Monthly Archives: December 2005

holiday mashups!

happy channukah, happy christmas, and happy whatever else it is that you do on this day an all others.

For festive types: Holiday Hackshop Mashups!

Created, produced and conceived in 1 day by small people at eyebeam’s holiday hackshop, most were made in less than 1 hour. This is truly elvish labour was uploaded just in time.

Despite it’s chaos, a few moments of brilliance, including : Dabrye with Burl Ives, Trans Siberian Railroad (Metallica) with MIA, RUN DMC with Cecile and Frosty, etc. Thanks to everyone who participated, and of course eyebeam for the event. Happy holidaze…

visualize music

since L.A. MOCA tried a hand at visualizing music (a rather psychadelic approach towards more traditional work this summer) and so many technofilic djs and computer heads try neato 3d stuff with big interactive whooshes (there are plenty of sites and bad interactive displays dedicated to this….) I thought I might mention one approach that seems radically honest.

I don’t normally go for screen based media, and even less for flash, but this music map just seemed like a nice use of the internet. as mike from stamen mentioned, it would be great if last.fm was integrated as well, but for now, this is just slick social software.

how to make the invisible

protect yourself from yourself

Not 1984, but a concept first created by the Brazilian Military Government (Escola Superior de Guerra) in their manifesto for their 1964 CIA backed coup.

Let’s face it. In the United States, we live in a Military Industrial Complex so ferocious and confused that it is devouring itself.

So when the U.S. government decided to leverage the bombing in september of 2001 towards their goals of global imperialism, I was neither surprised nor shocked. And when they decided to abandon the search for Osama Bin Laden in favor of their original agenda– making up for Daddy’s ‘mistakes’ with false intelligence and an Iraqi oil agenda– I was not really that shocked. Dismayed, of course, but not really surprised.

But the speed at which we have attacked our own people has surprised me.

Now, nearly helpless from the panoptic beast we have unleashed upon ourselves, we must reorganize and reproach the kidnapping, abuse, and destruction of the last fronteir of our everydayness in the United States.

A few strategies that inspire new tactics–>
1st. Step towards recouping free movement: map space and bodies
Disappeared in America:
Thousand Points of Light
and acknowledge them

2nd Step present your loss in the space
evoke the disappeared
(thanks to Carlos Motta)

3rd Step Recoup and redirect, produce new spaces
and map them

just some ideas from bklyn, ny on a sunday night.
Still hopeful hopelessness left…

when u add it all up…

Recently on mudd up! Jace named the top 10 reasons to sell out. That’s settled, we all agree we should take what we deserve.

But i’d like to finally sideswipe the ever widening discussion of rights. On The Wire stream the other day, i heard Steve Reich chatting about how licensing of work must be done strictly on a case by case basis…
And as a worker who makes his living through creative production, I am forced to agree. Still, my feeble attempts at following the legalitites in the ever-shifting planes of audio and video and print reproduction have encouraged my belief that something radical must be done to refigure the entire notion of property as it currently stands.

Is freedom = choice? Are property rights the solution?

What would 40 acres and a mule look like in the land of the downloadable streaming identity crisis?
A new publication merits note: Contested Commons, Trespassing Publics: A Public Record from the folks at sarai.net. I checked the heck out the audio of the presentations from the conference. Didn’t clarify, but did problematize. No conclusions here, but I’d love to bring up these problems in a more public way…

And for the record, my work is still for sale. An artist’s gotta eat somehow I guess.