Times Like These; Orange Crush. 2 important narrative songs about our times

Admittedly - I have a sucky computer and an unstable internet connection - but it seems to me that Youtube is doing everything they can to block my music listening.

I will not pay for content, the ad model is the thing.

This guy has it - he pretends to play along with the sound track from REM's Orange Crush - but really, you aren't that stupid are you? The crappy splices are the first clue.



But what about the fact I can't just listen to the radio on the internet?

I'm serious - what the fuck?

This one - which is the quinquennial video for this song - won't play on Youtube today for me on this system (Windows 2000 on a wifi connection which I found in the gutter) - let's see if it plays on embed... .





mh

Jonathan Mann's "Song A Day" up to #766 !

At Jonathan Mann's "SONGATRON" web site Mann's been posting an original composition - with a video - everyday for over TWO YEARS!

I found it via a search of playwright "Anton Piatigorsky" (who's play, ETERNAL HYDRA I'm going to see this afternoon) ... believe it or not ... (Google is magic).


At SONGATRON the magic of music and production is explained thusly:

"SONGATRON (noun): Mystery machine discovered by Jonathan Mann. SONGATRON makes videos and music daily. The results are posted here."

From Thursday, February 10th 2011,
Jonathan Mann and The Rock Cookie Bottom's

#766 Wren The Polyamourous Bear (LIVE!)

http://songatron.com/

Jonathan Mann's "Song A Day" at Youtube (all uploads).

Video: Jonathan Mann - A Brief History of Creative Work.



mh

Coming Attractions...

Looks like a coming attractions poster for a 1960's sci-fi film that I went to see for 45 cents and a nickle for soda. But it's not...

"LCPL Jordan Mitchell of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit plays a hand held video game lying on his cot next to his humvee at a forward operating base in southern Afghanistan Friday, April 25, 2008. Some 3,500 U.S. Marines arrived in Afghanistan to help NATO's increasingly bloody fight against the Taliban. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)"

From the DenverPost.com photographic collection they call a "Plog", or photo blog: "Captured: Seven Years in Afghanistan".



mh

New TVO Film: Marshall McLuhan on Social Networking and Reputation

In tandem with the 2010 "Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival", TVOntario is broadcasting a series of documentaries exploring the pervasive influence of photography on culture.

In a treat to kick off the month long event (May 2nd to May 30th), a never before broadcast 28 minute film entitled, "Marshall McLuhan in Conversation with Tom Wolfe" is to be broadcast this Friday May 7, 2010 at 10:00 PM. As well, a second film, "Marshall McLuhan in Conversation with Mike McManus" will air right afterwards at 10:30.

Don't tell anyone, but both films are already up at TVO's video documentary portal.

McLuhan's Place in History

McLuhan's takes are not dated, his perceptions still inform the future.

Marshall McLuhan is the father of the philosophy of media, as Freud was the father of modern psychology. Much like the biases in Freud's thinking having to do with Freud's subjective understanding of his own sexuality, I think there are subjective biases in McLuhan's landscape, specifically the idea of the post literate culture. McLuhan is the product of the Renaissance, the literate enlightenment that began with the printing press. He is slightly defensive about the forces dismantling that old meme. In the era in which he lived broadcast media is shaping the new electronic reality - it predates the internet and all the social tools we have created that re-enforce literacy.

While he says he doesn't think literacy will disappear, he constantly explains phenomena in the context of a literate/post literate meme. At points he makes what seem to me to be radical forecasts - like the tribalization of world culture, the dividing of humanity into intolerant boxes - these have at their centre, this subjective error.

McLuhan's journey of discovery is not a static model but an attempt to discover a formula that will explain the functioning of media and culture going forward - the mass of his ideas are absolutely viable today. I believe that until someone revisits McLuhan's entire body of work, maps his formulea and edits out his biases - he remains the leader in understanding new media.

