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from 2002, when I still used a CRT
Update: detail below added to show the materials:
A piece that Rick Silva showed at Dorkbot here in NY is now online: Rough Mix [Quicktime .mov] features Silva outdoors with his DJ mixing board doing turntablist moves on rocks, leaves, snow, sand, water: "scratching nature" if you will, treating the landscape as a series of imaginary vinyl LPs to be mixed. In his talk Silva discussed the importance of the hand and touch to the DJ, and here it's as if he's lost nature and is desperately (joyfully?) reconnecting with it by clawing, patting, swiping, rubbing, and scattering it. These seem like the actions of a crazy man since he has no turntables, only an unplugged board resting on various surfaces in the middle of nowhere (a gorgeous mountain landscape), but the piece makes it funny rather than alarming.
Aside from the obsessive performance aspect of it, the work thrills through its use of high-def cinematography but especially through its state-of-the-art collage of electronic sounds. One of Rough Mix's paradoxes is that turntablism is an "analog art" and the piece is about connecting with nature yet the sounds and images are quite distinctively digitally realized, that is, artificial. The abstract "music concrete" recalls urban dance music but densely filtered and "glitched"--imagine skipping CDs reverberating in a dreamy aural haze with the occasional hip hop beat cutting in and out. The timing pulls it together: the piece is long but the quick editing of the music in sync with closeups of Silva's scratching hand, spinning geosat views of the land, and the "surprise factor" of never quite knowing where the mixing board will turn up in the ecstatically empty, Western terrain, keeps you engaged. The DJ is the focal point, a crossing point of the real and the digitally mapped.
America Supports the Arts in Baghdad: Provides Large Unblemished Surface for Artists to Paint On
Photo caption from the UK Telegraph: "Local artists display their skills with murals on the blast barriers and concrete walls that dot Baghdad"
Article from the same publication accompanying the above photo:
Anger in Baghdad as Americans finish wallUpdate: Goddam, I'm tired of my tax money going for this shite--from Channel 6 news, Corpus Christi TX: "Construction of the wall has drawn strong criticism from residents who say it is a form of sectarian discrimination. Followers of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr (mook-TAH'-duh ehl SAH'-dur) say they fear Shiite areas in Baghdad, such as Sadr City, will be next to see the U-S-built barriers. Much of the construction is being done at night by troops wearing night-vision goggles." That's just sick, man. We need the money, here, for New Orleans, for anywhere. So corrupt.
American forces have completed construction of a concrete wall around the Baghdad district of Adhamiya despite protests from the Iraqi prime minister and local residents who claim that they are now at the mercy of militants.
The wall was intended to help control the activities of militants in the predominantly Sunni Muslim district. But it remains a bastion of extremist al-Qa'eda linked groups. Parts of the district are so thick with armed militants that they are no-go zones to coalition forces.
Capt Mohammad Jasim, an Iraqi soldier manning a checkpoint on the Adhamiya bridge, said: "The Americans did not listen to us. We think this wall has made the area inside the wall more dangerous for people.
Um Doraid, a middle-aged housewife, said: "We here inside the wall are still as vulnerable as ever."