John Cage Response

John Cage provides many different analyses under the subject of music. Music is composed of harmonious structured sounds, rhythms and orchestrated rest notes. Cage discusses that this does not always entail traditional instruments like the woodwinds and brass sections we would see in a band. It encompasses the everyday sounds around us from city noises to common house products. There are many musicians and other artists who have found creative ways to display these ideas in their work. For example, there is a group of musicians who call themselves Stomp who demonstrate some of these ideas well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYXUm8GgPjE&feature=related

ASCII explained

http://everything.explained.at/ASCII/

jon cates

experimental, new media, digital media: http://vimeo.com/7767391

Grice

Some of what Grice states in this reading is similar to the BBC program Ways of Seeing. Ways of Seeing covered a good portion of Walter Benjamin's ideas regarding mechanical reproduction of art. There is a part of the program, where the host is standing in front of an original painting. He then states that here is an original and I am standing in front of it, only what you are seeing is not the original as it is beamed to your living room via TV. Grice gets into a similar realm of thought as he covers our loss of the physical as we interact with digital representations of most everything. I often notice people in agony as they use their tiny cell phone to tap out communiques to their comrades also in the daily struggle. I like to think I don't look so uncomfortable, but I probably do. Relying on a phone isn't natural, but what the phone represents is natural. The phone represents our support network of friends and family which we would have called with our limited vocals in the past, but now we can send an electronic SOS to them at any time.

Legrice shtuff

I think Jamar brings up an interesting point that I don't think Legrice maybe stressed enough. The new medias are not only incorporated into our artistic practice, but into the very framework of our lives. While we can talk about the similarities interms of concept and treatment of the medium in relation to other art movements and modes of thought, I think the actual artistic practice of using new media vs old media has been a total game changer. What we perceive as art has changed and thusly the modes and intent we use to make it have changed. I think an artist's relationship to the materials he or she chooses to make art are a huge
part of what the art is or becomes. So in describing the evolution or foundations of something like new media or tech art, I think it's good to address this new relationship we have with materials. To what degree do we have to be invested in the work we make if it's simply a reproduction? What if our artistic practice stemmed from playing video games instead of apprenticeship? How does this change the way we make the art and what bearing does it have on it's honesty? I know these are vague questions, but I feel like, of couse there's a traceable reasonable evolution that brought us to media art in terms of art history and practice. At the same time I'm not sure to what degree that inform it's practitioners I guess - and thats why I get frustrated with it's relevance sometimes - so, it seems maybe more worthwhile to investigate the actual artistic process of making, rather than talking about how technology functions.

"It is impossible for data to have a coherent form or relationship to the information
it represents without analysis" (legrice)

What type of analysis? Technical? computer-based? I think that's what a very large group of people are attempting to do through computer visualization of data; to make data have a relationship to the material without certain types of analysis... maybe one day we will look at a massive grid of 1s and 0s and see within it something calm, or abrasive based on its varying degrees of contrast.... This is to say that the medium will continue to become instilled in our every process until it doesn't need to be analyzed because it will be our first language, and if our artwork is this same language, what makes it other than same ol same ol communication - it'll just be made mysterious for the sake of considering it art.

LeGrice Response

The LeGrice article brings up questions about the idea that in our current digital age, history space, time, fact and fiction have been compressed into one easy to use digitally reproduced media. We use computers and transmit information across thousands of miles in physical space, we face chat and skype with images of people who are in actuality very large distances from us. We accept this false representation of that person, this sub image or avatar, for the actual person we are in contact with. The age of digital reproduction has silently programmed us in mass to accept false realities and digital pixels as the acceptable form of life, its almost like the Matrix movies; just not on the same grand scale. We have revolve our lives around these device; cell phones, pcs and laptops, gps nav systems, and we use their digital interfaces to interact with our physical realm.

PDF version of Nic Collins' Handmade Electronic Music

This is a PDF of an early version of a book we'll be doing some projects out of. It's not as nice as the version you can get on amazon for $25, but it's got most of the same info and it's free! The book comes with a dvd and nice pictures, which in my case as kind of a dummy are worth it, but you might have all you need here for making oscillators and other hardware hacking needs:

http://www.nicolascollins.com/texts/originalhackingmanual.pdf

Exposure Calculating for Filmo 70DR

Filmo 70DR pdf

I found a pdf detailing how to get an exposure for the Filmos we're using. If you want to know how to set an exposure, this will be necessary without a light meter.

