Visualizing Ideas: New York City in Pastiche

PSFK introduced me to something rather interesting. The project itself can be found at Christian Marc Schmidt’s website. It is described as a collective composition of New York City which visually combines the geographic neighborhoods of New York with the digitally communicated ideas floating around in the blogosphere. This piece culminates with the virtual/verbal representation of New York organized by its many neighborhoods.

Pastiche—A Collective Composition of New York City, by Ivan Safrin & Christian Marc Schmidt from Christian Marc Schmidt on Vimeo.

My first thought when stumbling on this piece was a flash back to good old Jay Gould and his Oral History of the World. But the difference here is this piece is fundamentally written by the world and does actually exist. It most certainly is art of the communal and experiential kind, harking back to the days of the Dadas who, through those questionable Cadavre Exquise, formed works of art not centered on the talents of any one person but existing through the collaboration of the group. That is the heart of this project and though it has its creators: Ivan Safrin and Christian Marc Schmidt, it can only exist through the contributions of the blogosphere.
thoughts and reactions…

-huysmans

The Art of Talent: Evgeny Kissin

In the world of artistic discussions performance has been considered an experiential artistic work because with every performance of a piece the piece changes and takes on new character. I have always loved that about staged art, no matter how many times you see it, each time is unique. So the questions of artistic value for a performance become divided based on whether you are trying to analyze the creation of the original idea or that of the current interpretation. The problem with revisiting the classical works is that the original idea is not necessarily preserved to the creator’s specifications, then again Barthes that might not be a problem.Thinking a little bit about the intensely complicated issues that were only briefly described above I have had the enjoyment of listening to Evgeny Kissin at Carnegie Hall. He is no composer and therefore is not a creator of musical compositions and yet has been credited as one of the most talented artist playing piano today. This is an interesting form of art if you really look at it, yes it is easy to define him as an artist but the way he is “creating” art is not necessarily in the tangible world. The pieces he performed are credited to others, to the composers who first wrote them. It can be compared to how a copy artist might practice his trade by painting the work of a great master. However that comparison fails to recognize the performance aspects of staged art. Though the copy artist will add his own take to the painting, the ultimate goal is to make it look like the original. A better example would be that of Picasso who recreated Velázquez’s Las Meninas in his own style. Kissin isn’t appreciated because he sounds like everyone thinks the piece should but rather because of his phenomenal talent to do what ever he wants with the piano. His hands can be anywhere, his timing is flawless and his style is unique.

He is an athlete of the art world and just as the art of athletic performance can be valued in its own way; his ability has the artistic potential in his movement, in his sound, and in his style.

So is this a different way to look at the arts? Can we judge an artist for his talent in the field? Can this form of art be considered a revival of the talent driven art of the salons? And what about the Dadaist who will consider this nothing more than a copy? Beyond any question or answer that can be conceived the reality in my opinion is that the creativity needed here is more hidden and harder to define than with an artist in the traditional sense, and yes in this sense I am including the Dadas in the category of traditional since they were creating. It’s a creativity that is in the way a piece is interpreted, in essence perhaps the best comparison is to a translator. In literature a translator is creating her own interpretation of the work of art and is therefore cultivating a new art work in the simple fact that the words change. Since it is not a one to one relationship between two languages, it is far from that as Saussure defined for us in the beginning of the 20^th century. And in finding the best way to make that interpretation, a new work of art is born, and the translator becomes an artist. The same is happening here. In Kissin’s interpretation of how the notes on paper and the markings associated with them should be converted into sounds we hear. That conversion is creation and Kissin, the artist.

Thoughts…

-huysmans

The right video game influence or giving in to sin.

Globeandmail.com published this moralistic Call of Duty story.

Is this the answer to the violence question? Or does this further connect real violence with video game violence? In that case  could scenarios like this lead to more “real” violence as a result of video games? But on the other hand couldn’t this be seen as parenting taken to the next level–> not a fight or struggle but a compromise and a teaching moment.

And to bring this to the whole artistic element of a video game–> is this in essence limiting the full artistic experience the true artists of this game designed? Can’t this be seen as a new type of censorship, similar to the idea of watching R rated films altered for a PG audience? Then couldn’t this moralistic addendum be seen as an alteration or rather a limitation to the true artistic experience possible with this game work of art?

What’s this public think?

-huysmans

Preserving a President

Preserving a President

13 Presidents, each freezing their time in history with a library.

Question 1: Does 13 make it a tradition?

Question 2: What does America see as the purpose of this “tradition”?

Question 3: What should be the purpose of this “tradition”?

Now for the question the Times is asking:

Question 4: Should we keep this “Tradition”?

Personally speaking as I like to do, I think the end of this short post is what is most interesting. Will Obama’s technological influences inspire him to construct his library differently, or even perhaps digitally? Could Obama start the Second Life Presidential Library Tradition?

Thoughts?

-huysmans

Understanding Art… Question 1:

If it is in a museum… is it art?

