Cut-Ups: A Media Intervention

April 2, 2008 - One Response

This is the beginning of a media intervention. To combat the excessive amounts of media files suspended online, I took sections of news stories found online and recycled the content into my own story by using the cut-up technique.

The cut-up technique is a method of writing that rejects the rules and standards of traditional writing. Cut-ups operate on a ‘writers don’t own their words’ system of expression that fosters spontaneity in the writer and liberates the use of words for the reader.

The first cut-ups were created by Romanian poet, Tristan Tzara, who was a member of the political Dadaism movement of the 1920s; Tzara, would create ‘anti-art’ poems by tearing up dictionary pages and randomly pulling out its words and phrases from a hat to read to an audience of onlookers. The exposure of the cut-up technique to the mainstream is largely credited to multimedia artist Brion Gysin and famed writer Willam S. Burroughs, a pair that for years collaborated on cut-up projects for the audio, film and print mediums.

The format of my intervention was modeled after Detlev Fischer’s piece entitled, Secret Ballet. Fischer’s composition was created using over 90,000 example sentences included in the 1987 Collins English Language Dictionary (www.oturn.net). I chose news articles as my cut-up ammo; online news stories are updated daily and would allow me access to a great volume of content written about assorted topics.

My cut-up piece is a composition about wintertime in Canada and uses unedited sentences from 16 different news stories, as found on the CBC website; links to each of these news stories are cited below.

If you’d like to learn more about cut-ups, check out:

Brion Gysin: Tuning in to the Multimedia Age, José Kuri, 2003

www.oturn.net - Secret Ballet, online version www.languageisavirus.com – website with cut-up content & software

www.ubu.com/sound/burroughs.html – feature audio cut-ups from Willam S. Burroughs

Snow aftermath ‘Spring

Spring may have officially sprung, but Environment Canada’s senior climatologist says winter weather is a bully determined to stick around. Apparently it’s part of a trend. Arctic air continues to hold Canada in its grip after a “tough, cruel, cold, snowy winter,” the weather expert said.
Already several cities have set winter snowfall records including Quebec City, Bathurst, N.B., and Waterloo, Ont. Several others are on the verge of eclipsing decades-old records in the coming weeks. The storm, dubbed “mammoth” by Environment Canada is taking its toll on Canadians across the eastern seaboard, where it struck with force on the weekend.
A week’s worth of stormy conditions dumped almost 100 cm of snow on the region. Dozens of senior citizens were trapped in their homes by piles of snow Wednesday in the wake of a blizzard in central Newfoundland. Conservation officers spent the day tracking a family of polar bears after a resident in the area reported seeing a mother bear and two cubs in the early morning near an area locally known as Coles Pond. If a person encounters a polar bear, officials said the best thing to do is remain calm, back away slowly and avoid eye contact with the animal. Don’t snicker. Do not drink alcohol or smoke.
Freezing rain and ice that knocked down trees in New Brunswick left thousands of people in the province without power for much of the day Friday. NB Power spokeswoman Heather MacLean said, “To wash dishes we dug an alley to the campfire pit, lit a fire, put a rack from the oven over it and heated water in my canner. Spent evenings playing fiddle by candlelight and hanging out with the kids. Definitely memorable!”
Guelph was lucky enough to also receive 10-15 cm of snow earlier in the week. After another winter storm dumped 20 centimetres on Toronto, some people in the city say they have had enough. Magliaro, of Chatham, Ont., said most people are coping, keeping busy watching movies, going on the internet or talking on their cell phones. Artist Carol Hummel crocheted a cozy for a tree in front of city hall. No, that’s not a hallucination. That pear tree is wearing a sweater.
Quebec police are reporting several incidents of “snow rage” including one where a man brandished a 12-gauge gun after a private contractor blew snow in his direction in Quebec City on the weekend. After a 15-hour standoff with a SWAT team, an armed man quietly surrendered Tuesday afternoon.
One major B.C. highway has been reopened after an avalanche, but another may remain closed all weekend because of the danger of slides. Developer Paul Mailey, who is trying to sell “global warming resistant.” condos at Big White, near Kelowna, to Europeans, said the important thing is to emphasize is that B.C.’s winters are still pretty cold, and that right now there is a lot of snow. Good advice? Maybe.

