While taking a class with Todd Blair at the CCA we discussed art as the revealing of a phenomenon, that is making the unknown known. At the time I firt thought of the works of Alvin Lucier exploiting sonic phenomena, John Cage and small sounds, Marcel Duchamp and optical illisions (not mention ontological questioning of art), and James Turrell with his perception altering light pieces.
However now I see that definition more broadly. Isn't this what the impressionist did with the sea and landscapes? The alteration of perspective necessitates the generation of a new relationship with the subject. The new relationship opens the opportunity to know something one didn't know before.
Our contemporary landscape is one of information.
This is a well tread path, but at every turn we face another piece of media: a print ad, television punditry, music, movies, newspapers. We all know this. In fact our immersion is so great that our media become cultural objects and our idenities, if not built, are at least immensley influenced by what we hear, see, and experience. By and large we outwardly establish identity through media choices: the music we listen to, television we watch, news media (print, television, and online) that we consume.
I recently had the opportunity to attend a lecture by poet Kenneth Goldsmith in which he discussed the process of creating art as the process of organizing some part of the wealth of information we are constantly bombarded with. (Many of his works involve reading passages from newspapers and traffic reports.)
I'm fascinated with this idea of art making as cultural remix. Reworking cultural products (music, movies, news, etc) to show something fundamentally human, and often doing it with a sense of humor. Here are a couple of my recent favorites.
The first is microsoft's Songsmith generating a bluegrass accompaniment for Billy Idol's White Wedding. Songsmith is a new program released by microsoft to generate auto accompaniment to someone's singing. Do a google search. While a lot of people decry it for being lazy music making, I honestly can only think of its misuse and how beuatiful that is (Runnin' With the Songsmith is another favorite.)
The second, I came across from a posting by my buddy Kenneth Yates, aka Caustic Castle, on facebook. In garfieldminusgarfield, Garfield is erased from comic strips and Jon is left solo. Man. Intense.
I'd also like to invite anyone reading this to contribute some of their own remixes or others. Or any thought.
For more on Remix Culture, check out one of my favorite culture and tech theorists Lev Manovich.
I'm azz100c on YouTube, the individual responsible for that Billy Idol Songsmith version.
ReplyDeleteI'm also a doctoral student in cultural studies, with a good amount of coursework in audio cultures and the intersection of technology and culture.
When Songsmith was introduced, I immediately thought it could be used as a subversive tool for creating new art, and at the same time making a striking critical statement on technological determinism. I regret that the latter meaning has been lost in the ridiculous popularity of my videos, but that's what happens, I suppose.
I have to admit I wonder about the technological determinism inherent in Songsmith. The sonic vocab used is pretty much identical to that of a cheap 80's keyboard with demo songs. It seems that those are primarily used by eccentrics and hackers/benders now. I'm sure microsoft has access to more sophisticated sounds, and pitch recognition technology, especially non-real-time, is pretty rudimentary at this point. Part of me thinks they made it for hackers/eccentrics. How else would one explain the commercial?
ReplyDeleteI agree that the commercial is extreme even in the opinion of those who already think Microsoft is the devil. Philip's point might hold merit.
ReplyDeleteI just watched another youtube video where melodies fed into songsmith were derived from the stock charts of Lehman Bros, Bank Of America, GM, and even more morbid facts like graphs of the number of dead American GI's in Iraq. Obviously the most public use of this program has been to create surreal, ironic commentary on radically depressing information in addition to the immediate commentary on Microsoft's woefully odd creation.