The Cooky Creativity of OddBlossom

Strippers, insects, and zombie dogs mashed in old time film against a back drop of experimental pop await those brave enough to face garbage dump wonderlands of collected media scrambled and reassembled under monochrome names like Pop Poubelism.

   

Some time around 2006 an adventure of growing pains was undertaken and attributed to a childish alter ego,  Bram Urban.  OddBlossom became a public archive of audio works discarded in inevitable growth and way past their expiration date.  Eventually explorations in video led back to old musical exploration and once again the child has room to play once again.

 

Cinema City by OddBlossom 

2012 album "4 CM Off Reality. "    

production by LogicalCurl.

Drinking on the Job is no good for any performer but sometimes, just sometimes, it works out for the audience.   

DaRk CiTy DaZe by OddBlossom.
"4 CM Off Reality"

 Video Edited from Dance Of Life by LogicalCurl.

Armed with the artistic vision and commercial aspirations of Damien Hirst and Andy Warhol, Bram Urban set his sights on making a statement on the disposibility of popular music. Fueled by the Outsider Music notion of finding perfection in imperfection OddBlossom achieves the state of songwriting rawness lost in the blasé standards of modern plastic production techniques, Bram Urban's post contemporary sound is born of what the french labeled as " Poubellisme". The junk art aesthetic manifests itself through out his works as Bram Urban destroys multi tracks after early development preventing revision or the endless polishing of trite origins.  By releasing the first creation and making a decision not to censor the muse, Bram Urban thins the barriers between Composition and Improvisation. Instead the artist turns to a perpetual reuse of a vast collection of old material, remixing again and again recordings, remixes, previous creations in cycles until out of chaos and assembly a natural shape emerges. Thus Bram Urban serves as the mirror on celebrity and narcissist culture while maintaining a sound that its completely distinctive.
 

An Art Film To Accompany Cheyenne by Mesquite Treason

Using a telescope and a handycam I've created an abstract documenting of
the Joshua Tree Studio and the stick art I'm building on the side. 
This is a Return to Etudes In Construction Of Timbre, The second album Released as Mesquite Treason.

Edward Ruscha

Most noted as Pop Artist, Ruscha has created a great deal of work from the Southern California area where he has taken up residency.  He received training at the Chouinard Art Institute which would Later be joined with Ahmonson by Walt Disney to become The California Institute of the Arts.  A large percentage of his works contain text as a prominent feature,  California itself has also made "a few" appearances.  There is no shortage of work by Ruscha, most of them are large and he has been extremely prolific. Here are a few works

The Future of Noise Music and Childrens Rebellion

In this time of Miley Cyrus, Beiber boinking Selena Gomez, American Idol, Rhianna getting beat up over a herpes incident,  Lady Gaga's fashion use to gain stardom,  Green day getting old and political,   Chocolate Rain and the Double Rainbow Song blasting to insane YouTube heights, remixed and remashed media overload,  shortening attention spans,  the flooding of the markets by the amateur,  the birth of indie music.  the death of indie music, a label driven genre called indie.  Where are we headed?  Blending backwards and round we go again, shifting each pass with a new hue to collide with the old.  Musical trend cycling has placed us in an 1980s shit warp.  The music industry has been shaken in so many ways by technology since the early nineties, the advent of digital music,  freeing up the market to the underdog.  What began as an assault on the damage already done by the big record labels has backfired by the the "Do It Your Selfers" flooding the market with thoughtless mediocrity.  The recording of music was once difficult when proper facilities and the knowledge of their operation was required... now any Joe can do it with programs that come standard on a MacBook or in an iPhone app.  Quality control right out the window.
So now the trick is to get noticed amongst the rubble... somehow... and the musical revolution has been reduced to a media manipulation popularity contest.  To have the time to create quality creations often means the neglect of the realities of the day: kitten comments,  Chuck Norris,  drunk babies and the ruthless recycling of media on and on, though the concept of Memes has become a digital virus, its not really a new idea is it?  Warhol was doing it and now you can too with the war hole preset on Mac Photo Booth.   Complain about it as much as we can,  this reality is here to stay.  What is? What is just stupid?  Indifference and small thought.  It has all been said before.

