philoblog
Tuesday, August 31, 2004
a couple of excerpts from Jace Clayton's (aka DJ/Rupture) essay or NYFA:
"A bad DJ is little more than a jukebox. A good DJ is a jukebox with a nice musical selection. And a great DJ reinvents the familiar and/or the obscure, imprinting her or his own personality via realtime improvisation using only fragments of other people’s music. A successful DJ can be a desegregationist, coaxing hidden harmonies out of unlikely voices. When hip hop started in the Bronx, DJs such as Afrika Bambaataa would mix in any record so long as it contained a funky beat: James Brown to Kraftwerk to the Monkees."
"I’m fascinated by the frame-breaking possibilities of turntablism and sampling; but at the same time, I’m starting to view sampling as a very lazy gesture—innocent at best, creepily segregationist at worst. For example, if you’re sampling a sitar CD, it generally means that you can’t find—or can’t be bothered to look for—someone who actually plays the instrument. Sampling maintains cultural distance; collaborations require closeness. The difference is huge. It’s the difference between one-way cultural flow and the kind of dialogue that could lead to real community." ¶ 9:53 AM
"A bad DJ is little more than a jukebox. A good DJ is a jukebox with a nice musical selection. And a great DJ reinvents the familiar and/or the obscure, imprinting her or his own personality via realtime improvisation using only fragments of other people’s music. A successful DJ can be a desegregationist, coaxing hidden harmonies out of unlikely voices. When hip hop started in the Bronx, DJs such as Afrika Bambaataa would mix in any record so long as it contained a funky beat: James Brown to Kraftwerk to the Monkees."
"I’m fascinated by the frame-breaking possibilities of turntablism and sampling; but at the same time, I’m starting to view sampling as a very lazy gesture—innocent at best, creepily segregationist at worst. For example, if you’re sampling a sitar CD, it generally means that you can’t find—or can’t be bothered to look for—someone who actually plays the instrument. Sampling maintains cultural distance; collaborations require closeness. The difference is huge. It’s the difference between one-way cultural flow and the kind of dialogue that could lead to real community." ¶ 9:53 AM
Monday, August 30, 2004
new European distribution via A-Musik. it's been a while since we've been over on that continent, so here we go again! big thanks to our Japanese distributor for connecting us. otherwise they might not even read our emails. hooking up with distributors is perhaps the biggest obstacle to keeping a small label going. hooray!
¶ 4:21 PM
Thursday, August 26, 2004
"a work is made entirely by those who look at it or read it and who make it survive by their accolades or even their condemnation." - Duchamp
¶ 4:53 PM
call for the Collage as Cultural Practice conference:
Collage as Cultural Practice seeks to examine interventionist collage practices in all media, with an emphasis on the social, political, and legal implications of this method of appropriation. The conference, taking place March 24ˆ26, 2005, at the University of Iowa, will interrogate the political and social dimensions of collage as a practice that enables oppositional commentary across the cultural spectrum: from the leftist collages of the Dadaists and the Situationists to the unauthorized use of corporate trademarks, interventions by queer activists, and the more recent flurry of Internet-distributed antiwar video collage pieces that appropriate from the mainstream media in satirical ways. We seek to bring together scholars of, and practitioners in, the media of film and video, music, literature, visual arts and beyond˜putting together a series of panels, performances and screenings, and an exhibition at the University of Iowa Museum of Art on Interventionist Collage: From Dada to Negativland. Confirmed speakers include: Patricia R. Zimmermann, Rosemary Coombe, Carrie McLaren, Mark Hosler, Lloyd Dunn, Philo Farnsworth, Douglas Kahn, and Xmena Cuevas. Possible session topics are: Collage and the Beat Movement; Collage and Copyright; Found Footage Film and Video; Dada and Surrealist Collage; Situationist and Fluxus Collages; Feminist Strategies of Appropriation; Collage in the Digital Age; Collage: Remixing Cultures; Collage: The Cultural Politics of Appropriation; Collage: From musique concrète to Hip Hop; and Collage: Queer Interventions. Send 250-word proposals for papers to Rudolf Kuenzli at rudolf-kuenzli@uiowa.edu or Kembrew McLeod at kembrew-mcleod@uiowa.edu. Conference registration is free. Deadline: October 15, 2004. ¶ 7:34 AM
