Category Archives: Technology

Funky Remixes

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I talked before about about Musopen for a good place to access classical music that’s in the public domain. Now, I can’t do quite that well again, but I can give you an option to update your music selection. Funky Remixes is a site dedicated to, well, funky remixes; however, they do generally try to list music that uses creative commons licensing. So, even if you need something a little more lively to accompany your project, check out the site and see if anything will fit. You might find something totally sweet you could use. They even have mixes from some notables such as Beastie Boys, David Byrne, Le Tigre, The Rapture (a personal fav), and Danger Mouse & jemini. Oh yes, and they’re all free to download.

If you need a recommendation, then I’d start with “I’M FUNKYN’LOVE YOU” by DEEJAWU. It’s just groovy–er, funky.

Tiananmen & Twitter

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Tomorrow, June 4th, marks the 20th anniversary of the bloody affair in Tiananmen Square, when the Chinese army opened machine gun fire on unarmed protesters. In an attempt to obviate any risk of renewing the spirit of dissent, China is taking measures to prevent communication:

beijing_1

Not that we exactly needed more evidence that communication technologies are instrumental in 21st-century activism, but this certainly helps confirm it. And since China is credited with having the largest online community, the impact goes deep.

This maneuver to counter dissent has interesting connections to the massacre, since one of the key demands of students gathering in Tiananmen was for free media. Such issues should concern any rhetorician who is interested in who has the power to speak, who is denied such power, and the influence of digital technologies on expression.

One may wonder how protesters will react to this sadly predictable move on the part of the Chinese government. How will citizens communicate when the channels for doing so are blocked? Who will lead when leaders have been placed on house arrest or “strongly encouraged” to vacation away from the capital for the 20th anniversary? Furthermore, since none of these tactics are surprising, how might activists elsewhere learn from them? The digital networks that support much of the transnational activism that is highly touted these days could easily disappear. What then? How can those that identify with certain social movements account for “cutting the head off,” where leaders are minimized, or worse, executed? And what might this mean in our networked age, where movements could be seen as acephalous?

Point of Departure

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A conversation . . .

Debord:

In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation. The images detached from every aspect of life fuse in a common stream in which the unity of this life can no longer be reestablished. Reality considered partially unfolds, in its own general unity, as a pseudo-world apart, an object of mere contemplation. The specialization of images of the world is completed in the world of the autonomous image, where the liar has lied to himself. The spectacle in general, as the concrete inversion of life, is the autonomous movement of the non-living.

Plato:

Someday, in the distant future, our grandchildren’s grandchildren will develop a new equivalent of our classrooms. They will spend many hours in front of boxes with fires glowing within. May they have the wisdom to know the difference between light and knowledge.

Derrick Jensen:

When you don’t know how to connect, when connection frightens you so much, I suppose this simulation is better than nothing. Isn’t it better to watch nature programs than to never see nature at all? We’re substituting imaginary experiences with the images of things for experiences with the things themselves, having already substituted the experience of things for the possibility of relationship with other beings.

Martin Buber:

Through the Thou a person becomes I. The world is not comprehensible, but it is embraceable: through the embracing of one of its beings.

Jean Baudrillard

Television knows no night. It is perpetual day. TV embodies our fear of the dark, of night, of the other side of things.

Mikey is Listening

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Since we at Harlot love the multimedia approach toward our articles as much as the text-based, I thought I might pass along something that might help you get that multi-modality a little bit easier. I know it can be difficult to get into hardware, when all you want to talk about is, say, the rhetoric of a dog park, but the technological aspects of things are important considerations.

Blue microphones has released a new mic recently, duly dubbed Mikey, which connects and allows you to record directly to your ipod. Super cool, no? Supposedly, it’s supposed to be some high quality hand held recording. I’d love it if Blue Mic would give samples of how the audio sounds, but, alas, it seems I’ll have to trust their ethos. Get this, though, it doesn’t require any software, which is always a selling point for me. (Really, you get enough hardware that requires software and you end up having more software on your computer than Steve Jobs.)

I carry my ipod around with me enough as it is and I wouldn’t be opposed to grabbing some cool audio out on the streets either. Unfortunately, though, it only works with iPod nano, 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G, and iPod Classic, so that leaves ipod touches and iphones out of the mix.

