to walter benjamin’s idea of the work of art in the age of reproduction. in it, benjamin argues that the reproduction of an art works loses an essential quality (the famed ‘aura’), impossible to detach from the original. the aura, put simply, amounts to its history through time and space, and the visible hand of the artist within the work. benjamin’s ideas are most often employed in theories of visual culture, as the photograph and the lithographic reproduction (among many technologies of visual reproduction) have enabled fleeting moments and singular artworks to escape their specificity and become mass media- international symbols rather than individual art works.

the assumption followed that in the age of reproduction, the mass media are somehow soul-less (without that quality of aura) and therefore not a substitute for the original, though their tracing of the original does lead us back to the fountainhead, back to the aura we somehow we will find at the original.

which is why there is always a line in front of ‘starry night’ at the moma. because the visitor feels compelled to confront a something in the painting that every copy they’ve ever seen of it never had. they look at it like they’ve never seen it. because they don’t think they have. because they think that aura might be visible.

but of course, the aura isn’t visible. the visible is that which has been reproduced. but it’s still there somewhere. it’s the reason they stopped to look at the  painting in the first place.

the opera of media culture

i have both been and never been to the opera.

i’ve never been in that i have never taken a seat, and listened to the orchestra tune up, watch the maestro stroll out, grow excited when the curtain lifts, and been forced to decide whether to follow the actors or the subtitles on the back of the chair in front of me.

but i’ve been there in that i know the music. i know that wagner wrote “ride of the valkyries” and that i’ve seen it in a hundred commercials, parodies, and movies, most notably, in francis ford coppola’s “apocalypse now.” i’ve been to the opera house too. they’re all over our culture. in newport (ri) the main cinema is called opera house, though i suspect it hasn’t seen an opera in half a century. further up the road, at another theater, there are live broadcasts of the metropolitan opera every so often. i’ve watched the newporters dress up to watch these broadcasts, and line up touro street in the january dark waiting for the theater to open.

i’ve been to an opera house of the future, with bruce willis, and been told that it was the “new opera house modeled on the old opera house” as a fantastic blue diva sang what what you-tuber called “hyper-opera.” and i’ve loved it. and i’ve identified with the shots of bruce’s confusion, as he doesn’t know the words, and he didn’t speak italian, and all he can perceive of the experience is all i can perceive of it, that there is some otherworldly beauty in the experience, but that we both don’t know enough to really engage it.

last tuesday, i went to the opera with james bond. as he took on global capitalism in austria. at tosca. and the violence of the 21st century bond was made to bear resemblence to the great action heroes of western civilization, the siegfrieds and the tristans, who are still heroes in the opera house, and still define the qualities of the epic male protagonist.

on my bookshelf, it between memento and the big lebowski, there is a dvd of don giovanni which i’ve never made it through. it was a gift of a friend’s father, who is obsessed with the opera, and maintains that the more times i watch don giovanni and fail to finish it, the more meaningful it will be when i one day do.

being there

i am 21 years old. i am a junior in college. and i have never been to an opera.

i admitted this in a letter to the cogut center for the humanities, who were soliciting applications for students interested in attending a rehearsal of tristan and isolde at the met, and they took pity on me.

on the 6:30 bus to new york, with twenty other students of extensive musical experience, i felt a little out of place. so i kept to myself, and re-read the wikipedia entries on tristan and isolde, and daniel barenboim, the director, whose entry must be one of the most interesting biographies on the entire database.and eventually fell asleep, waking on the bridge into manhattan.

we slowly worked through the mid-morning traffic to barely get to lincoln center in time for rehearsal. in that fantastic modernist opera house, with its sleek marble lines and molecular glass chandeliers. where we sat in the first row of the second balcony with no one except the orchestra and the crew for company.

and the lights went down.

and daniel barenboim stoked up the orchestra.

and they played the prelude.

and the curtain rose.

and it was opera.

what they don’t tell you

is that opera is anything but boring. there is simply too much to pay attention to. on stage, you have amazing talents, singing at outstanding ranges, filling the entire house with their voices, and managing to find time to act between their vocal performances. directly in front of you, you have the entire orchestra. with each musician an individual who could be closely followed to see when and how he changes the sound of the symphony. and there are so many of them. if one were to follow each musician for two minutes, then by the end of the first act you would still have a few to go.

and you have the conductor, cajoling them faster or slower, his whole body a mediation of the sound’s experience, a ceaseless blur of expression. he is the shaper of the collective, and is yet somehow engaged in each instrument. at one point in the rehearsal, barenboim called out to the percussionist to sharpen his sound.