There is rumor on the wind of Americana bursting through the earth and back into the mainstream, but  the nature of revisionist roots music is inherently reproducing a much further back past. So we wait for a movement, in which something unique will bubble its way into the Echelons of Popular culture. 

But there is hope, Ruscha knew it 40 years ago.

There is possibility the future must be opening towards, and rebellion must certainly play its part in the midst of the brainwashing seeking to render us all thoughtless at the mercy of Murphy's Glee recycling.  Some massive cataclysmic shift away from the American Idol prototype of stardom.   Thought is hoped to prevail,  but it is rebellion which is unavoidable.  If you like the music your parents like, most likely it's not cool.  For those fortunate enough to have parents with good taste, there will probably be a period of rebelling into something else in between.   So that you can come back to it with a mature mindset shaped and renovated before being allowed to think its cool.   Noise is the path, the disturbance in the status quo,  like Obi Won Kenobi It's our only hope.  Just wait and see.  The pure opposite of pop... but as pop? 

It has begun rising up through the Cracks especially in Electronic music like Mr. Oizo, The Books, Matmos, Lexanculpt, Hrvatski, The dirty synthesizer,  the Digital Concréte manipulation of audio files.  Despite being ideas Explored By Pierre Schaeffer, Stockhausen, Iannis Xenakis in the early 1900s they have not fairly found their way into the public sight.  Merzbow with his monstorous forward thinking, leads Japan as a beacon of hope to the underground success of noise followed by such names as Melt Banana, The Bordoms and then the much more highly musical Worlds end Girlfriend who pulls no punches when it comes to being noisy.  Add this all to The Underculture of Industrial, Einstürzende Neubauten, Diamanda Galas, Skinny Puppy, Wolf Eyes, Yellow Swan, this stuff makes the Ultimate act of musical rebellion of the 70s seem like kids with guitars.  Not to subtract from Punk music in any way,  It has most definitely paved the way. And is probably the greatest example of how a countercultural movement can swing its way into becoming a Pop culture phenomenon. 

Mark my words, It will not be too long before noise rises.  The economic situation is ripe, people feel unsettled, it leads to needing an outlet, something aggressive perhaps they will take to the streets perhaps they will burn things. We can hope that a creative outlet overwhelms the destructive one.  Street art carries the poetic terrorism inherent in boundary pushing, and doesn't something so underground rising to popularity deserve its own special soundtrack.  New is needed, something is going to have to give,  Kids will only put up with so much of what they are fed. The standard quality of music has become flaccid, There is just not enough time to practice being a real musician. The tools exist to turn everyone into a walking sampler. And this will truly be the failing and breaking point of the noise movement.  The copy cats who think that noise has no shape or form.  The limited mind space to look at the abstract painting and say I could do that and regurgitate with out the background.  But none the less this is the nature of Pop, and the blanket it will weave will ever grow. and in the end perhaps computers will make music only for other computers to hear.

The Making and Breaking of Woodstock 1969

Who could have possibly imagined that a "Music and Art Fair" dreamt up by four young men would become one of the most talked about events in recent history?
Many skeptics believed that an event supported by a bunch of drug crazed youths would inevitably turn violent,  after all the organizer were advertising a gathering of about 60,000 people.  However, as a slap in the face to dumbstruck elders, the festival now known world wide as Woodstock, turned out bigger and more peaceful than anyone could have ever imagined.  Not to say there were no problems, but considering that an estimated 500,000 people from many different walks of life were mixed together for almost four days with a limited food supply, few restroom facilities, an abundance of drugs and alcohol,  a show stopping rainstorm,  and don't forget the evil loud music, things were basically positive.  Elliot Tiber referred to Woodstock as,  "a Counter-cultural mini-nation in which minds were open, drugs were all but legal, and love was 'free."      Although Woodstock was not the first outdoor festival it set the stage for all outdoor festivals that have since followed.  Woodstock can not be acurately imitated ever again, but it sets an extraordinary example for those who would try and follow.

