Image source: Amazon.com

More information about Rebirth of a Nation: http://www.rebirthofanation.com/

DJ Spooky has performed live Rebirth of a Nation, a remix of D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation in various parts of the world. The multi-faceted media performance deconstructs Griffith’s historically important film to expose the politics of racism during and after 1915, the year when the original film was produced.

DJ Spooky is releasing a DVD version of Rebirth of a Nation on November 4 of 2008. The critically minded would not hesitate to think that the release date is not a coincidence, but rather a constructive move on Spooky’s part to remind people that the upcoming presidential election is historically important. The United States has come a long way since the days when Griffith released Birth of a Nation, and on November 4, the title Rebirth of a Nation will take on a new meaning, for no matter what happens after the fourth, the United states will certainly enter a definitive new stage in its history.

Information about the Film and DJ Spooky’s Biography follow below.

http://www.rebirthofanation.com/
http://www.djspooky.com/

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First released in 1915, D. W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation ignited worldwide controversy with its graphic depictions of racism and white supremacy in the post-Civil War south. Nearly 100 years later, Paul D. MIller- also known as conceptual artist/musician/writer DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid- creates a daring ‘remix’ of Griffith’s epic to expose the film’s true meaning and relate it to the socio-political conflicts of America today. Originally commissioned as a live multimedia performance, Rebirth of a Nation- now featuring an original score by Miller performed by Kronos Quartet- is ‘a DJ mix applied to cinema’ that challenges our legacy of revisionist history as it deconstructs one of the most influential and inflammatory movies of all time.

DJ Spooky (Paul D Miller, born 1970, Washington DC) is a composer, multimedia artist and writer. His written work has appeared in The Village Voice, The Source, Artforum and Rapgun amongst other publications. Miller’s work as a media artist has appeared in a wide variety of contexts such as the Whitney Biennial; The Venice Biennial for Architecture (2000); the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, Germany; Kunsthalle, Vienna; The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and many other museums and galleries. His work “New York Is Now” has been exhibited in the Africa Pavilion of the 52 Venice Biennial 2007, and the Miami/Art Basel fair of 2007. Miller’s first collection of essays, entitled “Rhythm Science” came out on MIT Press 2004, followed by “Sound Unbound,” an anthology of writings on elctronic music and digital media, published in 2008.

Miller’s deep interest in reggae and dub has resulted in a series of compilations, remixes and collections of material from the vaults of the legendary Jamaican label, Trojan Records. Other releases include Optometry (2002), a jazz project featuring some of the best players in the downtown NYC jazz scene, and Dubtometry (2003) featuring Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry and Mad Professor. Miller’s latest collaborative release, Drums of Death, features Dave Lombardo of Slayer and Chuck D of Public Enemy among others. He also produced material on Yoko Ono’s new album “Yes, I’m a Witch.”

Image and text source: ReConstitution 2008

Text taken directly from the site:

ReConstitution is a live audiovisual remix of the 2008 Presidential debates. There will be three performances in three cities, each coinciding with a live broadcast of the debates.

We’ve designed software that allows us to sample and analyze the video, audio, and closed captioned text of the television broadcast. Through a series of visual and sonic transformations we reconstitute the material, revealing linguistic patterns, exposing content and structures, and fundamentally altering the way in which you watch the debates.

The transformed broadcast is projected onto a movie screen for a seated audience.

Join us in witnessing these historical television broadcasts and in reshaping the medium that has reshaped politics for the last half century.

The legibility of the underlying debate is maintained throughout the performance—we don’t want you to miss a word of it.

Sosolimited is a Cambridge based crew of audiovisual designers and artists. For more information on their work, visit.

Thanks to Greg Smith for directing me to this work.

Image and text source: Lulu’s

Description:

VJam Theory (collective writings on realtime visual performance) presents the major concerns of practitioners and theorists of realtime media under the categories of performance, performer and interactors, audiences and participators. The volume is experimental in its attempt to produce a collective theoretical text with a focus on a new criticality based on practitioner/artist theory in which artist/practitioners utilise theoretical models to debate their practices. For more information visit www.vjtheory.net

Image and text source: Telic Arts Exchange

Written for an exhibition with the same title curated by Eduardo Navas at Telic Arts Exchange, Chinatown, Los Angeles, CA. May 25 - June 16, 2007

Text released: May 25, 2007

What separates new media from previous media is, in part, waiting periods that define public and private experience; whether the download of a file from the Internet is taking longer than expected, an e-mail message has not been sent from one server to another for some unknown reason, or a large file is being rendered in video software like Final Cut Pro for output as a viewable movie, new media is largely dependent on constant moments of waiting, often referenced as latency.