New Stories Cited:

 

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Applications ADDiction: Intermedia Oral Presentation

November 26, 2007 - Leave a Response

Here’s a look into the many faces of Facebook applications and how they function to satisfy the motives of application developers, Facebook users and Mark Zuckerberg & Co.

This presentation was created by myself and two other Concordia Dips, Oletha McGillivary, Adam Panetta. Happy Facebook-ing :)

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Digital Self Portrait

October 1, 2007 - Leave a Response

Digital Self Portrait

people.jpg cards.jpg

The two pictures depicted in my digital self portrait are of images taken on two separate occasions: one photo captures me and my friends in Evan’s Point, Newfoundland during Christmas time 2006 and the other photo shows a sketch of a crowd of people that was featured in a giant maze of animal artwork at this year’s Osheaga Festival, Montreal, September 2007.

The Evan’s Point picture was a candid photo taken during a cabin trip with my friends. What I like best about this photograph is that it isn’t contrived or orchestrated in any way. It shows a genuine moment of me, having fun with my friends.
The sketch of the crowd of people caught my eye during an artwork display at Osheaga Festival. To me, the sketch is a reminder of an individual’s place in the world: we are one of many, all trying to make a way for ourselves as we live life day-to-day.

I used Photoshop elements to combine the photos. I altered each photo individually, adjusting the colour levels and cutting and cropping where appropriate. I then completely removed the image of myself in the Evan’s Point picture by using the magnetic lasso tool and then deleting the background of the photo. I transformed the size of my image and placed it on the ‘people.jpg’ layer. I used the clone stamp tool to copy the ’stick people’ in the sketch image, so that I could fill in empty areas of the overall digital self-portrait; although this was tedious, the cohesiveness of the final product indicates that it was time well-spent! Once the image looked like one unified photograph, I flattened the image layers and then played with the many effects of Photoshop. This was my favourite part of the process, as Photoshop has many neat effects to alter pictures! I decided to make the picture appear as if it was a drawing by selecting ’smudge stick’ from the ‘artistic’ filter templates, and I then added the ‘glowing edges’ style, transforming the image into one that was black and white with coloured outlines. As a final adjustment, I added some text to the image that I felt suited the image’s meaning.

The end result was a personalized piece of artwork. I didn’t have an overall message I wanted to convey when I started out on this assignment, as my images had significance to me as individual photos only. However, once these pictures were united, the overall image took on a whole new meaning. My digital self-portrait reflects my opinion of my place in the world: I am one person in the world’s massive pool of people and like the others, I have my own story, and my own life to lead.

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A Picture is Worth 455 Words: Mois de la Photo Review

September 17, 2007 - Leave a Response

Montreal is currently housing the 10th presentation of Mois de la Photo, a month long artistic celebration featuring more than 30 solo-exhibits, all paying tribute to the art of photography. ‘Replaying Narrative’ is the theme of this year’s presentation and now, armed with a little insight after viewing some of the exhibits, I will provide a narrative of my own about my experiences with Mois de la Photo.

So far, I’ve viewed three different art displays and each artist has quite a varied approach to the traditional idea of a photograph and its ability to tell a story. One artist has digitally altered photos that were initially taken 40 – 70 years ago to blend still images into images with depth and motion, while another artist uses a billboard to relay a message to an audience of commuters along the Boulevard on St. Laurent. The display that I enjoyed the most is that of Christelle L’Heureux and her video installation entitled ‘L’Expérience Préhistorique’. She uses three different large-screen videos to recreate a Japanese film from the 1930s, ‘Gion No Shimai’: one video depicts a lecturing Japanese woman with a muted audio and shows French subtitles (the audience is able to listen to the woman’s actual speech via headsets), another video shows silent actors re-enacting the story and a third video shows a man speaking fluent French into a microphone.

