I curated an exhibition for the Cultural Center of Spain in El Salvador, which takes place in both the Cultural Center as well as The Museum of Santa Tecla. Information below in English and Spanish.
CURATED BY EDUARDO NAVAS
NOVEMBER 9 TO DECEMBER 17, 2010
CENTRO CULTURAL DE ESPAÑA EL SALVADOR
Calle La Reforma #166,
Col. San Benito
San Salvador, EL SALVADOR http://www.ccespanasv.org/actividad.php?act=864
Mayra Barraza, El Salvador
Giselle Beiguelman, Brazil
Arcangel Constantini, México
Electronic Disturbance Theater y b.a.n.g. lab, USA
Belén Gache, Argentina
Brian Mackern, Uruguay
Antonio Mendoza, Cuba/USA
Fernando Orellana, El Salvador/USA
Paul Ramirez-Jonas, Honduras/USA
Isabel Restrepo, Colombia
Gustavo Romano, Argentina
English:
A Modular Framework is an exhibition that brings together artists from Latin America, or artists who have ties to Latin America, and have been producing new media work since at least the mid-nineties, when new media and digital art began to take shape. Most of the works included in this exhibition are recent, and were chosen as examples of diverse and rigorous art practices. The artists, themselves, while they crossover to art practice at large, are pioneers in digital and new media art in their own countries, and for this reason they were invited to participate in A Modular Framework.
TOKYO (TR) – Fans of analog music were dealt another blow when consumer electronics company Panasonic announced earlier this month that it would be discontinuing the audio products within its Technics brand, most notably the legendary line of analog turntables.
On October 20, the company said that it was winding down production of the Technics SL-1200MK6 analog turntable, the SH-EX1200 analog audio mixer and the RP-DH1200 and RP-DJ1200 stereo headphones due to challenges in the marketplace.
“Panasonic decided to end production mainly due to a decline in demand for these analog products and also the growing difficulty of procuring key analog components necessary to sustain production,” the company said in statement issued to The Tokyo Reporter.
Last year, Japan’s last remaining vinyl pressing plant, owned by the production company Toyo Kasei, produced around 400,000 discs from its multifloor factory in Yokohama’s Tsurumi Ward, a far cry from the industry’s peak of 70 million four decades ago.
Panasonic said that sales of analog decks today represent roughly 5 percent of the figure from ten years ago. At present the company has no plans for putting analog turntables back on the market.
I consider this video as well as Mcintosh’s mashups of video and sound. According to the basic definition of a mashup, which is to juxtapose two elements as they normally appear in order to create something new, one is able to notice the independence of image and sound while also recognizing how well they come together to create a cohesive yet disjunctive narrative that questions the very definition of propaganda.
During the recent Open Video Conference (OVC), from October 1 – 2, 2010 the video “Donald Duck Meets Glenn Beck in ‘Right Wing Radio Duck'” was screened by Jonathan McIntosh, who runs the blog Rebelious Pixels. The video so far has received 388,801 views and counting. Also listen to a Glenn Beck response.
Here is the excerpt from McIntosh’s website:
This is a re-imagined Donald Duck cartoon remix constructed from dozens of classic Walt Disney cartoons from the 1930s to 1960s. Donald’s life is turned upside-down by the current economic crisis and he finds himself unemployed and falling behind on his house payments. As his frustration turns into despair Donald discovers a seemingly sympathetic voice coming from his radio named Glenn Beck.
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.
Download a high resolution version of Diagram in PDF format
This text was originally published on June 25, 2007 in Vague Terrain Journal as a contribution to the issue titled Sample Culture. It was revised in November 2009 and subsequently published as a chapter contribution in Sonvilla-Weiss, Stefan (Ed.) Mashup Cultures, 2010, ISBN: 978-3-7091-0095-0, Springer Wien/New York published in May 2010.
It is here republished with permission from the publisher and is requested that it be cited appropriately. This online publication is different from the print version in that it is missing images that help illustrate the theory of Remix that I propose. I do encourage readers to consider looking at the actual publication as it offers an important collection of texts on mashups.
I would like to thank Greg J. Smith for giving me the opportunity to publish my initial ideas in Vague Terrain, and Stefan Sonvilla-Weiss for inviting me to revise them as a contribution to his book publication.