In 1968 at the age of twenty-three Michael Lang got into show business after running one of Florida's first head shops.

Bjork's new App/Album - Biophillia

It looks like Bjork has been busy, and just to show the world she hasn't lost her touch for pushing the industry forward,  she is releasing her newest musical work as a complete album/application for iPhone and iPad.  In addition to stop motion videos, 

Biophilia as a 3-D multimedia collaborative effort made possible through a large group of artists, scientists, designers and instrument building programmers.  Some notables are Scott Snibbe and Michael Gondry and M/M design in Paris who she has worked with many times before. Science Icon David Attenborough narrarates the opening introduction.

  

 The listener is invited to wander through constellations in order to access Album art, games, notation, lyrics and music.  The interactive approach allows full multimedia immersion in the entirety of the ideal presented in the work, primarily How nature music and technology interact.   The album presents itself as an instrument to be played, toying with organic ideas exploring space and microscopic environments alike.  The games allow the listener to become involved in actually creating the music building rhythms chord structures out of the earth, and fighting mutating viral rhythms.  Then of course you can also just listen Bjorks above par music. In a world where pop artists try and try to be different but still make mediocre cookie cutter songs Bjork shows up and shows Mother Monster she has a lot to learn about being an artist.

Modernist Primitivism

Our humanity took us in the wrong direction. Our modernism, our concepts of Utopian society, city life,  progression remove us so far from our virtues.  Removed from the self, being filled with so many things that cloud the mind distracting from a path placed before by an unseen and often neglected hand.   I have come to see the reverse of tolerance.  People tolerate the things they choose to. Through toleration we come to find appreciation in our separateness in the way that we stand out, unique individuals amongst a sea of similarity.  Perhaps our toleration stems from our own desire to be accepted and thus to become anonymous, but left to fit into our niche and to be respected.  The twist is the darkness ever present, picking at our thoughts, changing our perspectives, chasing out of our heads the innocence of being separate from the beast which compels us to be how it sees fittest or most desirable.  Note here that using words like darkness and beast to represent this something that is not modernism but is coupled with it,  intermingled, sinking in tentacles and infusing itself parasitically into the host of positive spirit and human energy.  The big city comes with a view of itself based on values created to perpetuate the mass.  The metropolitan comes complete with chic.  Well tailored and carrying itself in an aristocratic way.  The wisdom generated by the harshness of this soulless and blasé environment gives this particular human power, thought, over its "dumber" less educated parallel which I am going to here label as 'Savages."   That it is important to keep the gears cranking and turning is propagated by the media which is suppllied to build an entire economic system on falsity.  
We can all see it...
Actually, I am afraid that all we cannot see it.  There is the basic Calvinist idea which was predestination.  Some humans are meant to be saved and some are meant to burn, the separating of chaf from grain.  It sometimes seems so apparent.  In Isaiah, around chapter forty-three, it talks about the good of the servant who is able to see and is bothered by those who proudly wear their veils with closed eyes moving in unison and chattering imitations of wisdom.  They chop down a tree which has lived for years.  They make lumber from it and build a fire then praise the fire for the warmth it provides then taking silver and gold from the earth they melt it in the fire and shape it in the form of a human. In reality we shape it into Mcdonalds signs and concrete and little peices of colored paper we call currency.    Humanism has always been about replacing God, that's the whole point, to deify ourselves or our creation.  We want control of the thing controlling everything, the further we evolve the more we build, the fewer baby steps still remain between us and the prospect set by the serpent in the Garden of Eden.  The more we eat from this tree of knowledge the more quickly we become Gods.   
So Post religious bird walk,  If you are trying to figure out how this is relevant to modernist primitivism then please proceed to room G 604 where Gauguin leaves for Tahiti in 1891...  In the jungle, City Culture is only a byproduct of the western idea of conquest and claiming possessions presumably originated in Egypt thousands of years ago.  So in a modern world the only thing left or even vaguely important is to possess the game, to possess more than the person standing beside you. Realistically the city life forces this standard upon us, excepting those who refuse the concept of the ever expanding mass of concrete constantly forcing the "less sophisticated savage to the outskirts to perpetually carve out the next piece of gold.  Once discovered This new wonder will serve as grounds for the next rape of the natural world to create space for our ever feeding parasitic virtual modern world.   Setting oneself apart from this world is met with the highest of opposition.  But unlike the self or god ordained opposition to take part in the world, worldliness calls and nature yields.