I initially had no idea that each of these videos were connected until I started listening to the audio of the storyteller speaking in her native Japanese via headset. I am certainly not fluent in either Japanese or French, but once I began listening to the Japanese audio I noticed that with each voice inflection of the storyteller, the actions of the silent actors on the opposing video screen would change correspondingly. I then started paying more attention to the French subtitles (my French translating skills definitely need improvement) until I was able to piece together the overall story. The story centered on a cast of characters that each had romantic connections with one another, a video portrait perhaps about the complexities of human relationships.

To me, Christelle’s approach is very intricate and also very cool. While there is a lot going on in this cinematic display that requires the audience member’s attention, the interplay of each video is so in-sync that not even a language barrier (a DOUBLE language barrier, in my case) interferes with its storytelling abilities. Christelle successfully captures the essence of the ‘Replaying Narrative’ theme of Mois de la Photo, and demonstrates the universal strength of the photograph as a storytelling medium. A picture really is worth a thousand words, with or without subtitles.

“Mois de la Photo à Montréal.” 18 Sep. 2007 <www.moisdelaphoto.com/index.html>

“Bienvenue à la Cinémathèque.” 18 Sep. 2007 <www.cinematheque.qc.ca/>

Christelle Lheureux. “Christelle Lheureux.” 18 Sep. 2007 <http://christelle.lheureux.free.fr/?>

Omocha & Umekichi

Storyteller

Furusawa, Umekichi

Gion No Shimai

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Lend Me Your Ears: An Interpretation of espaceSONO Audio Lab

September 17, 2007 - 2 Responses

Upon entering the SAT gallery, I thought that maybe I had made a wrong turn somewhere. The room didn’t look much like a gallery to me, it instead had elements of a department store display: a fully assembled tent, a big, comfy bed complete with red, plush pillows and a mysterious black box (unopened!), each positioned throughout the white space. But this site was espaceSONO, the audio-listening lab showcasing the works of 36 sound-artists from all over the world.

Once inside I was immediately drawn to the tent! After removing my shoes so I wouldn’t muck up the tent’s neat interior, I listened to Helen Thorington’s ‘Calling to Mind II (For Joe)’, a piece that I couldn’t really get into. The sounds were, to me, unpleasant: discordant violins, clock chimes, train whistles and other shrill noises. The listening was a little too intense for me while in the tent. So, I decided to leave the campground and check out the mysterious black box. The inside was dimly lit by two computer displays with attached headsets, which made it hard to find the ‘play’ button in the dark. But I plunked my way along and listened to another piece, ‘Binaural Architecture Military Island, Times Square’ by Jamie Allen. The sounds he captured were that of the everyday occurring at the two locales in his title. I heard bits of conversations that people were having, a baby crying, a bus stopping, and somebody’s Mp3 player whose volume was on bust. I wound up confusing some of the sounds in this piece with the sounds that were happening outside the gallery – St. Laurent is a busy street!

This was my first experimental audio-exhibit, so I didn’t really know what to expect. What I liked best about the espaceSONO environment were the fun props that the audience gets to play with while listening to the artist’s pieces. Sound-art is a pretty tough medium to convey, as the listener is relying one sense, the sense of sound, for interpretation. Perhaps that’s why it was important that the espaceSONO supplied a set of props for the audience to interact with. The tent, the black box and the bed installments each invited the listener to ‘think outside the box’ (or this case, inside the box) and gain a different perception of the sound-art presented. As an audience member, I didn’t enjoy all of the sounds created by the artists, but with every noise I did experience some reaction, be it positive or negative. And I did appreciate the artist’s efforts in trying to present everyday, real sounds in a new and challenging way.

“espaceSONO :: upgradeMTL :: september 5th – october 5th 2007.” 18 Sep. 2007 <http://upgrademtl.org/archives/Sept0507.htm>

“New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., turbulence.org, somewhere.org, New American Radio, Helen Thorington, new.radio@verizon.net. “Helen Thorington/Home Page.” 18 Sep. 2007 <http://new-radio.org/helen/>

“jamie allen // heavyside.net.” 18 Sep. 2007 <http://heavyside.net/>

Tent (Prt I)

Tent (Prt II)

The Mysterious Black Box

Bed Display

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