“no not like that” he called, “it’s za da da Dat! za da da Dat!”

i also surmise that the opera is a great place for people watching. though we were (wonderfully) alone in the space, i could imagine myself roaming through the house with my eyes, wondering if those two were a couple, or if that old man had seen this opera before, or who exactly those people in the third box on the right were and why they chose to sit there.

no the opera is anything but boring. it is the original multimedia. it is the great western hybrid art form- that plays with poetry, stagecraft, acting, singing, and orchestral composition. each and every one of those disciplines is it’s own massive art form, with ranges of subtly and control.

but in opera, no one of these arts be distilled or essentialized. they all must work together. so the spectator-listener must engage the opera actively, and cannot be distant or apathetic.

there is simply too much going on.

the opera is not that which happens to you, it is that you are willing to work to put together.

meeting him

daniel barenboim told us just this. he mandated active participation in the experience of the opera. which was certainly a helpful pointer for me. in fact, it was simply astounding to be in a position to receive that kind of advice at this kind of a moment. two hours before, i was seeing my first opera. now, daniel barenboim was telling me how to listen to it.

it was like bill belichik telling me how to understand football.

i could not be more grateful to the cogut center and michael steinberg for this experience. i was lucky enough to get to see an opera, let alone at the met, when the experience became simply unbelievable in that i was sitting down to talk with daniel barenboim about what i’d just seen.

so i asked him about the only thing i felt equipped to talk with him about: the mediation of the operatic experience. did he think that the opera could be captured in film or broadcast televisually?

he told me no. of course he told me no.

“the short answer is no and the long answer is no.”

it has to do with the multiplicty of experience. in a film or on tv, barenboim explained, you are always “the point of view of the camera man.” which doesn’t equate with the myriad ways one can engage with the operatic experience when you are physically there.

and of course, there is a certain agency of the spectator in opera. “you cannot simply sit down and wait for magic to happen, you must be active,” barenboim said.

because the opera is something that you must construct for yourself.

and until then, i never had.

but here i am, on the floor in the auditorium of international house (what a beautiful building!) listening to lawrence lessig speak, after years of hearing him in youtube clips and reading his books.

it’s a little like seeing a concert with your favorite artist after years of listening to their albums and proslytizing their music.

as lessig starts, sitting on stage with fred benenson (arguably the hub of sfc), he tells the crowd that he could not be more thrilled and proud to be at a meeting with this many people. he recalls what it was like when he wrote the book, and the student organization started.

fred corrects him for sounding optimistic, when he’ well known for being a pessimist.

“that’s why i had to get out of this movement” lessig explains “because I needed to be pessimistic”

hybrid economies

despite his pessimism, lessig argues that we are living/entering an Interesting new economy, a hybrid economy. in this dualistic economy, there is a captilastic sphere, and communist sphere (if you forgive the political re-reading) wherein there is both business (amazon) and sharing/volunteering (reader reviews) working in tandem.

there are two possible forms of hybrids:

type 1: “darth vader-type”

inspired by george lucas’ sharecropping mash-up forum, where users can mash-up star wars footage, but lucas will own it.

type 2: “nine inch nails-type”

where the recombination of media allows the recombinateur owns the work. they don’t own the elements, but they own their approach/curation of media.

lessig begins talking about valenti, the MPAA head he debated several times throughout the last decade, and how valenti inspired him with his claims that we were raising an entire generation of people living against the law. he thinks that we do need to consider how we live, not against the law, but changing the law. live within rules, but rules you help set.

lessig reported in june 2007, that he was moving on from issues of intellectual property in the digital age. now, he is moving on to political reform, something he claims is both more academic interest

“9% of Americans polled thought that congress members were doing a good job. More people supported the british crown at the outbreak of the Revolution.”

change congress, the group that lessig has started to campaign for poltical reform, has faced interesting pressure, and had interesting solicitation from groups who want to convene a new constitutional convention.

the future of students for free culture

“five years from now, ten years from now, what is students for free culture?” benenson asks.

