Everything is a Remix: An Exploration of Remixing as a Form of Creativity

in Film, Literature, Technology | February 16th, 2012

In a series of short films, direc­tor Kir­by Fer­gu­son has been grad­u­al­ly mak­ing the case that “Every­thing is a Remix” — that great art does­n’t come out of nowhere. Artists inevitably bor­row from one anoth­er, draw­ing on past ideas and con­ven­tions, then turn­ing these mate­ri­als into some­thing beau­ti­ful and new. The first film high­light­ed the role of remix­ing in lit­er­a­ture and music. The sec­ond install­ment shift­ed the focus to film­mak­ing, while the third turned to tech­nol­o­gy, com­put­ers and user inter­faces. Today, Fer­gu­son released the fourth and final install­ment — “Sys­tem Fail­ure” — which makes the argu­ment that ever-expand­ing copy­right laws, despite what our Found­ing Fathers intend­ed, now tilt in favor of cor­po­rate inter­ests rather than the social good. And, more omi­nous­ly, they threat­en to put the brakes on an essen­tial part of the cre­ative process. If you’ve enjoyed this series, which you can watch in full above, you can sup­port Fer­gu­son’s next project, This is Not a Con­spir­a­cy The­o­ry, on Kick­Starter.

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Suzanne Vega, “The Mother of the MP3,” Records “Tom’s Diner” with the Edison Cylinder

in Music, Technology | February 16th, 2012

An oft-repeat­ed piece of sound engi­neer­ing apoc­rypha holds that the cre­ators of the MP3 for­mat geared it specif­i­cal­ly to repro­duce, as faith­ful­ly as pos­si­ble, Suzanne Veg­a’s “Tom’s Din­er.” You might know the song in the orig­i­nal; you prob­a­bly know the song in its DNA remix; you could even know the song in that ver­sion Bil­ly Bragg and R.E.M. put togeth­er, or in any of the count­less trib­utes, falling in unusu­al places on the spec­trum between remix­es and cov­ers, that oth­er artists have paid. Alas, that sto­ry isn’t quite true: when we lis­ten to MP3s, we aren’t lis­ten­ing to music com­pressed by a pre­ci­sion-tuned “Tom’s Din­er” deliv­ery sys­tem. But the song did influ­ence the tech­ni­cal­i­ties of what MP3s do to turn songs into small, man­age­able dig­i­tal files. Karl­heinz Bran­den­burg, a key con­trib­u­tor to the MP3 com­pres­sion algo­rithm, did indeed put MP3 tech­nol­o­gy to the test ear­ly in its devel­op­ment by using it to com­press Veg­a’s hit. Upon play­back, he heard enough dis­tor­tion in the singing to per­form some seri­ous tweak­ing.

Evi­dent­ly such a “warm a capel­la voice,” in Bran­den­burg’s words, does­n’t take com­pres­sion well. So how does it stand up to the brute rig­ors of one of the old­est record­ing media in exis­tence? In this video Vega sings “Tom’s Din­er,” with­out ampli­fi­ca­tion, into the horn of a vin­tage Thomas Edi­son phono­graph machine as its nee­dle digs the song straight into wax. Not “wax” as in the vinyl we’ve all played music on — wax as in wax. The tech­ni­cian then read­ies the cylin­der for play­back, winds the crank, and releas­es “Tom’s Din­er 1890”: a speed- and pitch-incon­stant war­ble beneath a car­pet of sur­face noise, but unmis­tak­ably the same stark, haunt­ing­ly jaun­ty melody that worked its way into our col­lec­tive con­scious­ness for decades, touch­ing even those who lack the audio-geek enthu­si­asm to get excit­ed by this bridge between the first era of imper­fect son­ic repro­duc­tion and our own era of imper­fect son­ic repro­duc­tion.

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil Young on the Trav­es­ty of MP3s

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A Brief, Animated Introduction to Thomas Edison (and Nikola Tesla)

in Animation, History, Technology | February 15th, 2012

Last year, Jere­mi­ah War­ren cel­e­brat­ed the 154th birth­day of Niko­la Tes­la by cre­at­ing (in less than 36 hours) a short, ani­mat­ed intro­duc­tion to Tes­la’s work, which con­tributed to the birth of com­mer­cial elec­tric­i­ty. Now War­ren turns to Thomas Edi­son, the great inven­tor, who gave us the phono­graph, the motion pic­ture cam­era, the long-last­ing elec­tric light bulb, among oth­er inven­tions. Hold­ing 1,093 US patents in his name, Edi­son is appar­ent­ly the fourth most pro­lif­ic inven­tor in his­to­ry. And, it’s worth not­ing, he once employed Tes­la before lat­er becom­ing his rival.