Latency is used with three significations in mind. First, is the technological latency that takes place in new media culture due to the nature of the computer: the machine has to always check in loops what it must do, to then execute commands, eventually leading to the completion of a task. This is the case when someone uses Photoshop, Microsoft Word, or any other commercial application; or streams image and sound across the Internet. This constant checking in loops at hardware and software levels opens the space for latency’s second signification, which extends in social space when the user consciously waits for a response that begins and ends with the computer. Latency becomes naturalized when a person incorporates computer interaction as part of his/her everyday activities.

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Text and Image source: Create Digital Music

March 20, 2007

The wireless, Bluetooth-based Wii controller is fast becoming the music control hardware of choice. The latest addition: Yann Seznec’s Wii Loop Machine, a free, Wii-controller looper for Macs. The software is built in Max/MSP using my current favorite way to interface with the Wii controllers, the free aka.wiiremote external for Max. Load in any samples you want, boot up any Mac with Bluetooth, grab your Wii controller, and you can sync, control, manipulate, and muck with loops.

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TV Remix by Philipp Rahlenbeck

Note: This announcement is archived for historical purposes.

Image source: http://fluctuating-images.de

Text source: http://www.netcells.net

Red Light Concert #10
TV Remix - Media criticism in real time
Philipp Rahlenbeck is jumping channels for us
Saturday, November 12, 2005, 8pm
fluctuating images, Jakobstr.3, 70182 Stuttgart

Recently, the BBC opened parts of their programme archive, as an opportunity for VJs to create video mixes out of footage from old documentaries on art, society, and nature. A special licence allowed free treatment of the images.

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Image source: http://www.visitorsstudio.org/session.pl?id=23
Text source: http://blog.visitorsstudio.org/?q=node/31/

VisitorsStudio is a Media Art project, in that it is “art through and with electronic digital media… a hybrid of electronically generated images, sounds, machine processes and possibilities for interaction”[1]. In addition to this definition by media, and equally important to an understanding of the VisitorsStudio project, is how it corresponds with processes, and practices developed by an earlier generation of artists associated with the Fluxus movement who worked with mail art, happenings, performance, art-activism and live art. This text describes some of these connections with past works and then positions VisitorsStudio within the thriving territory of real-time art, software art, net art and participative and collaborative expression in contemporary ‘remix culture’.

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Image and text source: http://01sj.org/content/view/976/52/

Jul 27, 2006

Time Code — the Live Mix at ZeroOne San Jose will feature Mike Figgis’ new interpretations of this seminal work he started in 2000. For this performance Mike Figgis will be “playing” with the image and “re-mixing” the sound to create a new way to experience this story. Shot simultaneously on four cameras and presented in four frames, Time Code tracks the lives of a smitten lesbian lover as she obsesses over her partner’s dalliances and the tense goings-on of a Hollywood film production company. Time Code is, as one of its critics point out, is one of the “first films shot in real time in one take, to be truly interactive, and to present four different concurrent stories filmed simultaneously.”

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Images source: http://wii-wii.us/
Text source:  http://createdigitalmusic.com/
Related: alternative interfaces, controllers, DJ, hardware, video, VJ, wii, youtube & more

While music manufacturers struggle to create “integrated hardware solutions”, enterprising DJs and VJs are picking up US$40 Nintendo Wii remotes and having a blast. Here, the controller gets assigned to audio filters on the computer (I’m guessing the Max/MSP/Jitter external may be at work as it’s on a Mac), and controls glitchy visuals. I’ve been working with the Wii myself, and I’m not quite satisfied with the gestures I’ve gotten out of it yet — just as some of the early launch title games for Wii may not quite have the control scheme perfected yet, so, too, are these early performance attempts a bit limited. But another six months to a year, some more code, and I’m sure we’ll being having Wii DJ/VJ battles.

Image title and source: 16 [R]evolutions (2006) – Eyebeam, NYC

Text source: VJ Theory

Date published: 12/10/06

Performance is so many things: the synchronized sounds of a symphony; actions with words in a play; steps and turns in a dance; words from a pulpit. Performance art, too, is variable, perhaps too multifarious to define, even with semicolons. At traditional performances with traditional support materials, from symphonies with program notes to theatre productions with playbills, performance acts as replay, a repeat of an event, a memorization of a string of notes or a set of lines, a reformulation of a tested formula. Then there are those performances that vary, that respond to the moment, that unfold through the implementation of chance or improvisation or, more and more, digitization. With the insertion of new technologies into performance, the question arises – do actions result from numbers? What indeed is the connection between the physical and the digital? Does the digital component determine the performance, or do actions generate a numeric pattern, which then underlies the piece’s structure?

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