Never before seen Film

The first film is shot in McLuhan's backyard* at number 3 Wychwood Park, Toronto. (*I seem to remember he lived on Campus at the University of Toronto - a reference instead to the global village?). The interview takes place in the summer of 1970 with the Futurist and the novelist Tom Wolfe lounging on lawn chairs in conversation about technology and culture.

As he and Wolfe volley concepts back and forth, McLuhan uses the word "Publics" to describe a media commons we understand today as an active thing, like Twitter, where news is produced by a wiki commons, where 140 character edits are vetted in a commons fact checker until a narrative is arrived at that doesn't change.

(See my Twitter/Snowpocalypse Story, "People Like to Talk About the Weather Using Twitter Lists". When President Obama dropped the Snowmageddon reference the mass media credited him instead of Twitter users who coined both terms in real time - although there's some debate about that.)

Further, McLuhan describes the idea that via mass media, Publics are participating at a deeper level in the media though an emotional investment in the story telling - a story that is after all, our story. Further still he says, consequently and consciously, the new Publics begin to participate in the creation of the news on the streets, that they will later go home to watch. In the present technological reality an example of this was the vetting process that, before the global demonstrations against the Iraq invasion in 2003, produced common slogans and united the peace movement world wide through email and Facebook.

Next, McLuhan takes us to the idea that people experiencing themselves broadcast, put on "A public", a mask that represents what the commons expects in the context of the story they're going to be told. We see this everywhere in mass communication; from Nixon's Checkers speech in 1952, to the current post modern pop stars and the "glitterati", who understand that the 'tribe' is the media, not the speeches, poems or melodies. Today we are on the verge of an adoption of these ideas, combined with social tools, being used by people, groups, corporations and governments all creating Reputations, or as McLuhan would say 'A Publics', that will propel them (or not) in business, politics and personal networks.


Here's a list of the upcoming broadcasts on TVOntario as part of the "Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival". TVO might want to use this nicely linked list in a title page about the Festival (or have I over-looked it?).

TVOntario Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival Program List

May 2, 10:30 pm "The True Meaning of Pictures" (Jennifer Baichwal)
May 6, 10:00 pm "Stars by Helmut Newton" (by Julian Benedikt)
May 7, 10:00 pm "Marshall McLuhan in Conversation with Tom Wolfe" (tvo.org 1970)
May 7, 10:30 pm "Marshall McLuhan in Conversation with Mike McManus" (tvo.org 1977)
May 9, 9:00 pm "Annie Leibovitz: Life Through a Lens" (Barbara Leibovitz)
May 13, 10:00 pm "What Remains: The Life & Work of Sally Mann" (Steven Cantor)
May 16, 9:00 pm "Ansel Adams: A Documentary Film" (Ric Burns)
May 19, 10:00 pm "Houses of Hristina" (Suzanne Raes)
May 20, 10:00 pm "Eloquent Nude" (Ian McLuskey)
May 20, 10:00 pm "Peppers and Nudes: The Photographer Edward Weston" (Joachim Haupt)
May 26, 10:00 pm "Dolce Vita Africana" (Cosima Spender)
May 27, 10:00 pm "The Women of Sanne Sannes" (Frodo Terpstra)



mh

Web 2.0 and Carole's Magic Workshop

Film maker Carole Joskowitz, has so far produced two beautiful no-budget puppet movies through her Company Carole's Magic Workshop. She loves making film but dislikes marketing. When I saw on her MySpace page that she'd just completed her most recent, I offered to help her marketing it, Web 2.0 style.


Her first response,

"Michael..yes I read this but I'm not crazy about putting the whole movie on the web in a lesser quality ...I also don't like twitter ...and don't use pay pal...I'm lousy at marketing."

I think Madison Avenue is also lousy at marketing. Advertisers are insulting peoples' intelligence with ironic associations that aren't confusing or funny anymore. The game has resolved down to branding our brains with repetitive "smart" associations, so when we see it on the store shelf we'll buy against our better judgment. Nice. Perhaps that's why people avoid TV now-a-days like the plague. What ever happened to vested self interest - marketing products that have real value for the people your selling them to?