“sfc needs to pick some fights” lessig says. he remembers the successful drm campaign and hopes that can be the norm for further fights. lessig thinks that the “low hanging fruit” fight is making university publications (at institutions around the country) open access. force top flight educational institutions to open up the work of their faculty’s work for the rest of the world who can’t afford to pay for access otherwise.

“it’s fun to rally around fights, they’re lots of parties involved with fights….”

drawing the line in the sand/defining free culture

“we have to come to recognize the principles that will guide us” lessig says, “it’s about whats defining for our culture”

this is a long lost response to something i read in a lev manovich essay almost eight months ago. that something was:

if we now try now to develop a better historical and theoretical understanding of remix era, we will be in a better position to recognize and understand whatever new era which will replace it.

the quote was from “what comes after the remix?” and when i stumbled upon it, i was halfway through writing a paper on the idea of the aesthetics of informatics. i actually hit briefly upon the idea that info.art could be that which was beyond the remix aesthetic, and wrote parenthetically to the instructor braxton soderman, i wish i had time to develop a taxonomy of the remix.

given a moment, i have decided to at least tenatively develop that taxonomy.

the remix, as manovich historicizes it, is born of a tradition of sampling. it is quotational, but not only in the sense that journalism cobbles stories from sound bites, but also from the idea that the quotation can be divided, resampled, taken out of context, repeated and manipulated. in short, the remix is always allowed to be a new fiction of the fact it originates from.

the extension remix

let me be more specific. the first taxonomic level of the remix is the extension. this is the differentiation between values like “album version” and “radio edit.” the extension remix is always about time, and by virtue of its name, almost universally represents the idea that the original serving (designed for short, potent commercial play) denied the listener an elaborated concept worked to completion.

the translation remix

the second taxonomic level of the remix is the translation. with the translation, a song is re-adapted from its primary genre to a secondary genre. generally this translation is at the service of club culture, as well known pop-songs are frequently given treatments to make them acceptable in a dance venue. in sharp contrast with the extension, the translation is almost done by a secondary producer, which is to say that the band/studio responsible for the original song generally outsource the work of the translation to a well-known DJ or club producer, whose responsibility becomes making the song a cross-over success.

unlike later remix aesthetics, which will be discussed, the translation is often constrained by the need to have the remixed songs still contain the song’s original singer, singing the original lyrics, in generally the same order. which is to say that the song still reflects a pop structuration. there is still a verse-chorus-verse-bridge-chorus shape to the song, and this makes the translation feel… cheap.

the mash-up

just past the translation is the mash-up. this terrain, made world-f#@!ing famous by girltalk, is all about the superimposition of well-known songs within one another. the most quotational of remix forms, the mash-up at best constructs an homage and at worst creates superficial allusions that say “oh listen to that, and that. my wasn’t that something?”

to not overly diminish the mash-up, one must remember that the better mash-up is not one that sounds like one song put into another but two songs deconstructed and rewoven together. they should become a indivisible new unity, that while clearly frankensteined from two or more other sources still sounds like a cohesive one. the original masters of this were not greg gillis or internet amateurs, but a group of underground belgians who made techno by night as soulwax, and then made american pop-music mashups by day. like mash-up itself, they decided to name themselves after the multiplicious culture of recombitant music remixes: “2manydjs.”

the most important element of the successful mash-up is the value of dissimilarity between the original songs which is then considered against the fluency with which they are then brought together. below, two choice examples of successful mash-ups are measured by just this criterion as they manage to overcome genre and bpm (beats per minute) differences to become a cohesive whole.