Here are some profound answers:

http://www.google.com/search?q=museum&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

Art

Googling Question: This is not for the faint of heart.

From inside Carnegie Hall

Reporting live from within Carnegie Hall.
Just heard Jean-Yves Thibaudet play piano for Concerto in F for Piano and Orchestra by George Gershwin.
Wow.
This is a real memorable experience.
What amazing talent and expression.
Overture to The School for Scandal, Op. 5 by Samuel Barber was amazing as well.
Awaiting Igor Stravinsky’s Le sacre du printemps.
Great night to go to Carnegie Hall

Huysmans out.

The Internet verse Tradition Part 1

It began as a discussion between one of my closest friends and myself years ago. But now with us both beginning our professional lives it is time for the discussion to move up a notch and to become a series of dialogues I hope to have here.

The topic is grand and vague and in most cases too confusing to understand what the hell is going on, but somewhere in the language lies a very interesting debate over the future of human interaction and the creation of art. The Role of The Internet, on its surface a seemingly endless answer with parts that are constantly growing and changing with or against time. But that simple yet confounding fact does not exempt the internet and its future from discussion, just the contrary actually. So now it is time to begin again. Pay close attention Mark, I’m ready to do this on your turf now:

The first concept I have been struggling with is the idea of separating two very distinct areas of the Internet’s development (I don’t mean to say there are only two but rather that there are two that this will focus on, or at least that there are two I don’t want to get confused over). The first is the internet as a tool of communication, as the great democratization of information distribution, where as my friend reported he was able to hear about the Hudson crash through Twitter faster than any “credible” news media service could deliver. Now the second area is the Internet as a medium for the creation and publication of art and it is in this title that I want to explore. I want to look at the pros and cons of the Internet as the democratization of publishing, or rather I want to look at the idea that the Internet is doing such a thing to begin with.

The question at hand is whether or not editors and “credible” publishing services are needed as filters for highlighting what is actually worth reading. On the opposite side of the fence, that of the internet users, the editors are replaced (or augmented by) the sheer populairty given select published pieces by the masses. Thus the question really is: Should the masses control what is read or the editors or some combination of both? We should start with that last addition, perhaps the internet has no intentions of destroying the traditional methods of publication and critisicm, but if that were true than we shouldn’t have seen the destruction of nearly every newspapers book review section save the Times. So it is clear that we can agree a change is happening, and that this change is destroying, to a certain extent, the authority of traditional editors and critics.

But maybe it isn’t destroying them, maybe those critics and editors are moving to the Internet, are combining with it to create a new format for finding the next great literary publication. Along with that point is the Long Tail effect of the Internet to allow for every possible niche market to find itself and its companions, but in order to find what you are looking for in that respect you have to be pretty experienced with how to search, is that an assumption we can make about the masses?

Anyway that’s enough for part 1, I apologize for introducing a lot of differing points but I had to start somewhere. The real question I have for the Internet is this: How will it protect the minority opinion in art if the masses are always dictating the path?

-huysmans

3D animation… a new style of film?

Since its inception I have experienced 3D animation as I would a roller coaster in an amusement park; something that entertains and excites for only the time you are experiencing it. I never walked out of a 3D film movie thinking it was anything above possibly entertaining for the time in the theater. It was always presented as one of those “look at the spectacle we can make” or “watch how we bedazzle the screen and almost startle you a little.” That was true of EVERY 3D movie I saw up until this past weekend.

Enter Coraline.

I am not a movie reviewer and I won’t even pretend to have opinions about movies that should be listened to by any great number of people, I mean I convinced my friends to see The Weather Man on my birthday (and I actually liked it). But for this film I will forcibly put on the reviewer and critic hat and say this is the first work of art to be done in the medium of three dimensional animation. There are no gimmicks, no cliche tricks here, just pure artistic beauty coupled with an intriguing and thoughtful plot that had me analyzing it while walking home.

So here is to a new style that will hopefully develop from Coraline’s success. But more importantly here is to the unlocking of a new theatrical experience that has been up to this point trapped behind the glass walls of consumer art.

Sent from my iPhone

It is time for the return of the CBF. I know our discussions and posts have been… well… nonexistent since last summer and that has all to do with the basic and near dominating transition from college to the real world. But now as real people making real earnings and going to real jobs we at the CBF are ready to return. This here will be the first post (if that isn’t obvious already).

From now on I am afraid I will be changing the way I post. Since posting to my blog has always greatly reflected the work I was involved in at college it should be of no surprise that my posting style as well as content will change. For example now that I am a New York City public school teacher I am sure education will take a more prominent role on this blog.