In times past, we have high­light­ed Edis­on’s tech­nol­o­gy in action. Don’t miss Mark Twain Cap­tured on Film by Thomas Edi­son (1909), Edi­son him­self recit­ing “Mary Had a Lit­tle Lamb” in an Ear­ly Voice Record­ing, Bike Tricks Caught on Film Cour­tesy of Mr. Edi­son, and The World’s First (and Slight­ly Scan­dalous) Hand-Tint­ed Motion Pic­ture, anoth­er Edi­son cre­ation.

Want to share intel­li­gent media with friends? Sim­ply fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and now Google Plus and we’ll make it a cinch.

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Trotsky, Russian Revolutionary, Makes Debut Performance Before Microphone (1932)

in History, Politics | February 15th, 2012

Many moons ago, we fea­tured a speech by Leon Trot­sky giv­en in his Mex­i­can exile in 1937. Turns out record­ings of his tele­vi­sion address­es go back even fur­ther. The short clip above was record­ed in Den­mark in 1932 and is titled “Trotzky makes debut per­for­mance before micro­phone”. (A lit­tle aside: The clip was pro­duced by Fox Movi­etone News, a news­reel that ran in the U.S. from 1928 to 1963. Would Fox still show some­thing like this today?) In Novem­ber 1932, Trot­sky left his exile in Turkey to accept an invi­ta­tion by the Dan­ish Social Demo­c­ra­t­ic Stu­dents’ Asso­ci­a­tion to come to Copen­hagen and speak about the Russ­ian Rev­o­lu­tion. You can read the text of the speech called “In Defence of Octo­ber” held on Novem­ber 27 here. There are also two impres­sive pho­tos secret­ly tak­en by a pho­to­jour­nal­ist. There was a lot of com­mo­tion sur­round­ing Trot­sky’s trip to Den­mark: the Dan­ish Com­mu­nist Par­ty, con­trolled by Stal­in, staged demon­stra­tions and the Roy­al Fam­i­ly protest­ed against his vis­it — they held Trot­sky respon­si­ble for the vio­lent deaths of their rel­a­tives, the Tsar and his fam­i­ly. Nev­er­the­less, Trot­sky deliv­ered his speech before an audi­ence of about 2,500. The video address was record­ed in Eng­lish two weeks lat­er, on Decem­ber 10, 1932.

To see oth­er famous lead­ers mak­ing their debut per­for­mances, check out Mahat­ma Gand­hi in his First Record­ed Video and Nel­son Mandela’s First-Ever Inter­view.

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

 

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In Search of Haruki Murakami: A Documentary Introduction to Japan’s Great Postmodernist Novelist

in Books, Literature | February 15th, 2012

Haru­ki Muraka­mi holds the titles of both the most pop­u­lar nov­el­ist in Japan and the most pop­u­lar Japan­ese nov­el­ist in the wider world. After pub­lish­ing Nor­we­gian Wood in 1987, a book often called “the Japan­ese Catch­er in the Rye,” Murakami’s noto­ri­ety explod­ed to such an extent that he felt forced out of his home­land, a coun­try whose tra­di­tion­al ways and — to his mind — con­formist mind­set nev­er sat right with him in the first place. Though he returned to Japan in the after­math of the Kobe earth­quake and the Tokyo under­ground gas attacks, he remained an author shaped by his favorite for­eign cul­tures — espe­cial­ly Amer­i­ca’s. This, com­bined with his yearn­ing to break from estab­lished Japan­ese lit­er­ary norms, has gen­er­at­ed enough inter­na­tion­al demand for his work to sell briskly in almost every lan­guage in which peo­ple read nov­els.

I myself once spent a month doing noth­ing but read­ing Murakami’s work, and this BBC doc­u­men­tary Haru­ki Muraka­mi: In Search of this Elu­sive Writer makes a valiant attempt to cap­ture what about it could raise such a com­pul­sion. Rupert Edwards’ cam­era fol­lows vet­er­an pre­sen­ter Alan Yen­tob through Japan, from the mid­night Tokyo of After Hours to the snowed-in Hokkai­do of A Wild Sheep Chase, in a quest to find arti­facts of the supreme­ly famous yet media-shy novelist’s imag­i­nary world. Built around inter­views with fans and trans­la­tors but thick with such Murakami­ana as laid-back jazz stan­dards, grim school hall­ways, six­ties pop hits, women’s ears, vinyl records, marathon run­ners, and talk­ing cats, the broad­cast strives less to explain Murakami’s sub­stance than to sim­ply reflect it. If you find your curios­i­ty piqued by all the fuss over 1Q84, Murakami’s lat­est, you might watch it as some­thing of an aes­thet­ic primer.