the radical reconstruction

the penultimate remix aesthetic could be considered the final stage of the remix in that it represents the last clear indication that a given work is derivative from an original, and wants to acknowledge that original. this penultimate level is called the radical reconstruction. like the mash-up, the radical reconstructive remix begins by breaking apart a cohesive whole into song-elements, and then curating certain elements into the new. in sharp contrast to the mash-up, the radical reconstruction often includes new elements, riffs, synth-leads, beats, and other musical components that were not in the original song. this is not to say that the new elements will be entirely new; in fact, they are often abstractions of given song-elements that have been reinterpreted by the remix dj when he/she decided to redo the song’s melody with a moog keyboard or angelic synth line. consider the vampire weekend remix below by the teenagers, which clearly acknowledges the structure of the original song, but also imposes some wholly new material.

for what it’s worth, i got this remix through hipster runoff as they did a recent testament to the potency of the teenagers as a remix collective.

the radical reconstruction remix is really the ultimate remix, as it represents (generally) an ideal balance between the introduction of new material, and the reintrepretation of existing song-elements. unlike the transition, which is superficially the restructuring of only rhythm and song pacing, the radical reconstructive remix must change the tone of the song, both playing as an homage to the original but taking it towards something new. in this way, the r.r. could be considered the montage remix as it reframes a way of looking at a work, but does so using pre-existing vantages.

the deep abstraction

if this taxonomy suffers any obvious flaw, it is that i’ve privileged abstraction (which is to say the development of palpable difference) as the axis on which remixed music is to be categorized. here, i complete that axis with the concept of the deeply abstracted remix aesthetic.

somewhere just before a remix becomes a completely original piece, it lingers as a deeply abstracted allusion. here, the game of recognizing song-elements from the original is practically pointless. save for very obvious preserved components (like the vocal tracks) the song is so alien that is virtually a new work.

i first noticed the existence of this type of remix when i bought tiesto’s suburban train on vinyl, and it came with a remix by way out west. this remix had virtually nothing to do with the original. it was like a burned out house that is rebuilt using only the west wall of the original structure, there is just the ghost of a similarity in the song

below are two examples of deep abstraction from hybrid, a group i believe to be among the most creative remix squad in the world. i say that because whatever the purpose of their remixes may be, it is not to provide a flavor of the original. instead, their remixes plug original songs into a cybernetic body of electronica, crafted by these masters, and able to give the original song a totally new life.

so this past week marked my 21st annual completion of orbiting the sun. because the united states federal government believes that this number of orbits holds particular meaning in terms of access to alcoholic beverages, much fun was had.

MUCH. FUN.

one of the great things about turning 21 is the fact that i can now go to bars, go to liquor stores, or order drinks at restaurants. one of the bad things about this is that lack of access was both healthy and inexpensive. in short, i have quickly discovered the alcoholic beverages are not for the frugal although they may be an opiate of the impoverished.

consider the college student (mwah).

i got excellent birthday presents. i got a dvd copy of in bruges, one of the greatest films of 2008, and i believe, one of the most potent examples of dark comedy ever made. my first, and only viewing of this film left me with the conviction that this film had a certain depth, a depth i feel requires amble fathoming. the film is also an early example of the post-postmodern film, which satirizes postmodernity and exists in a certain meta-meta reality, if that makes any sense. it’s like anti-folk music, except that the real counterpart would be anti-anti folk, which could never be a direct return to folk music, because it wouldn’t represent a virginal folk music but a music trying to return to its roots after a digression that it is shaped by.

but anyway i digress.

among the many other excellent presents i received, was one that stood out above the rest: a potent mash-up of all my favorite songs, done by professor purple (aka Jeremy Malvin) at the request of my amazing girlfriend.

this mash-up is without a doubt one of the most wonderful things i have ever had gifted to me. because it feels uniquely mine. because it represents a sort of audio portrait. as a curation, the songs are not so unique as to be enough of a audiotory fingerprint. many of my friends listen to similar music. but the composition of the songs, done wonderfully by jeremy, reveals the thread that binds the music altogether, a beat, a rhythm, a bass reflex, which essentially represents my consciousness at this point in my life.

it reminds me, in many capacities, of a project i once encountered that sampled your itunes library and created a 30 second “audio identity.” (does anyone know what project this is?)