So now on to the subject of this post… the iPhone, or rather the effect of the iPhone world in which we live. I just saw Fan Boys yesterday and its opening credit role, in the style of Star Wars, ends by declaring the previous message was sent via an iPhone. This got me thinking about how our world, already changed by the internet, seems to be changing again (in the most obvious of ways) to one where we are not limited by our “office.” The writing space has always been transportable and the act of writing applicable to any location, but the act of publishing was once extremely limited. First it was limited to the funnel of editors and periodicals, then (and I know this is already a large jump) to the limits of a 56k or later high speed connection established for the communication of a clunky to now sleek device that could connect to that World Wide Web capable of instantaneously publishing your work. But now we live in a world where that device has become completely portable as well, you don’t even need the Starbucks wifi to get a post out. This brings a whole new level to those cell phone novels already taking form in Japan.

But then again I only started this post on my iPhone, I finished it at my computer in my room.

Liz Phair: Modernism and Modern Feminism

A while ago I wrote that the aim of shocking one’s audience is necessarily conservative. The example I used is South Park – the show is amusing and occasionally clever, but I’m really surprised that more people haven’t commented on its reactionary tendencies, which I find rather obvious. While they play the ‘messages’ at the end of episodes for irony, at least in the use of corny music, most of the episodes do make statements fairly unambiguously, and more often than not those statements are socially conservative. Exhibiting transgression as shocking, disgusting or laughable reinforces the idea that there’s something wrong with it; this is why Umberto Eco made the claim that all comedy is conservative. Perhaps South Park’s left-leaning fans just don’t want to ruin the show by teasing out its politics; I really can’t reconcile it with my beliefs, which are, in the end, really not that extreme.

I don’t reject art because I disagree with it, but I do find it interesting to think of how its political identity relates to that of its audience. Another example of intentionally-shocking art that I’ve been thinking about lately (because it’s been back in the media, naturally) is one of the great rock albums, Liz Phair’s ‘Exile in Guyville.’ The album may not be particularly shocking today (this is one of the reasons why Chris Dahlen’s review in Pitchfork Media claims that the album now sounds dated), but in its time it was fairly notorious for the highly explicit presentation of Phairs’s (Phair the character’s, if not Phair the actual person’s) sex life. The album has often been called feminist, and feminism often shows through in Phair’s independence and sexual aggression, which places her in a traditionally masculine role. But the absence of a traditional relationship is conspicuous, and the need for one comes to the surface in ‘Fuck and Run:’

Whatever happened to a boyfriend
The kind of guy who tries to win you over
Whatever happened to a boyfriend
The kind of guy who make loves ’cause he’s in it
I want a boyfriend
I want all that stupid old shit, like letters and sodas.

There’s nothing necessarily reactionary about the need for stability, even if takes the form of “letters and sodas,” and it’s fairly clear that the relationship Phair wants is an egalitarian one, but the album presents the alternative to jukebox-and-milkshake heterosexuality as bleak and loveless, and makes some pretty clear attempts to shock people with the details of it. This takes a bit of the irony out of these lines. There is a real longing for the courtship rituals of the (idealized) past in them.

But I don’t think this longing is reactionary. I would compare it with the sentiment of the Modernist poets, and in particular T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. If the main idea of Modernism was that poetry can only be successful if it has a strong sense of the ‘now’ – T.S. Eliot once claimed that the most important thing for a young poet to study is the internal combustion engine – the Modernists had very little affection for the time they lived in. The Modernists’ fixation on classical antiquity is in part explained by their belief that an understanding of the present must be grounded in an understanding of the past, but the genuine longing for a return to Byzantium was not peculiar to Yeats. What redeems the Modernists from being nothing more than curmudgeons is that they knew full well that the present was not the past, and that the time in which they lived really was that bad. Their longing for tradition came from a serious feeling of uprootedness that affected people across Europe and the U.S. in the first three decades of the twentieth century, and the sense of ‘tradition’ that they longed for never entailed stasis.

Phair’s work is, in much the same way, directed towards the present rather than the past – the record’s immersion in the indie rock culture of the early nineties is the other reason Dahlen calls it dated – and even though her longing for “all that stupid old shit” really is genuine, it does retain the bitterer part of its irony: she knows that it’s not coming back. The pathos in this situation could be interpreted as reactionary, except that Phair seems to be aware of the falsehood of the idealized past she craves; the real cause of her predicament is her inability to reconcile the actual nature of her life with the lingering remains of the tradition from which it has violently broken off which still reside in her consciousness. Classical feminism may not work this way – most of Katherine Mansfield’s protagonists, for instance, find themselves acting out social roles that they don’t genuinely feel engaged with, while Phair finds herself disengaged from social roles that she still has internalized. But that doesn’t mean Phair is not a feminist. Like Mansfield’s characters, she is after a way to resolve her life with the way she really feels, and a return to the strictures of the past is not the way to do that.

(Also, in response to the allmusic.com piece I linked to, which says of the album’s supposed parallel with the Rolling Stones’ ‘Exile on Main Street,’ “Just try to match the albums up: is the ‘blow-job queen’ fantasy of ‘Flower’ really the answer to the painful elegy ‘Let It Loose’?” Of course it is, and the fact that ‘Flower’ takes the place of a spiritual is one of the album’s most cutting jabs.)

~therighthandofnixon