Nirvana Alchemy Film by Jennifer West

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qr4rR292yBQ

Nirvana Alchemy Film (16mm black & white film soaked in lithium mineral hot springs, pennyroyal tea, doused in mud, sopped in bleach, cherry antacid and laxatives - jumping by Finn West & Jwest), 2007 , 2 minutes 51 seconds

John Cage Response

Silence brings up thoughts of mans ability and inability to listen to, emulate, compose, and arrange music. It seems that as humans we are slaves to the phenomenon of sound in a variety of ways, we subconsciously filter out or ignore sounds we find annoying, while we amplify or surround ourselves with the sounds we do enjoy. This brings up thoughts of the ethnomusicology subject the soundscape, or the surrounding sounds of any specific area. It also reminds me of the human need to arrange or organize this thing we call sound. It seems almost primal in our nature as humans that we have this urge to rearrange the sounds that we hear in an audibly satisfying way.

Brakhage Response

Stan brings up some interesting views on the perception of our inner eye. I think what he is trying to get at is the fact that maybe the physical act of seeing what is around us waters down our minds potential to create our own images within ourselves; that perhaps the few colors we actually see when we open our eyes are miniscule when compared to the multitude of things our eyes are capable of seeing inside our own heads. This brings up thoughts of altered perception, it even makes me think of artists who use recreational drugs in order to gleam inspiration from “the higher plane” of their transcended thoughts. I also found it interesting that Brakhage argues that our eyes ultimate purpose is to search for God, whatever that may be for a particular person.

Response to Wolshen

I found this film while reading Wolshen's techniques on how to destroy and decay film. He made mats of liquid latex onto the film's emulsion, then bleached off the excess and rephotographed it with an optical printer. I like that the original image still shows thorough at certain points, so the film is still documenting its surroundings.

http://vimeo.com/7352980

Metaphors on Vision Response

The loss of innocence and naivety becomes evident as we grow older and gain new experiences. It is because of this acquired knowledge we gain further questions and aspire to attain answers. Sometimes these experiences and questions are expressed through cinema as a way to further perceive or evaluate them.

Wolshen

I enjoyed Wolshens  Zero Visibility the most out of all of his films we watched.  I got the most out of this film because it felt familiar, going on road trips, daydreaming and looking at the world through the car window at a faster speed.  The reading helps the viewer understand the reasoning behind his process.  I think it works on two levels.  The viewer gets the feeling of apprehension that comes with driving unable to see whats ahead.  The decay of the film brings the viewer into a dreamy realm, like a fading or pieced together memory.  The idea of speeding up the decaying process of film as to see into the future is an interesting connection Wolchen makes for this aesthetic.

Metaphors on Vision

Brakhage describes the desire artists have to look deeper into the physical objects found in the world.   Artists are able to look at the world through new eyes and find ethereal meaning in everyday objects.  Film is a great medium to communicate to viewers the world of dreams, new ideas, and invoke the emotions that come with nostalgia.  I really enjoyed this reading because it's a reminder of how art making should be approached. 

wolshen response

the Wolshen article made me think about how artists often draw from personal experiences for inspiration. In this instance it is interesting to me that he chose to turn a traumatic experience into an art project. I also admire his overall process of film degradation. Prior to this class i had never ever thought of the process of film degradation as a artistic medium, it itself unlocks an entire new world of aesthetic possibilities in handmade film.

Wolshen Dirt

reading "reproducing decay and damage" made me think a lot about our efforts as artists, and alchemists, to recreate the natural world around us - normally it seems people tend to move towards lifestyles that offer some stability, predictability, routine.... and I think as artists, we often try to allow for our creative practice to move us into realms unknown.... allowing the whimsical, demanding, crushing, powerful, subtle, unpredictability that nature embodies to determine our next piece of 'art' seems like it's right in line with our tendency to create this alter existence through art-making.... at the same time, in a way wolshen's whole process could also be seen as an attempt to tame nature, to make those processes his own... is the intention to make those foreign processes predictable and routine also?