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"Labyrinth Remixed" [2.8 MB .mp3]
Shorter, digitally rearranged version of ex-Happy the Man keyboardist Kit Watkins' instrumental prog anthem "Labyrinth" (1981). Took what I consider the "essential riff" (four variations of the same tune, plus a bridge) and jettisoned all the classical dynamics, theatrics, and buildups as well as expressive soloing. Reordered the riffs and overlayed them to make new counterpoint, thus turning a progressive rock song into a techno-prog song--kind of sped-up Philip Glass, what I always wanted to hear when I played this. Some excellent "real time" keyboard and drumming being massaged here--but I am interested in the song's "money shot"--structures of the sublime in their most compact form.
A few posts back a "wandering POV of a wandering POV" was discussed--a shaky, panning YouTube video documenting Linda Post's shaky, panning video perambulation through a cornfield. Here's another variation (thx AFC): John Michael Boling's YouTube of a video panning along a block of strip malls. The standard YouTube screen framing the action scrolls slowly from right to left using the "marquee" browser command, making its position on your screen in constant "slow and go" tension with the position of the camera's viewfinder. The video's continuous "tracking shot" is roughly panoramic, whereas the YT starts over at your screen's right as soon as it reaches the left side, creating what feels at times like an impossible folded space.
In both scenarios (James Kalm's Linda Post video isn't a piece per se but an inevitable meta extension of the Post), recursiveness is the watchword, in form (a picture within a picture) and in content: Post's video references cornfield tracking shots (from North by Northwest to Children of the Corn) and Boling's obliquely channels Ed Ruscha's Every Building on the Sunset Strip.
If we had an Adorno he might say such dual recursiveness is a distinguishing feature of 21st Century art, or at the very least Web 2.0 art.
Related / 2 / 3
Another for the XYZ Art list:
"Paul Pfeiffer's Live from Neverland video installation is divided into two separate videos: one soundlessly replaying footage of a televised statement in which Michael Jackson addressed the child-molestation allegations, and a second one featuring a chorus of 80 voices reciting Jackson’s monologue in the manner of a Greek chorus. The two videos are brought into further correspondence by means of a subtle re-syncing of Jackson’s facial gestures to match the spoken delivery of the chorus, down to every pause, inflection and nuance." (opening at The Project in NY on May 3)
File that one under "choir":
Choir sings NASDAQ average
Choir recites Jackson molestation monologue (or maybe that's ABC art--Jackson 5 joke)
etc
See also New Kids on the Block.
And top 1000 amazon reviewer Newt Gingrich.
Robert Wright on the latest nonsense from the Bush adviser cadre:
Neoconservatives have been airing an explanation for the failure of the Iraq war that's so obvious you'll wonder why you didn't think of it yourself: the war wasn’t neoconservative enough.Read the whole post, it's very well argued. That Bolton interview is worth watching. The puffed up little Bantam rooster just deflates when asked tough questions by the incredulous BBC interviewer. (thx jim and dave).
Last week Richard Perle, on "The Charlie Rose Show," echoed what his fellow neocon John Bolton told the BBC last month: We should have turned Iraq over to the Iraqis much sooner. Then, presumably, the power of democracy to blossom pronto in even nutrient-depleted soil--the neocon elan vital--would have kicked in.
Nice try, but they're just digging themselves in deeper. They're highlighting a paradox within the neocon game plan that would have doomed this war even if it had been run competently (enough troops, a dollop of postwar planning, etc.).
On the one hand, we were going to bring democracy to Iraq. On the other hand, we were going to use Iraq as a platform for exercising military power. (Days after Baghdad fell, the neocon Weekly Standard festively titled an article "There's No Place Like Iraq ... for U.S. Military Bases.")
Next month artMovingProjects gallery in Brooklyn exhibits my blog. I'm in the project space; Zoe Sheehan Saldana appears in the main gallery with "an edition of 96 tobacco seedlings (Nicotiana tabacum Burley) under indoor lights," per the press release. More:
BLOGOpening May 19. More as the date approaches.
For the first time a blog is shown in a gallery space. Tom Moody has been posting art, music, animation, art criticism, political commentary, and found internet art on his blog at http://www.digitalmediatree.com/tommoody/ since Feb 2001. For this exhibition artMovingProjects will present his blog as a performance work. During gallery hours a computer terminal in the project space will be dedicated to whatever Moody posts. A mouse and keyboard will also be supplied if viewers want to leave a comment. Anything can happen, and anything can be said. This is an experiment in total freedom.
The Senate majority leader states the obvious:
"This is the message I took to the president," [Harry] Reid said at a news conference.This was considered outrageous in some quarters but it's long overdue. The US can't build competent levies to save New Orleans but somehow enough taxpayer money can be found to start construction of five apartheid walls around Sunni neighborhoods in Baghdad. This colonial adventure needs to end, soon. It's not working. "The troops" can be protected by returning them to their loved ones. Let the Dubai company Halliburton pay for its own hired guns.
"Now I believe myself ... that this war is lost, and that the [escalation] is not accomplishing anything, as indicated by the extreme violence in Iraq yesterday," said Reid, of Nevada.
"I know I was like the odd guy out yesterday at the White House, but at least I told him what he needed to hear, not what he wanted to hear," he added....
Reid said he did not think more U.S. troops could help. "I think it's failed, I say that without any question," he said of the troop increase.