The intrigue of primitivism lies in its separation from any system resembling control.  Its almost a desire for anarchy, a desire to be truly free to live life in any way that one feels compelled to partake of.  To be an artist one cannot allow themselves to be caught up in the flow.  The savage is an individual,  savages are individuals relying on each other for protection, safety,  food, shelter,  all the things that modern society claims to hand out to you as long as you have some way of obtaining possesions which serve to perpetuate the system.  The Savage's system contains no way of feeding a beast such as the city.  The savage system relies only on the ability to be small, moveable and adaptable. The City system is about duration, about lasting, growing roots and using the right amount of recourse to jump start a self sustaining environment.  Every day for the savage may be his last.  This gives a perspective on the importance of every moment, every meal, every action and interaction.  The non-savage holds no desire for life on that level, he drifts through life following signs that say stop and go.  Failure to respect the cold rigid line of these signs will result in an unfavorable end.  While the savage seeks, explores, and struggles, the metropolitan goes through motions and performs mundane tasks to perpetuate the system, which in return feeds the individual's need for temporary escape from the system he helped create. 
So why does the soul disappear in the metropolitan system.  Is it a currency sign that eats it or that search for personal identity in the statistic sea.  Is it the repetitive tasks or propaganda posing as guide posts to freedom.   Diving back into religion:   When Jesus Christ walked and taught his message was rebellious,  it went against the structure of the Romans and of Jewish tradition, it was about separating the self from the beast.  His message was savage, it was about living life in the best way you could, not blindly accepting what ever was thrown your direction.   Christianity fell victim to the same curse and merged with the ideals of the Roman empire,  The apposing beast it found its way to incorporate and destroy the soul, as it does any system that comes in contact with the mass.  Christianity was used as a tool of control taken out of context and used without relevance to the text in order to control an illiterate society.  What was once a lifestyle became a cog, a gear wheel in the system more relevant to class than philosophy.   When Primitive Art was introduced, the concept of an untamed world was allowed to re-sneak into the imagination of the mass.  It turned heads, averted attention, was met with opposition riots, it was unacceptable, maybe even revolutionary.  Unchecked it could have brought the created world to its knees, but the beast quickly seized its opportunity and swallowed the savage, plundered it, squeezed it like a wash rag until every drop of its life was gone. Then they sold cups for a penny a piece and society obliged saying "Yes' I will have a sip".  When the world drank from the cup the rush of the spirit no longer held sweetness, but instead tasted bitter, but the hope of possibility exists that something free lives out there, that adventure is possibility, that there still exists something of the idea of a circle of life and that maybe having control is less important to being in control than not having control forcing oneself into the situation of surviving.
I want to leave with this thought "Modern is now, life is passing by."  Times spent in mountains trying to find what has been beat out by the city are never long enough.  It's like allowing a callous to wear away.  One of my friends who moved out of my small hometown to Dallas introduced me to the analogy of the big city callous or the blasé attitude if one wants to use big fancy french terms.  Growth happens on more than just one level, there are are many ways to gage the worth of a person.  The metropolitan man is no better person than the man from the small town.  The man from the small town tends to have more soul and love to tap from.  Cities deal in dollars and cents you get what you pay for, sometimes you get screwed.  In the ideal you have a community, small, interconnecting, you build a family with those that surround you, the good of one is the good of all and at the end of the day you eat or you go hungry and you all do it together.  Ayn Rand leaves this scenario as taboo due to moochers and others that refuse to pull their weight.  Yet in the end of Atlas Shrugged those who shrug off the weight of the world end up in a small community of equally driven individuals.  The cold and slicing city seems more savage than savage to me.  The extreme fix says "Utopia will not exist as long as people do.  So buy an uzi and start mowing.   Better days are ahead."  It is true there is no going back, giving up our modern conveniences.  But I like to think that we can adopt the community of our savage ancestors and use the fractured togetherness in our modern setting.  In any case,  "Goodness is not what has been it is ever what shall be".

