work 5
by Mark Amerika
With the advent of the Internet and what
I have previously dubbed Source Material Everywhere
we can now alchemically transform Whitehead's
"concrescence of prehensions"
into what I have previously referred to
(in 1996 in relation to something that had no name
but that soon materialized into net art)
as the practice of surf-sample-manipulate
where the nomadic net artist circulating
in the networked space of flows
begins sampling sounds as any DJ / VJ would
but instead of using vinyl or iPods or mix tapes
or any of the advanced image manipulation software programs
that facilitate the postproduction sets of
hyperimprovisational live A/V [audio-visual] artists
they are now scouring the net
for websites that deliver interactive sounds
remixing them in a live performance setting
as part of a new breed of remixologist
we might now call a Webspinna
(to borrow a term from Trace Reddell)
The DJ's "cut and paste as you go"
open source lifestyle practice
now becomes experienced in a live
Webspinna postproduction set
where the self-conscious remixologist
begins intersubjectively jamming with the Network
as a way to engage with or otherwise manipulate
the Source Material Everywhere
The Network is many things to the Webspinna:
Archive, Medium, Default Co-Conspirator
i.e. one significant player among many
although absolutely loaded with potential meaning
(and one that produces a kind of ongoing
bandwidth co-dependency and the secret hope
that nothing crashes during the live gig)
At the University of Colorado at Boulder
I teach a seminar on Remix Culture
where the students are required to read Debord
as well as arch-appropriationist Kathy Acker
literary cut-up inventor William Burroughs
post-photography philosopher of
the networked image Vilém Flusser
and Paul Miller's Rhythm Science where we undertake
the difficult task of innovating our own rhythmanalysis of
what it means to be both of one's time and ahead of one's time
while caught in the heat of perpetual postproduction
After digging in deep and remixing Gertrude Stein
Raymond Queneau Jorge Luis Borges and various
other writers and net artists
the students eventually prepare for their first live sound remix
and this is where the Webspinna project
becomes the focus of everyone's attention
At the March 19, 2010 Webspinna performance
seventeen students from
a variety of disciplinary backgrounds
all jammed with the sound of the Internet
and together postproduced a 110 minute
audio assemblage that at times sounded like
an underground pirate radio station gone wild
and other times a subtle discourse on the call of the wild
whether it be reflected in the moan of a moose
in its natural habitat
or the crack of a whip from a disembodied S&M video
(If the species remixologist
is about anything at all
it's about finding inner wildness
i.e. using the creative process itself
to attract more intense aesthetic experiences)
The beauty of the performance as a durational achievement
composed of multiple postproduction sets conducted
by emergent remixologists
was captured in the way the Total Gig Environment
became what Umberto Eco once termed an OPEN WORK
***
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