Image source: The First Post

Note: Below is an excerpt of a film analysis of Inception I wrote for Vodule, a new collaboration that focuses on the concept of volume and modularity in emerging media.

Spoiler alert: this is a film analysis, meaning an in-depth review that gives away key  moments of the film.

Written by Eduardo Navas

Inception is defined as “The establishment or starting point of an institution or activity.”  In the film Inception, the term means “the introduction of an idea in someone’s mind.”  Dominic Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a master at manipulating people’s dreams.  He is able to introduce an idea deep into a person’s unconscious.  The idea will take over the individual’s reality and perhaps even push him or her to the edge of sanity. The individual may question actual reality and consider the dreamworld real, not the material world.

Inception was written and directed by Christopher Nolan, who consistently plays with the concept of time in multiple parallels of reality.  He did this with Memento, Batman Begins, and The Dark Knight.  But Inception, as original as it may appear, in effect, is far from being itself an introduction of a new concept that may take over film form and ask that film as a medium be redefined.  Nolan by no means may be claiming to do this with Inception, but serious filmmaking is at its best when it becomes that which it proposes.  This is known in the arts as the sublime: to present the unpresentable–to present the possibility of comprehending the incomprehensible.  This is the ultimate space of exploration in aesthetics.  Inception, as respectable as it may appear, falls short in this important aspect.  Why this may be so is worth considering.

Read the complete text at Vodule

Note: Jazari was featured on NPR: Jazari: A One-Man, Wii-Operated Drum Circle.  What is interesting about the band’s approach (the band consists of only one person, composer/programmer Patrick Flanagan) is that by programming two Wii controllers for speed, rhythm, loudness and syncopation, the performance references the role of a conductor in front of an orchestra or phylarmonic.  One could speculate on the meaning of this approach to making music, especially in regards to how a performer has a certain agency in front of the audience.  What happens when this delivery is done through a computerized set up?  Where is the mythologized hand of the artist?

YouTube Description: Esther Wojcicki chairperson of the board of Creative Commons interviewed at the Innovation Journalism conference at Stanford University, Palo Alto in June 2010. Esther talks about the way the creative commons licence works and assesses the potential for the movement. The interview itself is of course offered under an informal creative commons licence whereby anyone is free to re-publish the video so long as Winchester Journalism is credited as the source and so long as any editing does not change the general character of the interview.

Note: Medialab Prado has released online the video documentation of my presentation of “Remix, The Bond of Repetition and Representation” for Interactivos during the summer of 2008.  The presentation emphasizes the concept of  Visual Play, which was the thematic for the workshops sessions in that year.  A different version of the text was later published at the end of the same year by Telefónica, and is available online, through Remix theory as post 361. The introduction is in Spanish, but the text presentation itself is in English.  The video is also downloadable with a Spanish voiceover translation.  Much of the material presented has also become parts of various texts also available on Remix Theory. Abstract of the text follows below as published on Medialab’s website:

This text, “Remix: The bond of Repetition and Representation,” entertains the historical importance of Remix in culture at large. It places particular importance on how the image is constantly appropriated in the visual arts as well as other areas of mass culture with unprecedented efficiency. This is done to understand the dialectics at play within Remix, itself and to further understand the principles behind concepts such as “Visual Play” in the emerging network culture. As it becomes clear in the following essay, in order for remix culture to come about, certain dynamics had to be in place, and these were first explored in music, around the contention of representation and repetition. This essay defines the concept of Remix in relation to these two terms, and then moves on to examine its role in media and art. There are three Remix definitions introduced in this essay: The Extended, The Selective and the Reflexive Remixes. These definitions are outlined historically and examined in various areas of culture including the visual arts, pop culture as well as game culture. The essay ends with a critical reflection on what one can do with an awareness of Remix as a dialectical manifestation.

This animation of illustrated stills does a pretty good job at explaining the basics of Creative Commons in about five minutes. The intro may be a bit long, but other than that it is well produced.  It is a good resource to introduce Creative Commons to people who may not have heard about it.

I uploaded [Re]Cuts on YouTube.  The Resolution is not great, but at least it is easier to share the video.  Original link to FLV version here: http://navasse.net/recuts

Video exhibited as part of Dead Fingers Talk at  IMT Gallery, London.

Lawrence Lessig recently gave a talk about what the left can learn from the right when it comes to sharing and remixing content.  Much of the material will be familiar to people who have read Lessig’s books; still, his own position is explained: he considers himself on the left but repeatedly looks to the right, as it is people on this camp that appear to be interested in supporting remix culture.

Note: The following is an interview about a book that’s coming out on the history of the vocoder.  Quite interesting.  My only observation is that the interviewer casually links early Hip Hop with pop culture and this is missed by the interviewee. Historians know that early Hip Hop was also an avant-garde movement, though with different preocupations of previous groups who may have deliberately linked themselves with the nineteenth century concept. Still worth the listen/reading.

Orignally aired/published: May 13, 2010

Morning Edition

If you’ve listened to pop music in the past 40 years, you’ve probably heard more than a few songs with a robotic sound. That’s thanks to the vocoder, a device invented by Bell Labs, the research division of AT&T. Though the vocoder has found its way into music, the machine was never intended for that function. Rather, it was developed to decrease the cost of long-distance calls and has taken on numerous other uses since.

Music journalist Dave Tompkins has written a book about the vocoder and its unlikely history. It’s called How to Wreck a Nice Beach: The Vocoder From World War II to Hip-Hop.

Tompkins says the machine played a significant role in World War II. After the U.S. government discovered that Winston Churchill’s conversations with Franklin D. Roosevelt were being intercepted and deciphered by the Germans, it decided to invest in speech-encoding technology. So the National Defense Research Committee commissioned Bell Labs in 1942 to develop a machine — and Bell Labs delivered.

The vocoder wasn’t without its flaws. Intelligibility of speech sometimes proved a problem, but Tompkins says pitch control was a bigger concern.

“They didn’t mind world leaders sounding like robots, just as long as they didn’t sound like chipmunks,” he says. “Eisenhower did not want to sound like a chipmunk.”

Read or listen to the complete interview at NPR

I ran into this brief interview with Just Blaze, who explains his theory on how music samples can  be tracked on radio play to evaluate popularity of a song.

Shrine to the Funky Drummer from Joshua Pablo Rosenstock on Vimeo.

Recently received a link from Joshua Pablo Rosenstock about his video, Shrine to the Funky Drummer.  The video presents Rosenstock as a subject who is greatly influenced by James Brown’s “Funky Drummer.”  We quickly learn that his interest is a jumping point to understand how the song’s basic drum beat has become part of Hip Hop consciousness.

While the video, in my opinion could be edited (the intro is too long, and some footage does not match the sound), it does provide some historical context as to the art of sampling and its place in Hip Hop Culture.  It starts with Rosenstock listening to a scratched 45, and then playing the beat on a drum set.  The next set of scenes are about DJ’s manipulating The Funky Drummer’s break beat, complemented with random interviews with record diggers and turntablists. The video then goes back to Rosenstock who no longer plays a drum set, but a set of samples from a drum machine.

Shrine to the Funky Drummer reminds me a bit about Nate Harrison’s  Amen Brother Break.  Though very different in approach, both videos can be complementary references for understanding the history of Remix.  I understand that Shrine to the Funky Drummer’s current version is a rough cut, so I look forward to the final production.