It is an $80 drop, but I do think it’s worth looking into. People create entire documentaries out of flip-cameras, I think someone could do just as well with little Mikey.

via Popgadget

Days of Rage (part deux)

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A few days ago I posted some off the cuff, rather glib remarks about President Bush’s response to having a shoe thrown at him, at the very end of which I note Bush’s acknowledgment of protest as distinctly different than, say, Nixon’s.  Well, today I’m revisiting a really stellar article by Jodi Dean, Queen of I Cite, a blog that covers political theory the likes of Agamben, Foucault, Zizek, and so on, which brings up the topic in a more serious light; so I’d like to follow up on my post with a quote from her article, “Communicative Capitalism: Circulation and the Foreclosure of Politics,” from Digital Media and Democracy:

Even when the White House acknowledged the massive worldwide demonstrations of February 15, 2003, Bush simply reiterated the fact that a message was out there, circulating–the protestors had the right to express their opinions.  He didn’t actually respond to their message.  He didn’t treat the words and actions of the protestors as sending a message to him to which he was in some sense obligated to respond.  Rather, he acknowledged that there existed views different from his own.  There were his views and there were other views; all had the right to exist, to be expressed–but that in now way meant, or so Bush made it seem, that these views were involved with each other.  So, despite the terabytes of commentary and information, there wasn’t exactly a debate over the war.

Dean goes on to make a persuasive case for the separation of a politics that is the simple circulation of content (websites, TV pundits, blogs, RSS feeds, listservs, and so on) and the politics of the institution (activities of lawmakers and bureaucrats).  Today, she argues, these two politics operate almost entirely independent of each other.  Sure, we’d like to think the circulation of content impacts the actual decision making . . . but it doesn’t.  However, it does keep us busy.

I’ll end with one of her juicier claims:

The proliferation, distribution, acceleration, and intensification of communicative access and opportunity, far from enhancing democratic governance or resistance, results in precisely the opposite, the postpolitical formation of communicative capitalism.

There’s a distinct chance I’ll be posting on this over at Candid Candidacy if any of you are enticed by these ideas.

Video Essays!

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Nothing I like more than a little analysis in a hard candy coating and, well, I feel like sharing.

Is He Bona Fide?


Is He Bona Fide? from Daniel Anderson on Vimeo.

“This video essay explores the theme of sincerity in the film O Brother, Where Art Thou?. The essay is composed in video form, using clips from the film as quotations and layering analysis over the clips through narration.”

Remix Culture II


Remix Culture II from Ricardo on Vimeo.

“My second mashup for the
Total Recut Video Remix Challenge 2008
“What is Remix Culture?”

Here’s a list of all the entries in the competition:
http://www.totalrecut.com/contest-videos.php”

Watchmen Video Essay/Review


Watchmen Video Essay/Review from Adam Schoales on Vimeo.

“Here we go kids, after hours of writing, editing, shooting, cutting, and recutting my review… err… video essay for “Watchmen” is complete.

I’m going to work on creating a more concise version thats more along the lines of an actual review, but this should whet your appetite.

(and yes, I’m reading from a teleprompter. you try doing a 20 minute review from memory and smoothly…)”

The World is Flat 3.0

This is more of a lecture, but still mighty thought provoking. I especially like starting at the 29:30 minute mark when Thomas Friedman says that being able to use “imaginative thinking” and connecting dots, in the way liberal arts does, is essential. Then again, I’m a bit biased.

Bringing liberal arts into the equation is more important than ever, because we’re in a world now where imagination and mashups–the ability to mash things together through really imaginative, I think, thinking–is going to be such a huge advantage. . . I think inspiration, innovation comes from having two or more specialties and applying the framework of one specialty to the framework of another. And so, it is great, it is critical, it is essential. We have people who are experts at dots, but we also need, as individuals and collectives, to be encouraging the connecting of those dots and the mashing of them together.

Blogging with Arianna Huffington

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Arianna Huffington talked about blogging about a month ago on The Jon Stewart Show. Of all the different explanations and discussions concerning blogging, I think I like her explanation best. She makes several comments I appreciate, including:

The difference about blogging is that it’s — as we say . . . first thought, best thought. Like, don’t over think it, don’t overwrite it . . . it’s a first draft of history.

or

Blogging is not about perfectionism. Blogging is about intimacy, immediacy, transparency, and sharing your thoughts the way you share it with a friend.

So, friends, I come to you now to bring up the conundrum of writing a book on blogging. Hmm, I say. I think the way she explains it is correct — blogging seems to be a “first draft of history” — typos and all. I can’t help but wonder about the marketing of this. I mean, bloggers would seem to be the ones truly curious about this book, but instead of releasing it as a pdf book, they chose to publish it on real paper. I have to wonder if they’re really reaching their audience.

BUT! I have a copy of Creative Nonfiction‘s “The Best Creative Nonfiction, Volume 1” which includes some choice blog posts. (I mean, they recently published “The Best Creative Nonfiction, Volume 2” that does the same thing.) If we’re now publishing the first draft of history (which is important, I’m not saying it’s not), then what happens to the 2nd and 3rd and 4th draft of history?

I suppose I’d like to see these posts retold later, you know? I’d like to see how the 2nd and 3rd drafts come out in comparison to the first. There’s no need to get rid of either–they both have validity, but I just want to see how they change. Obviously, typos would improve, but would reveal something about how we approach different audiences (ie from the internet readers to the book readers)? Would we change what we think? I don’t know, but I am curious to know.