Those secretive, a moral, usury tactics make me double-ly enthusiastic about "New Media Network Marketing" - which empowers communities through technology to spread word about a product because they like the product, and the community they've helped build that is, and is spreading a good thing. It's a schematic that mirrors the way Jane Jacobs saw neighbourhoods as foundation stones of livable cities.

It's also a great way to get your art out, so as many people who want to see your it, get the chance while participating in the creation of a dynamic culture in the process - you know, being fans. It's the same way the big ad firms have been marketing for years through broadcast and print, but new media is making marketing democratic, because we are learning, and implementing marketing theory to benefit our communities.

Shortly Carole agreed to have a look at it. It was then that I realized that though I have spent years learning Web2.0, I didn't know where to begin to teach it. And how do I talk marketing to folks who have learned to edit out the white noise of modern ad speak; who hate marketing and 'turn off' when they hear terms like 'bringing eyes', and 'creating a buzz'. I knew that if I used the vernacular of marketing I wouldn't get through.

I realized the best way to communicate these ideas was to do what I do best, write a blog post.


So, here goes, this is my pitch to Carole - out here in a public space in the traditions of the Open Source Movement and Web 2.0 Marketing.

First, let's get rid of the word "marketing", which has fifty years of secretive manipulation associated with it. A more appropriate word in this new two-way media universe is networking, or community building.

Effective Web 2.0 networking says Tim O'Reilly, is a combination of "harnessing collective intelligence, openness, and empowering network effects".


"Collective Intelligence" is the way a network of people can produce high quality work quickly through working collectively. The best example of this right now is Wikipedia which is an online encyclopedia written by everybody - with-in a clearly defined set of rules - working with-in view of everyone else, acting as peer, mentor, editor or proof reader to each other.

"Openness" means that the project a network is working towards is transparent to everyone. Everyone knows what's being created, how and why. Twitter is a good example of an open creative process. It is a simple and therefore dynamic application that is being developed further by the people you use it. In this case, at this time, it's more open than any other application on the net because no-one knows where it's going to go. It's so flexible, a function of it's design, that the possibilities are endless.

"Network Effects" is a complex idea that includes systems analysis and group dynamics (math and social science). The short history of social networking reveals some truths about networks - like the size and influence of a network will expand exponentially. Once a networks gets to a certain size it begins to double its' size and the quantity of its' functioning, which then doubles again. The process creates better quality links through the social creative interaction as it goes forward. So quality also exponentially increases as it morphs towards its' destiny - which is predicated by it foundation elements.


So how to put these understandings into play on the internet. How do you build a network of motivated fans of Carole s' Magic Workshop that will become a dynamic sub culture, an exciting community of active participants?

The best example of this strategy is the "webcomic" xkcd. Physicist, Randall Munroe started scanning his doodles and posting them on his web site. In 2005 Randell s' friend, author and publisher Cory Doctorow, convinced him to put the comic up on a separate web site. At the time that was unheard of, people back then believed that evil-doers would steal the art and perhaps sell it to people as theirs. The usual way cartoonists got paid was by submitting comics to magazine and newspaper editors until an editor decided the artist was consistent and funny enough to publish. A hard road.

Cory Doctorow though gets this Web 2.0 thing at a deeper level than almost everyone - probably because once he cognized the idea he immediately threw the theory into the practical work of publishing his web site - which has now become WebMagazine BoingBoing. And, being the Canadian that he is, and thusly stupidly romantic - he believes that if you build it, they will come. He must think he's some kind of Jesus figure, laying it all on the line like he does, with absolute faith that the idea is true in the largest sense. And good for him. :-)


Doctorow s' take was that by putting the comics up on the net for free - to copy, re-purpose, send to a friend, post on your site - the content in the hands of consumers would motivate readers to spread news of the product to their friends. By allowing people to own their own copy of the cartoon they thus feel a part of the xkcd movement, and they tell their friends all about it with a salesman s' passion - and a free sample. It works - as publisher John Paton recently pointed out - because the production of new cartoons is on-going - the value is in the history combined with its future history - the next cartoon is read and shared by a living 'ecology' of consumers.

