Archive for the ‘freedom’ tag
The Faust Cycle: Day Eight
Artist: Ergo Phizmiz
Title: The Faust Cycle (or The House of Dr. Faustus)
Today’s section is “The Abduction of the Object”. By this point, I have lost most of the narrative thread of the story, only to say that I do know what the object is, and was surprised by this turn of events, as it represents possibly the only aspect of an actual plot line that isn’t part of the setup, or a set of narrative twists and turns.
Ergo is chasing a Linnet in a part of the house he doesn’t recognize. He doesn’t remember what he did with the parcel, and now imagines that if he happens on Dr. Faustus, he doens’t relish telling him that he’s lost the package. As he chases the Linnet he finds himself in an auditorium with a cross dressing person on stage, reciting odd sing-song-ish poetry than rolls on and on endlessly and barely making any real sense. The audience is a bunch of (again) people dressed in bird suits.
It’s after the cross-dresser that Faustus appears on the stage, wheeling out what appears to be a life size doll: Eloise. With the emergence of Faustus on the stage, we are presented with a series of processes for the construction of an automaton. I won’t explain here, however this section links together several of the more unusual recurring elements of the piece to give us an idea of how Faustus has accomplished a miracle: Eloise is an automaton.
While we and Ergo have been introduced to Eloise before, now she is quite appealing to Ergo. She has become a thing of beauty, something desirable. So desirable that he storms the stage, knocks out Faustus (with a trombone he steals from the orchestra) and grabs Eloise and runs away with her. And thus ends chunk 4 of The Faust Cycle, with possibly one of the most standard plot points of a narrative. However, it doesn’t seem like a cop-out. It works, we have seen Eloise before, and by now (nearly 12 hours into the piece) couldn’t have imagined that this was going to happen.
Much of the music and sound collages in this section were put together by James Nye & Ergo Phizmiz. And in this case, the majority of it has been used to illustrate the construction of Eloise and automata’s. This is possibly one of more distinct and specific examples of an interweaving of the narrative elements with sound collage techniques. Part of the sound collage reveals another source of the elements of The Faust Cycle: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
Onwards..
Finding Music Online: Part Two
This time I’m focusing on Netlabels. What are Netlabels? Well, like the Kahvi Collective mentioned in the first article they are community organizations that have decided to release collections of music either by individual artists, or in compilations in a way that is analogous to what the large record companies do. Many Netlabels release these recordings for free (as in without $$$ charges), and under a Creative Commons license, or a license that is very open.
The other aspect of Netlabels is in their history. Many of the Netlabels have been around for quite a few years. They derived from the Demo Scene: a group of hackers (hackers in the good and correct sense of the word) who work with computers at the lowest possible level to produce demonstrations of what the machines can do. In some cases you would be quite astounded by what could be done with an Apple ][ or Commodore 64. A lot of the music that these intrepid hackers wrote for the demos were initially released as “tracker” files, which predated MP3’s. Eventually, with the rise of the Internet and MP3’s these intrepid multimedia artists started releasing music on their own for the world to listen.
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Sunday Re-spin #3
Looking back at the past week, I have had some successes and failures. The level of time that I have been putting in on the site is a lot higher than it appears, despite my job making some things more difficult than I would like at times. I guess I just have to be thankful for the things that I am able to accomplish…what still amazes me from time to time is the change in perspective I can have in a very short period of time.
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Review: OG – 01
I have to say that I was initially skeptical about this release on Jamendo: it was another case where the artist solicited a review of his work. If you recall, I ended up writing a somewhat mixed review (see Review: Bielebny – Punxsutawney). Yet, this artists request was quite courteous and drew my interest. But, in another turn, as I looked at the release page, I noticed several things: (1) this release has been out for over six months, (2) the artist got into a debate with a listener over “spamming” for reviews (what I term “solicitations”), and (3) the artist has over 100 reviews, in seven languages.
So, is history repeating itself? Am I writing another mixed review? Do I have issues with the “solicitation”? Do I have issues with the “spam” debate?
Finding Music Online: Part One
Introduction
Many people seem to think iTunes and MySpace are the primary sources of music on the internet. A few may even think of sites like AmazonMP3 or eMusic as alternatives to the afore mentioned monsters. However, if you search around a bit there are many many sites available that offer a range of music that is as interesting, competitive or a better alternative in some cases to the mainstream sites. This series of articles will highlight a few sites each week in the hope of providing the music listener with some alternatives.
Recent Changes at Facebook
There is something about Facebook that I have just come to not trust. I think the issue centers around the changes in their policies of late that have left me feeling a little less secure, and feeling like it’s more and more likely that my personal information could be shared without me really realizing that it’s happening. For example, the EFF published an article on the changes to Facebook’s privacy settings (see Facebook’s New Privacy Changes: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly) that just left me feeling cold on the whole thing. Now I see there’s an update to Facebook’s Site Governance Policy, and I wish I didn’t have to read it, but I feel that I need to since this is the first change that they’ve made since updating their privacy settings.
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Editorial: Jamendo’s Future
According to a recent article in TechCrunch (Digital music startup Jamendo runs out of steam, mulls sale) Jamendo is running out of funds from it’s initial investment from Mangrove Capital Partners, and therefore is seeking a new investor. This is bad news for the Libre Culture movement / CreativeCommons. But, there are several things about this turn of events that make me feel there is a chance for something better to come about.
Review: Bielebny – Punxsutawney
I was concerned when I listened to the first track of the album… “Nitro” was something of a jumbled mess to my ears that really didn’t go anywhere. I was left thinking, “sheesh, this might be the first time I write a negative review, and here the artist actually approached me and several others to write reviews!” But, the second track “I SuJAZZt you” somewhat revised my opinion of this release.
Not quite dZihan & Kamien, not quite Thievery Corporation, or even Kruder & Dorfmesiter. Once I got past the first track, I was instead reminded of James Hardaway, A Forest Mighty Black, Jimpster, and Taran — all of whom have worked in a more groove oriented style with very raw samples (scratches and all) used as the basis for their pieces. (I am thinking specifically here of a compilation called After Hours: Miles Away which remains one of my all time favorite discs.)
That being said, I won’t say that this release is in the same category as any of the artists I’ve listed above. There are too many differences between what Bielebmy does and what any of them are doing. But this isn’t necessarily bad.
eBook Piracy
During an interview on the Colber Report, Sherman Alexie made the statement: “With the open-source culture on the Internet, the idea of ownership — of artistic ownership — goes away.” Then prompted by Colbert, added: “It terrifies me.”
| The Colbert Report | Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Sherman Alexie | ||||
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But, after watching the interview, there was much more than just the sound-bites that are worth thinking about and considering. Read on for my reactions and thoughts.