Relat­ed con­tent:

An Intro­duc­tion to the World of Haru­ki Muraka­mi Through Doc­u­men­taries, Sto­ries, Ani­ma­tion, Music Playlists & More

A 96-Song Playlist of Music in Haru­ki Murakami’s Nov­els: Miles Davis, Glenn Gould, the Beach Boys & More

Read 5 Sto­ries By Haru­ki Muraka­mi Free Online (For a Lim­it­ed Time)

A Pho­to­graph­ic Tour of Haru­ki Murakami’s Tokyo, Where Dream, Mem­o­ry, and Real­i­ty Meet

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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The Weird World of Vintage Sports

in Film, History | February 15th, 2012

British Pathé has released an inter­est­ing col­lec­tion of vin­tage news­reel clips high­light­ing ear­ly exper­i­ments in hybrid sports. Some of the feats are dar­ing, oth­ers mere­ly sil­ly. All are fun to watch.

News­reels of this type were an impor­tant part of the movie-going expe­ri­ence in the first half of the 20th cen­tu­ry, often fea­tur­ing cov­er­age of news, enter­tain­ment, cul­ture and sports. Some reels were pack­aged into reg­u­lar­ly appear­ing “cin­emagazines” like Pathé Pic­to­r­i­al, a mov­ing-pic­ture ana­logue of the illus­trat­ed mag­a­zines of the day.

The reel above, shot in Bavaria in 1955, expos­es the “Most Dan­ger­ous Sport in the World.” Motor ski­ing, also known as “motor­ized ski­jor­ing,” involves ski­iers being pulled at high speeds over ice and snow by cars or motor­cy­cles. You can scroll down to watch a few more of our favorites, or access the whole col­lec­tion on YouTube, at the British Pathé Sport­ing His­to­ry chan­nel.

Cycle Skat­ing, Paris, 1923:

Ten­nis on Ice, Amer­i­ca, 1931:

Sum­mer Ski­ing on the Boule­vards, Paris, 1930:

Blimp Water Ski­ing, 1932:

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Enroll in MIT’s First Free Certificate Course Today

in Education, MIT | February 14th, 2012

Note: You can now find through the fol­low­ing link a com­plete list of Mas­sive Open Online Cours­es (MOOCs), many offer­ing cer­tifi­cates.

In the wan­ing days of 2011, MIT announced MITx, a new e‑learning ini­tia­tive that will offer cer­tifi­cates (find a list of Free Online Cer­tifi­cate Cours­es here) to stu­dents demon­strat­ing mas­tery of free MIT cours­es. The uni­ver­si­ty set a spring launch date for MITx, and they have now opened for enroll­ment the very first course. Taught by Anant Agar­w­al, Cir­cuits and Elec­tron­ics is an online adap­tion of MIT’s first under­grad­u­ate ana­log design course. Accord­ing the MITx web site, this pro­to­type course will run — free of charge — for stu­dents world­wide from March 5, 2012 through June 8, 2012. And stu­dents will have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to demon­strate their mas­tery of the mate­r­i­al and earn a cer­tifi­cate from MITx. You can get more infor­ma­tion on the course, or sim­ply enroll in Cir­cuits and Elec­tron­ics, today. Just click here.

Many oth­er engi­neer­ing and com­put­er sci­ence cours­es can be found in our col­lec­tion of 400 Free Cours­es Online.

UPDATE:  MIT pro­fes­sor David Pritchard and his edu­ca­tion research group, RELATE are offer­ing an online MIT-lev­el course in Intro­duc­to­ry New­ton­ian Mechan­ics. The course is free and does not require a text­book.  Enroll­ment has just opened (it starts with an option­al pre­req­ui­sites test), and the course runs from March 1 — May 14, 2012.  Indi­vid­u­als who com­plete the course will receive a let­ter of com­ple­tion. This MIT course is unre­lat­ed to the MITx project men­tioned right above.

via Wired Cam­pus

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Mr. Happy Man

in Film, Life | February 14th, 2012


Matt Mor­ris, an award-win­ning film­mak­er liv­ing in Win­ter Park, Flori­da, came across John­ny Barnes in the same way he has dis­cov­ered all of his film sub­jects — by com­plete acci­dent. One day, while flip­ping through images on Flickr, Mor­ris stum­bled upon a tourist’s pho­to of the 88-year-old Bermu­di­an. He then read the cap­tion attached to the pho­to and knew he had to make a film about Barnes. “Aside from the fact that I tend to make films about elder­ly folks,” Mor­ris told us, “I’m fas­ci­nat­ed with peo­ple who have cho­sen unique ways of liv­ing their lives and as a result are irre­press­ibly hap­py.” “I want to make films about them in part so that I can learn from them.” And so, Matt head­ed to Bermu­da to cap­ture “Mr. Hap­py Man” work­ing his mag­ic on Crow Lane each day.

In Decem­ber, we fea­tured a 2008 film by Mr. Mor­ris — Pickin’ & Trim­min’, an ele­gant doc­u­men­tary that show­cas­es the blue­grass music made in a down-home North Car­oli­na bar­ber­shop. It’s not to be missed. Mor­ris’ next film, Mark & Lor­na, will take as its sub­ject a lounge singing duo based out of Orlan­do, Flori­da.

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