anyway, malvin is a master beat matcher, an art kid from pittsburgh (the land of girl talk, steel, and andy warhol dontchaknow) who i met through his sister hanna, and rowing star here at brown (the girls have won the national championships twice in a row now). jeremy is not even in college, but already he’s got some righteous gigs going on down in pitts. like gigs at the warhol museum with bellydancers.

i am eternally grateful that malvin thought it was worth his time to make me a little mix. his talent is truly endless, particularly as his real calling is as a concert percussionist, and all this electronica is just a side project. when i met jeremy i told him that he should work on remixes because a lot of electronica artists got they’re start doing remixes (see paul oakenfold, deep dish, lcd soundsystem, justice, etc. for details)

if you’re interested in witnessing professor purple’s talent first hand, take a listen to these tracks he compiled for the “mccune birthday fantastic.” each one blends the kindof girltalk mash-up aesthetics with a radical satirical sensibility. what i mean, is that malvin does not privilege anyone track as primary, and compile ontop of it, but rather weaves the threads together into a would-be tapestry of sound.

and it sounds… beautiful.

the pinker tones will force you to dance at wand point . image by ventura mendoza. creative commons 2.0.

or maybe you have, in which case, hats off.

but if you haven’t, allow me to introduce them. ladies & gentlemen, i give you the pinker tones, barcelona’s answer to daft punk. in many ways, the pinker tones will already feel familiar: they are a electronic duo, who enjoy wrapping their music in the enigma of bizarre costume, and use synthesized political samples to critique contemporary culture. i don’t know if the electro-duo is the boy band of western europe (as in basement jaxx, simian mobile disco, and orbital also have a stake in the two man techno genre) but as long as it continues to work, i have no complaints.

like their french cousins (justice, daft punk, les rhytmes digitales) the pinker tones keep the bpm below 130, so there’s nothing really hard here, just some light, smart house music. but where the french electro scene can often feel like the same old, same old, the pinker tones are kings of reinvention, not sticking with a formula, but moving around a lot. they also almost always avoid the robot-synthesizer voice, which has become the emphysema of otherwise good electro. when they do use it, as in “S.E.X.Y. R.O.B.O.T” it’s ironic yet dynamic making the track feel fresh rather than canned.

it’s not like the pinker tones aren’t a big deal. they are. they have “made it” in europe, and are threatening in the u.s. as we speak. this summer, they are touring as part of the warped tour. which might be the smartest thing they’ve ever done, or a waste of time. i’m leaning towards the latter.

what the pinker tones need to do, is get on a tour with someone like Girl Talk, lcd soundsytem or dan deacon. hell, i think they’d make a great dance-punk/hipster ticket with crystal castles, who i saw play in philly. in short, they’d do well reaching the niche electronica community in the u.s. rather than trying to convert rock lovers at the warped tour. their music really isn’t aggressive enough to bring hardcore rockers into the electronica fold.

my only disappointment is that i want to see these guys, I will have to brave the wanna-be’s and emo punks of the warped tour to see them.

but don’t let their booking decision dissuade you from approaching the pinker tones with a sense of awe. their music is fucking outstanding; crisp, polished, engaging, and diverse, demonstrating a host of digital music making fluency.

it sounds good, it dances better, and it’ll get stuck in your head. which is everything you want from good house music anyhow.

videos

“Karma Hunters”

million colour revolution

S.E.X.Y. R.O.B.O.T

so i downloaded the new girltalk album “feed the animals.” i paid $5 for it. i had the option of course, to get it for free. but what fun would that have been?

it’s my opinion that you should always pay for albums that you can get for free. because you can pay for them, you should. encouraging artists that believe in dynamic pricing and are in dialog with contemporary discussions of free culture are exactly the artists that need to be supported. moreover, how shameful is it to imagine that when a guy is willing to give away his album for anything you’d like to pay, the amount you choose is nothing. everything’s got to be worth something.

i am listening to the tracks, and will follow this post up with a review (at some point). i did see girl talk (aka gregg gillis) when he played at spring weekend. he was an amazing performer. lotta energy. lotta talent. played some tracks that i believe were from this album. major improvement on m.i.a. (i head she left the music industry, no loss really).

anyway, album bought, downloaded, being listened to, and that’s the story from 12 stockholm.