Experimental Films That Can Be Found Online

"The Hearts of Age" (1934)
by Orson Wells and William Vance




"Cat's Cradle" (1959)
By Stan Brakhage

The Work of Tripp S. Nestor

I would like to share the work of a friend and collaborator I met traveling in Europe. I have used a few of his Images before but will be turning to him for whatever custom art this blog needs.

Ladies and Germs,  May I present Tripp Nestor.

"A good portion of my friends are visual artists... I have been watching and admiring them for some time.  Sound is an excellent medium,  but my jealousy of the eyes became too great.   So I got a Wacom tablet,  and tried my hand at the whole Photoshop digital painting thing... I haven't gone back since"  -  Tripp Nestor

The Merge of Democracy and the Insurance Company

we each play a part in the system

one to their own way

the way we fill our time

the way we teach

the way we grow

the point of living every day

to play

is to teach

the radiation

from which the power does spread

the east

in distance waves

workers on the other side

earliest film

a post apcolyptic playground

rhythm in frames per second

moving in comfortable silence

the eye watching you

the way a child sees his father

----------------------------------------------------------------

The Body as an Interface

Biomechanics is a rising field of interest for many different people from medicine to sports and even into the arts.  The human body can be monitored in a variety of ways from eegs which measure brain waves,  eogs to measure eye movement in sleep studies,  heart and breathing monitors. The depth of research into this world is an abyss that seems to be come ever deeper the more one learns about the subject.   My interest in the subject remains within the arts and with movement as a control of a non-clinical environment.   Our main limitation is that the human body can can only (as of yet) be interfaced superficially.   This leads to problems measuring human movement because joints which could be hard to measure on their own are even harder to access because they are deep to certain muscle groups and skin.  For a short example of the complications, take just the lower body from the superior structure the hips down to the inferior ankles.  By limiting possibilities to the larger movements of the skeletal system (particularly to those inferior to the transverse plane) you end up with only six large joints acting independently of all others. For monitoring, movement these joints can be looked at in 3 pairs of root sensor systems.

    - the hips
    - the knees
    - and the ankles

When standing, we can say that the body is at unity or the starting/natural state.    Most joints are in their natural state of extension in this position.  and then...

The Hips

When dealing with the hips circumduction becomes a problem because of the 3 Dimensional conic movement of a ball and socket joint.  The closest electronic analog i can think of is a joystick which measures potentiometers on two axis  and outputs both position values like coordinates (x,y). if we were to use a flex sensor we could only measure the anterior hip motion along the the sagital plane because of the gluteus maximus and hamstrings on the posterior which mask the small angle of movement we could measure if we had access to the acetabulum where the head of the femur makes contact with the coxal bone.  One might be able to measure the movement of the greater trochanter but that would still be difficult with the muscles which act as the flexors of the hip joint. This problem holds firm when you try to measure abduction(open) and adduction(closed) on the frontal plane as you would see it in Leonardo's  "Anatomy."
{as a side note measuring the medial and lateral rotation would be difficult as well}

The Knees

The knees being a hinge joint are the only joint on the lower body that can be easilly monitored using a flex sensor.   Hinge joints lend themselves to this type of monitoring because they have one state of extension and one state of variable flexion from 180 degrees all the way open down to about 10 degrees as folded as possible.  Flex sensors aren't really useful for any other type of synovial joint.

The Ankle

Measuring the ankle is weird because its natural state of extension lies between two points of flexion: dorsiflexion with the toe up and plantarflexion with the toe down.   One could put flex sensors along the achiles tendon and the dorsal part of the foot where the tibia and fibula meet the talus.  

