Image: Still from Brian Mackern’s performance of Cinema.tik, in which he remixes film clips from Tarkovsky and Hitchcock among other directors. Performance took place on November 11, 2010 at the Cultural Center of Spain in El Salvador.
Besides the two openings for the exhibition, A Modular Framework, there were two extra days of events. On November 10, there was a panel discussion with the artists. And on November 11 there was a performance by Arcangel Constantini, Brian Mackern and Antonio Mendoza.
Image: Detail of the Museum of Santa Tecla, where the second opening for the exhibition, A Modular Framework took place on November 12, 2010. The museum is a former prison, where some revolutionaries during the war of the 1980’s were held. The artists who shared this space appear below. The first opening took place on November 9, 2010 at the Cultural Center of Spain in El Salvador.
Some images from the events for the exhibition A Modular Framework are available on Picassa. Images by Gonzalo Vides.
Above: Arcangel Constantini remixes noises and video games live for the audience, November 11, 2010. Other images present Brian Mackern, Antonio Mendoza, and Arcangel Constantini mixing image and sound live for an audience at the Cultural Center of Spain, El Salvador: Live audio-video performance
Also see images of a panel with the artists in which they discussed their art works and creative process. The panel took place on November 10, 2010: Conference
I’m very happy to be collaborating with Mette Birk, Mark O’ Cúlár, Owen Gallagher, Eli Horwatt, Martin Leduc, and Tara Zepel on a chapter contribution for Networked Book.
ABSTRACT: The text on video remixing contributed to Networked Book is the result of an ongoing collaboration that started in January 2010, when Owen Gallagher invited Mette Birk, Mark O’ Cúlár, Martin Leduc, and Eduardo Navas to join a ‘Remix Theory and Praxis’ online seminar. In April, Navas invited Tara Zepell to join the group.
The text explores concepts of remixing not only in content and form, but also in process. The aim of the collaboration is to evaluate how the creative process functions as a type of remix itself in a period when production keeps moving toward a collective approach in all facets of culture. The emphasis on video remixing is the result of a collaborative rewriting activity among the contributors, who each wrote independent paragraphs that went through constant revisions once combined as a single text. Video was selected as the subject of analysis because members have a common interest in time-based media, and also because video remixing is at the forefront of media production. One of the group goals is that the text becomes a statement of what video could be as a reflective form of the networked culture that is developing at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The text is in constant revision and readers are encouraged to join in its writing.
Last week, I headed to Montréal for the 11th incarnation of the Elektra International Digital Arts Festival in Montréal. The five day event attracted artists and industry professionals from as far away as Dakar, Seoul, Istanbul and Shanghai, as well as various countries across Europe and North America, to the cosmopolitan Québeqois city, which is quickly, as many of us already knew, establishing a name for itself as THE creative hotbed for electronic arts. There was much to take in each day, and while it can’t all be discussed here, this post represents a compendium of the most interesting, evocative and stimulating experiences from my time there.
The Conferences
For those presenting at the International Marketplace for Digital Arts, the future, in the (wink) words of Chip Douglas, is very much now. The “professional rendez-vous” as it was dubbed by Elektra’s organizers, was a two-day blitz of presentations, debates and dialogues, given by over 30 international artists, producers, agents, broadcasters, curators, institutional directors and event organizers. While the format of the conference itself could be described as both a massive speed dating session and networking boot camp, leaving not quite enough space for attendees to fully digest all that was being offered, the conceptual framework of the event – arranged as a space to foster collaborations and to develop new, cross-border distribution networks, was clearly taken advantage of by all observers and presenters alike.
Note: I don’t normally post competition opportunities, but the following call is worth noting because it exposes a shift in remix culture: the DJ and VJ hybrid. Besides, I admit to being a Plastikman fan.
Derivative is pleased to announce the next-gen of their collaboration with techno-futurist Richie Hawtin who is unleashing PLASTIKMAN LIVE 2010 a much-anticipated series of live shows produced in collaboration with Minus & Derivative to launch at this year’s Timewarp festival on March 27th, 2010.
The influential Plastikman performance at MUTEK 2004 was visually driven by Derivative’s powerful software tool TouchDesigner enabling Richie to orchestrate sound and visual compositions generatively and in real time; the technology altering the course of how electronic music could be performed and experienced live.
That was then. With the current generation of TouchDesigner 077 completely reengineered, the team has built an information-rich bridge between Richie’s Ableton Live rig and Derivative’s TouchDesigner. Derivative will release the TouchDesigner-Live Bridge to its users this year. Hawtin’s visual artist Ali Demirel has been working closely with Derivative’s Jarrett Smith and Markus Heckmann in LA and Toronto to create the content and a custom performing interface for the shows.
Another Hawtin/Minus/Derivative collaboration invites the community to create their own visuals to original Plastikman tracks using TouchDesigner. Hawtin and Derivative have packaged and made available for download a complete toolset that includes a purpose-built TouchDesigner synth and 4 Plastikman tracks enabling participants with full support to produce buy cheap valtrex online visuals in the same real-time generative environment as the show’s. Winning entries are to be incorporated into the live events.
Dedicated to advancing the way we make art and visualize information and ideas, Derivative has produced live visuals and interactive art projects for an exemplary roster of international superstars that include Prada, Herzog & de Meuron and Rush. They have also developed major theme park attractions globally. In a unique alliance with raster-noton now entering its second year Derivative designed and built an expandable framework for multi-screen live performances under the guidance of label founders carsten nicolai (alva noto) and olaf bender (byetone). The collaboration resulted in a series of shows last year at Club Transmediale, Sonar, MUTEK, OFFF, and Ars Electronica that were received as precedent-setting.
TouchDesigner is the most complete authoring tool for building interactive 3D art, visualizations, prototypes and user interfaces. Its open, broad and highly-visual procedural architecture boosts and expands discovery, creativity and productivity.
TouchDesigner FTE (Free Thinking Environment) and its counterpart TouchDesigner Pro puts a free development environment with an extremely rich feature set into the hands of artists, animators, educators and “everyone else”. “TouchDesigner is our vision of what is possible in tomorrow’s software tools for building interactive applications and exploring data, imagery and sound”, Derivative founder and CEO Greg Hermanovic states. “It exploits what is possible in today’s computing technology and is positioned to grow with the foreseeable advancements in computer, graphics and mobile technologies.”
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.
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 buy generic meds online 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.”
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.
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