This version brings together much of my previous writing. Individuals who have read texts such as The Bond of Repetition and Representation, as well as Turbulence: Remixes and Bonus Beats will find that many of my definitions and theories of Remix are repeated in this text. I found this necessary to make sense of a fourth term which I introduce: the Regenerative Remix. Those who have read the previous version of this text may like to skip pre-existing parts, and go directly to the section titled “The Regenerative Remix.” However, all sections have been revised for clarity, so I encourage readers to at least browse through previously written material.
An important change has been made to this text. In the original version I argued that Reflexive Mashups were not remixes. In 2007 I did not know what Reflexive Mashups could be if they were not remixes in the traditional sense, but after consideration and rewriting, I developed the concept of the Regenerative Remix. To learn more about this change in my definition of Remix as a form of discourse I invite readers to consider my revised argument. I also introduce a chart (above) which helps explain how Remix moves across culture. I also include an entirely new conclusion which will clarify my earlier position on software mashups.
A note on formatting: The text below is set up in simple text form. This means that italics and other conventions found in print publications are missing. If you would like to read a print ready version, please download a PDF file.
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Introduction
During the first decade of the twenty-first century, sampling is practiced in new media culture when any software users including creative industry professionals as well as average consumers apply cut/copy & paste in diverse software applications; for professionals this could mean 3-D modeling software like Maya (used to develop animations in films like Spiderman or Lord of the Rings); [1] and for average persons it could mean Microsoft Word, often used to write texts like this one. Cut/copy & paste which is, in essence, a common form of sampling, is a vital new media feature in the development of Remix. In Web 2.0 applications cut/copy & paste is a necessary element to develop mashups; yet the cultural model of mashups is not limited to software, but spans across media.
Mashups actually have roots in sampling principles that became apparent and popular in music around the seventies with the growing popularity of music remixes in disco and hip hop culture, and even though mashups are founded on principles initially explored in music they are not straight forward remixes if we think of remixes as allegories. This is important to entertain because, at first, Remix appears to extend repetition of content and form in media in terms of mass escapism; the argument in this paper, however, is that when mashups move beyond basic remix principles, a constructive rupture develops that shows possibilities for new forms of cultural production that question standard commercial practice.
My most recent text “Remix: The Ethics of Modular Complexity in Sustainability” is published in the CSPA Quarterly. The journal is the print publication for The Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts, a non-profit that supports artists and organizations; it enables them to be ecologically and economically sustainable while maintaining artistic excellence. My text is not yet available online but I hope to have it released in a few months. I do share an excerpt at the end of this message. In the mean time, I encourage you to purchase a copy of the CSPA Quarterly, which focuses on works made with found materials.
Here is the issue release statement:
In this issue, we’re working against the stereotypes of the form, and attempting to broaden its term. As always, we’re exploring our chosen theme across disciplines and were delighted to include sculpture, visual art, theater, public art, and media art in the following pages. Instead of asking for work based on waste materials, we asked for work built from objects that already exist.
Excerpt from my text, “Remix: The Ethics of Modular Complexity in Sustainability”, page 13:
Remix and Sustainability
Within immaterial production (music and other arts dependent on forms of communication) recycling of existing material becomes an aesthetic with real repercussions. As stated in the introduction, Remix expands across culture from music to ecology: from immaterial pleasure to material responsibility. It is a binder that informs the awareness of the interrelation of one’s beliefs and actions in culture.
Once an idea or content becomes calculable, measurable as an actual thing produced, intellectual property becomes a pivotal issue: who owns the material and how should such material be re-used if it is to be recycled? Thus the result is that we live in a time where information is privileged and immaterial pleasure has become the prime commodity, as the global economy has assimilated a fourth layer of global production, which agriculture, industrial production, and the service industry support. Information plays a prime role in defining the other layers of production. As the emerging market it dictates how the others are represented. This shift places a certain stress on the sustainability of intellectual production, since ideas, its prime real estate, become more precious than ever before. Immaterial production is at the forefront of a global market that thrives on the low-cost of information production and outsourcing of repetitive labor in computing and networked services such as telemarketing, and social media to different areas around the world.
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.
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?