More of the foot could be wired up to flex sensors for each of the phalanges and metatarsals but the shoe probably wouldn't be very comfortable.  For the foot I would like to develop some sort of measurement device that would be more intricate but similar to the type of system that you see in children's flashing led shoes.  the system would have quite a few pressure sensors embedded in the soul of the shoe to measure the anterior most end of the metatarsals through the phalanges and cuboid area and also below the calcaneus to measure the weight displacements as a user moved and balanced in different ways. 

So you see talking about the body could get complex, let alone measuring it. Then there is a whole new slew of fun to be had by all.  So the knees and elbows are easy bend sensors,  and then... fubar...

If you like the flexion measuring its worth a look at the MidiDancer developed at CalArts by Coniglio and Stoppiello of company Troika Ranch.   That's where it has all already happened in dance... has been happening since 1984...probably longer... at the risk of repeating the grand. 

I had original aspirations to use such a system for performance after having my brain fully warped by the book "Machine Musicianship" by Rob Rowe.   It was Morton Subotnik's work "Intimate Immensity" and his use of infra-red beams in a system technically executed by Clay Chaplin and danced by Nyoman Wenten that led me to CalArts in the first place.  My exploration of sensor possibilities for retrieving information from the human body began with the use of video to track motion, followed by research into things such as joint angles and rotations, muscle stretch or tension, and pressure for weight displacement on the plantar surface of the foot. 

anyhow...

In my search for better sensors I came across some interesting developers and their websites.

Poleema sensors use magnetic feilds to determine location.

The porcupine is made of several tilt / ball switches which recognize motion and orientation on the three planes, it could be quite useful.

I also found a similar sensor that reads full 3d motion and comes with software(very cool).  www.xsens.com.  It uses small blocks which could be fitted to the femur and the tibia/ fibula and would send out information about the orientation of those bones.  Really, useful stuff it also says how fast it moves etc.. check it out.

Also, there is a book called "Three Dimensional Analysis of Human Movement"  containing essays of many different scientists edited by Paul Allard. 

Its something to think about...more...

DEFINING EXPERIMENTAL FILM

Websters New Universal Unabridged Dictionary:

experimental- a. [french experimental, from the latin word experimentum, an experiment
1.  of or based on experience rather than based on theory or authority.
2. based on, tested by, or having the nature of experimentation
3. for the sake of experiment; testing
4. tentative
5. of or used for experiments

experiment-   a trial test, from experiri to try, to test
1. a test or trial of something; specifically, (A) any action or process taken to discover something not yet known or to demonstrate something known; (B)   something tried to find out whether it will be effective;  as giving students complete freedom to to choose their courses is an educational experiment

film- n. [ME. fylme AS. filmen,  a film, membrane.]
1. a thin skin; a pellicle; a membrane;  a delicate coating or outer layer, partially obscuring what lies beneath; as, a film of gelatin; a film of lace.
2.  a sheet or roll of a flexible cellulose material covered with a substance sensitive to light and used in taking photographs.
3. a thin veil, haze, or blur as over the eyes.
4. a motion picture
5. a delicate thread, as of a cobweb