Collage as Cultural Practice seeks to examine interventionist collage practices in all media, with an emphasis on the social, political, and legal implications of this method of appropriation. The conference, taking place March 24ˆ26, 2005, at the University of Iowa, will interrogate the political and social dimensions of collage as a practice that enables oppositional commentary across the cultural spectrum: from the leftist collages of the Dadaists and the Situationists to the unauthorized use of corporate trademarks, interventions by queer activists, and the more recent flurry of Internet-distributed antiwar video collage pieces that appropriate from the mainstream media in satirical ways. We seek to bring together scholars of, and practitioners in, the media of film and video, music, literature, visual arts and beyond˜putting together a series of panels, performances and screenings, and an exhibition at the University of Iowa Museum of Art on Interventionist Collage: From Dada to Negativland. Confirmed speakers include: Patricia R. Zimmermann, Rosemary Coombe, Carrie McLaren, Mark Hosler, Lloyd Dunn, Philo Farnsworth, Douglas Kahn, and Xmena Cuevas. Possible session topics are: Collage and the Beat Movement; Collage and Copyright; Found Footage Film and Video; Dada and Surrealist Collage; Situationist and Fluxus Collages; Feminist Strategies of Appropriation; Collage in the Digital Age; Collage: Remixing Cultures; Collage: The Cultural Politics of Appropriation; Collage: From musique concrète to Hip Hop; and Collage: Queer Interventions. Send 250-word proposals for papers to Rudolf Kuenzli at rudolf-kuenzli@uiowa.edu or Kembrew McLeod at kembrew-mcleod@uiowa.edu. Conference registration is free. Deadline: October 15, 2004. ¶ 7:34 AM
Tuesday, August 24, 2004
"The prevailing attitude seems to be that things from the Internet are inherently different than their material counterparts. For example, it's cool to download a song from the Internet, but it's uncool to steal a CD from a store. It's OK to pull a computer program off the Internet but it's not OK to walk into CompUSA and just take the thing. Same thing with textual intellectual property. It's not OK to check a book out of the library and copy directly from the book and call it your own, but for some reason, it's more OK to cut and paste something from the Internet and stick it in your own school paper." from metroactive
¶ 9:56 AM
Friday, August 20, 2004
"Los Angeles panic-rockers the Mae Shi have joined this year's growing list of artists (Jadakiss, Ghostface, Diplo, Ratatat) who are getting more acclaim for their promo street discs than for their official albums. Carrying the post-2ManyDJs phenomenon to its ultimate absurdist conclusion, Mae Shi 2004 Mix CD crams three-second snippets of 200 songs (Abba to Jay Z, Patsy Cline to Melt Banana, Steely Dan to Hüsker Dü, even an Andrew W.K. megamix) into a 70-minute free-associative history of everything." -- Boston Phoenix. Stefen played some of this band for me last night and I really loved it (not the cd mentioned above, but their proper rockish album w/ plenty of odds twists) and then i go to their site and find this interesting bit about this extreme mix cd. these guys are to be reckoned with.
¶ 3:56 PM
Wednesday, August 18, 2004
i received messages to a couple of different email addresses saying my ebay account was inactivated and then it links to this page http://updatebilling.info/updates/. it's obviously a scam to grab credit card info etc. besides the fact that it isn't an ebay domain an obvious clue is their use of the ebay holiday/winter header image in august.
¶ 11:30 AM
Monday, August 16, 2004
there is a proposed amendment in Colorado to split up their electoral college votes (as Maine (since 1972) and Nebraska (since 1996)... although neither has ever really split their votes). interesting. i didn't know that was possible. the only catch is that unless all states go that direction the party that loses out (that is wins the state, but not all the districts) will naturally feel it is unfair since they don't get their token votes in other states. it seems that going state by state this will never really stick. national reform is needed. the only thing worse than the ec is that Iowa and New Hampshire have such a strong influece on the primary process... by the time it reaches me it's pretty much over.
¶ 3:19 PM
Wednesday, August 11, 2004
California, the food just grows on the trees here. it's amazing. next week... back home, back to normal, back to teaching, etc. etc. etc.
¶ 11:17 AM
Monday, August 02, 2004
according to the Electoral College Breakdown 2004 (run by a pro-Republican) Kerry is ahead in the electoral college.. just barely with a lot of "battleground states" slightly leaning towards Kerry. a great site w/ good stats and the most recent polls from each state. it also notates some of the biases etc. of different polls. the current "tossup" states (NV, MO, OH, and IA) are enough to push the election either way. while the electoral college is fasninating to look at and analyze it is essentially a flawed system. i live in a state with a "strong advantage" to one candidate. except to exercise my right to vote, or just in case something odd happens, why should i even bother?
¶ 11:50 PM
