Blog 8

Rhythmic Cinema

“To name, to call, to upload, to download… So I’m sitting here and writing—creating a new time zone out of widely dispersed geographic regions—reflect and reflecting on the same ideas using the net to focus our attention on a world rapidly moving into what I like to call prosthetic realism.” (85)

This quote struck me for the fact that you forget sometimes how the Internet has eliminated physical space in many different aspects. You can be physically located in Australia, but the next moment be Skyping with someone in the United States creating this false sense of realism, or as he calls it, prosthetic realism.

Rhythmic Space

“It all seems more and more that the creative act itself is becoming a source-code like Linux where people create and add modules of thought-ware to the mix, making it all a little more interesting.” (89)

This goes along with what the books theme is; we live in a digitized world where the creative world works in cahoots with each other.

Errata Erratum

“In the remix, single notes are assigned not to playing cards, but rather to digitized “roto-reliefs,” on-line representations of the engraved cards that Duchamp made throughout his career and gave away randomly to people.” (96)

This is in reference to Duchamp’s Erratum Musical. The digital world is a network of entwined cultural movements that are made by the people involved.  

“It’s a milieu where each “musical sculpture” is unique yet completely dependent on the system that created the context.” (97)

Very straightforward quote we having going on here. The virtual artifact someone creates mirrors the digitized world we live in today. This mirror is not always as direct as we think, but the influence of our society and the technological determined world is evident.

The Future is here

“In a moment like that, the strangeness (strange-mess) of global culture, hip-hop, and of operating as a Dj on a global level crystallized before my eyes.”  (105)

Context here is that mixed cultures are coming together and finding common ground. The digital world has brought communities together that, in the past, would have never existed. We have created new cultures that are breaking the boundaries of creativity.

The Prostitute

“The sample is an interrogation of the meaning we see in a song, of its emotional content lifted away like a shroud from a dead corpse, only to be refitted and placed on another body.” (113)

New meaning is brought to life through past work. The emotional content some kind of work originally had can be flipped and remixed into a new creative work.

WhoSampled.com

Very interesting tool we have going on here. I wanted to explore it in a little bit of a different way. We have been focused on Hip-hop so I decided to go with a rock band and see if they have sampled or if they have been sampled by hip-hop. Searched Modest Mouse and found both examples. I wanted to see if they have sampled and I found one example, Modest Mouse-Workin’ on Leavin’ the Livin’. The sampled song was from a movie which surprised me and I found the clip to be very creepy. I liked the song (musical wise), but it was very creepy none the less. Charles Hamilton, a hip-hop artist, also sampled one of my favorite MM songs and I thought it was a very interesting choice, “Ocean Breaths Salty”.  I wasn’t very surprised to see “Float On” sampled by Lupe Fiasco, or any other hip-hop artist for that matter, because it was the first single from the album that brought MM to more of a mainstream stage. This song is just coming out (March 8^th) and will probably become very popular. Music enthusiast will recognize the hook and beat, but many people will not even realize that it is a sample from MM. Some samples will include the original artist, like the Hamilton sample, but this Lupe song doesn’t even mention MM. Going through some of the YouTube comments people are wondering why it sounds like “Float On” and “how come Issac doesn’t get any credit? It is interesting how artist can get away with this, there has to be some kind of pay out to record companies.