Together the words, experimental and film, seem to mean more than the definitions imply.    By following the history, one is introduced to experimental film at an almost identical point to that which film in its self as an art form is being introduced.  In a almost fanciful way one can say that any of the films being made up to and into the 1920's were experimental since making a film itself was a young and untapped art.  All of the pioneers were attempting to do something for which no template had been laid out.  Surely it must have fascinated artists such as Melies,  Rene Claire,  Louis Feuillade, Dmitri Kirsanov, and Man Ray simply to watch this machine feed tape through recording pictures.  These primitive beings, mostly standard artists had the power to capture life in any way they saw it and the possibilities were endless. Ferdinand Leger captured the machine and tied it into our human reality with Ballet Mechanique.   But at this point the experimental art of making any film can be further broken down into more aesthetic issues.  The experiment becomes:    How do i make something new and fresh even fresher?  Should I just show pretty pictures or try to shock the audience?   Should I try to tell a story?
    I will divide here into my own aesthetic categories of experimental film: films with out a narrative and films with narrative.  It is my opinion that both films without narrative and films with narrative must be looked at very differently.  Personally I have enjoyed the narrative films more.  Which is not to say that I have gotten nothing from those films with out this element of story line. Actually, almost all of the films have some form of a life running through them.  The city films show this in an interesting way.  In place of standard characters the films focus on the overall image of the city, be it though a few hours on a rainy day or through the entire day as in Berlin.  This tampering with scale does some interesting things to the mind.  These films teach you to focus on imagery and smaller things with in the whole of the film.  It becomes the subtleties that define the film.   The art resides in the dance of the hop scotch playing children in a Bronx Morning.  Its in the connection between lunch break and zoo animals in Berlin.  The tempo and musicality of the non-narrative films play an important role also.  The human body has a tie to this pulse present through all motion films.   The music of motion seems most accessible in animations.  Symphonie Diagonal by Viking Eggling even has a sonata form.  Composition in Blue by Oskar Fischinger is probably my favorite films to view though it is simple and easy to figure out the stop frame methods of creating it, it made me happy to watch it. It is fun even border line cheesy when placed with the music but hey, what can you say its an opinion.  Colour Box by Len Lye with the paintings on film is  beautiful and intriguing I enjoyed its musical quality and nature even more with out the Beatles than with the arbitrary soundtrack.  I am continually reinforcing my love for the way that almost any kind of music can be played to a film and will sync up in coincidental ways and shape the entire viewing experience of the film.
    Narrative forms hold a special place in experimental films for me, my limited knowledge of experimental film begins with David Lynch which has nothing and everything to do with my interest in the matter.  The final place I am going to go is where I was left off,  with the film The Blood of The Poet by Jean Cocteau.  This to me had that same great narrative quality as Lynch where the actual story line is experimental in its self with artistic photography cast aside. If one were to just read the screenplay the overall arch would lead you into an alternate reality where the goal is the journey which has an ambiguous place in time and space where anything is possible and all the things that living on earth teaches are rendered worthless.   In my past this type of film is what I would seek out as experimental film and to a great extent it is my preference.   Narratives for some of the experimental films I have watched have not all had this element.  Some of them are labeled as experimental on the basis of how they are filmed or edited.  You could look at the film Life of an American Firefighter by Edwin Porter and easily see something that by today's standards seems cooky and strange or at least out of a Quentin Tarantino movie.  The Idea of space and time is altered here but not in as abstract of a way withing the story.  Here we have an example of a very basic scenario, a totally realistic occurrence.  But the way that it is shot holds the integrity of the space with more value than the integrity of time continuity.  First it is filmed from inside showing one side of the drama as if it were a stage play, and then it starts back at the beginning and shows itself from another view point outside the house.  I was immediately taken by this. Les Vampire by Louis Feuillade though presented as such didn't seem to have any experimental element it them at all.  My ability to decipher films out of context with the other normal films of their time severely stunts my ability to label anything that is not extremely obvious as a an experimental film.  There is just nothing to compare it too.

so...
What separates experimental film from traditional film?   In modern times where Hollywood has developed a cookie cutter example of what will make a film "good" where "good" is infinitely interchangeable with the word "marketable"  it is easy to pick out something that is different.  Ironically there really isn't any thing new going on its just a recycling of discoveries previously made through out the course of the century.  Fortunately, these lost experiments and the rediscovery and reuse attempting to expose a modern audience to a narrative of filming trick that isn't always used fits the vague definitions of experiment laid out at the beginning of this essay.  Some films are easy to watch some were more difficult, some seemed to meander about aimlessly.  Keep in mind I am not trying to offend any film.   I am mearly trying to find a definition to the combined idea labled with the name Experimental Film.  Aesthetics should not determine the expiremental nature of a film, but rather the composition should define the label.  One should ask what is it about this film that is unique or experimental in nature.  What has the director/ artist done outside of standard practices.  So in conclusion My definition falls most closely with the first definition of experiment, any action or process taken to discover something not yet known or to demonstrate something known.  Experimentation is not being the first to do something but to do something to open the mind.  perhaps?