The webcomic quickly became very popular, garnering up to 70 million hits a month by October 2007. No one stole the art and sold it behind Munroe s back because the word spread along with the comic - that it was available for free on the web. Since then several publication have picked up xkcd, which has allowed Randell Monroe to earn a living as a cartoonist.


Well, back to the beginning. This is the letter I wrote Carole in facebook, after I found out her new movie was finished. (Bigger? Right click -> open in new tab)


So there's the philosophy and a practical plan.



A Snippet from Carole Joskowitz s' new movie on her Youtube Channel.

I'm not a know-it-all, I know that, but I know when I know I'm ready to act on an idea. This is a Masters Thesis, hopefully Carole agrees to the PhD project.

As we put our learning and intuitions into action in the tricky ecology of human culture - everything about this thesis will begin to change - but because the cause is true, it is sure to be good.


Carole Joskowitz has produced two films: 2007's "Realm of Fantasy" And 2010's "Cactus Psychosis". Both films are available for sale by leaving a note with contact information at any of the social spaces linked in this post. Snippets of the films are available in Youtube and in facebook.

Image of Tim O'Reilly at Web 2.0 Summit, courtesy cnet.com/.
Image of xkcd comic by Randall Munroe, courtesy Wikipedia.
Image from facebook was produced via ScreenPrint32
Thanks to Youtube for the embedded Video.



mh

Oil - Photographs from Alberta to Azerbaijan: Essick, Helbig & Burtynsky

The absolutely magnificent grandeur of the Alberta Tar Sands Project demands you take a step back in order to take it all in, way back, and way up Rusty, way up.

Here are some aerial photographs of the Alberta Tar Sands Project that I was able to find on the web, created by three different photographers: Essick, Helbig & Burtynsky

(All images can be enlarged by clicking them.)

Peter Essick

Peter Essick, working for National Geographic, created these and many more - which appear at the National Geographic site.




And to compare...

Louis Helbig

Beautiful Destruction - Alberta Tar Sands Aerial Photographs

Kristin Reimer and Louis Helbig flew their 1946 Luscombe Bush Plane east to west across Canada. One of their destinations was Fort McMurray and the Alberta Tar Sands which Louis wanted to photograph from the sky. They've put up a public gallery.








Louis Helbig has several gallery exhibits up coming. Right now Snapdragon Gallery in Ottawa Ontario, Canada has hung the walls: A solo exhibition, 'Beautiful Destruction – Alberta Tar Sands Aerial Photographs', December 10, 2009 - January 6, 2010. 791 Bank Street (at Third Ave).

Edward Burtynsky

"Edward Burtynsky: Oil"

Lastly, St. Catharines, Ontario born Artist Edward Burtynsky's ten year project titled, "Edward Burtynsky: Oil" just finished showing at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washihton DC.

The Galleries biographical essay reads,

"This exhibition, premiering in the capital city of the United States in Fall 2009, represents a look at one of the most important subjects of our time by one of the most respected and recognized contemporary photographers in the world."

Unfortunately the exhibition being taken down as I write. Luckily though the Galleries web exhibition is still up and I was able to catch some examples to show here.



Consumption realtime montage







Nicholas Metivier Gallery Toronto. "Edward Burtynsky: Oil" (October 8 to 31, 2009) in Toronto at 451 King Street West, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5V 1K4 - phone: 416-205-9000 -
(I'm sure they can help you)

("Edward Burtynsky: Oil" was made possible with the generous support of Scotiabank Group. The exhibition was organized by the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. 500 Seventeenth Street NW Washington, DC 20006 (202) 639-1700. HASTED HUNT KRAEUTLER Gallery New York is the exclusive representative for Edward Burtynsky in the United States. Thanks for the screen shots.)




mh