I have thoughts, I can write a Blog

sigh...
I just watched "Julie and Julia". It showed me something about continuity, which is often the cry of the masses, and indeed a mismatched gathering of self stimulation is in fact just that. Yet the overwhelming number of Blogs will testify to the value of self adoration and reaching out to strangers in this time of our civilization's evolution. Shall I share my perspective on the world? In time dear child, but first view this image Tripp Nestor. (I have heard the people like pictures)

Now, there is this ongoing debate about real art vs. digital art, another about real writers and throw away bloggers. Furthermore we have endless copyright issues, remixing of video and music. (by the way that picture you need permission to use that image) Yes we have worked our selves towards something, in a few hundred years they may explain the phenomenon. Will it be a modern Renaissance? What is going to be seen as the worth that comes out of this time of reckless freedom of expression? Is success to be measured by the number of google hits one has? Will those hits equate to ease of living, wealth or prosperity?

Who knows?

In the vaults of the future...

The proof will be in the pudding.

Speculations on the Development of Music and Language

We follow the leads of crudely drawn cave paintings documenting instruments as early and 3500 BC but this doesn't even touch on a vocal tradition. So how did music develop? Why would it develop? There have been many theories of the evolution of musical behavior in human beings. The article "is music an evolutionary adaptation?" by David Huron poses several theories for possible evolutionary reasons for music: mate selection, social cohesion, Group effort, perceptual development, motor skill development, conflict resolution, and safe time passing Trans-generational communication. Darwin would have us believe that because musicians possessed these traits that they were more more fit and therefore had better chances of survival. I think all may have assisted but find the last one (Trans-generational communication) particularly interesting. Music might have developed separately from speech or it may have developed in unison. Perhaps music was speech. Instances of the Nigerian talking drum or the importance of pitch material in some Asian speech point towards grouping the two into the larger category of communication. I personally found the Peter Marler article "Origins of music: Insights from Animals" to be much more useful than the evolution spill. Origins of music are difficult again because music itself is hard to define. John Cage would say that the sound of the world surrounding us is music and that there could never be a moment of life without a musical accompaniment in which case God would be the originator of the first never ending composition. In Mythology, Humans received songs from the gods. I would like to keep this in mind as I take my stance on the idea that music developed along the same lines as any other communication, however it it is a higher form of communication. I had a guitar teacher several years ago say the first musicians were gods, then they were kings, and now look at us barely scraping by. I have heard of some tribes blinding there musician because he was the recorder of time and history and was to valuable have him wondering off. Musicians often played the role of shamans and music itself was often the direct link to the Gods. Where oxytocin and NAPS plays into that, I don't want to get into. Music itself has been used in so many cross cultural religious activities that it must be either a really catchy idea or maybe it is innate, may be it is a communication link between humans and God.

Peregrinations into Sound Art

Digital concréte is an adaptation of a classical composition style fathered by Pierre Schaeffer in the 1940s it marks the division between the French and German schools of electronic music. The Germans making sound by electronic means (oscilators, etc) and the french manipulation of found sound(tape, records,etc). I do both, but lean towards Concréte...digitally.

Banksy and Hirst Show Us How To Make "Real Art"

I'll go ahead and kick this off with a work by Two of the biggest names in Contemporary Art:  Banksy putting a stencil on top of  Damien Hirst's patented polka dots.  More than likely an outside party was commissioned to paint the exposed canvas frame if not the whole thing.
The work is titled "Keeping it Spotless" and sold for $1, 870, 000.00 at Sotheby’s in New York on Valentine’s Day, 2008. Not a shabby price! Bono and Gagosian Gallery were also involved in The (RED) Auction held for the United Nations Foundation to support HIV/AIDS relief programs in Africa conducted by The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.  Isn't it cute?