December 2008

Attended Blipfest 2008 on Saturday Dec. 6. The free workshops from 12-3 pm consisting of demos and how-tos for chiptune music and low-res computer animation were chock full of info and ideas, in particular Baron Knoxburry's walk-through of how he makes a song using the Windows-based Famitracker.

Commencing at 8:30 pm, the live performances of music made with Gameboys and other videogame-related sound equipment might interest Roland Barthes as a critic of wrestling. The problem for the performer is that most of the music is pre-sequenced and meticulously made in the studio. Live play consists of little more than, say, muting and unmuting channels or twirling EQ knobs on a mixer. So the problem is how to appear to be doing something musical on stage.

Like WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment), where no actual combat takes place, chiptune performers have developed a series of ritual moves that simulate intense engagement in the musical process. These consist of repeated fist pumps, making a horn sign with index and little finger, and vigorous dancing and running in place while the machines are playing. These Kabuki gestures ran the gamut Saturday night from krazy kids in kangol hats doing hard trance dance steps to Henry Rollinsesque beating of tabletops and cursing at the audience.

Another similarity to wrestling is an enthused audience that Believes. The Bell House in Brooklyn was packed Saturday with hundreds of fans screaming, moshing, and rushing the stage only to be removed by bouncers the size of industrial freezers. (Am exaggerating slightly--there was only one such bouncer but he did carry a dancing fan off the stage.) The music was mostly a hard wall of sound not dissimilar to a metal concert.

Cow'P, from Tokyo, veered from the pack somewhat with a series of sexy, hypnotic, floor-shaking trance-like bass runs alternating with washes of trebly delay. His music was the most house-tinged and danceable; he seemed the least invested in obligatory stage moves, barring the occasional semi-hearted air fist. And despite the electronic sound-emitting Pikachu toy on stage with him, his set also came across the least game-like, taking the music into new directions and timbres other than the comfortable nostalgia-invoking ones of childhood Nintendos.

Bubblyfish also steers the game sound in a techno direction, or more precisely a hard Euro-electronic body music a la Front 242. Was surprised to see her joining the entertainment posse with multiple fist pumps and diva-like arm-raisings, as her usual mien is quiet and studious on stage. In comparison to chiptune performances in NY three years ago, a strong set of crowd-pleasing stage conventions appears to be developing in this, the third Blipfest, which are becoming hard to buck. These moves have always been in the scene: Bodenstanding 2000 dance, clown, and rock out on stage, too, but in a winking-at-the-audience, "we are scientists who party" way, in contrast to the simulated Black Flag angst on view Saturday. Nerd empowerment can only be taken so far.

Update: A reader suggested that Saturday night's pounding style might have been different from the other nights in the four day festival. Doubtful, based on the Friday night cell phone call I got, but any reports on other evenings would be appreciated.

An annual tradition: Aron Namenwirth calls me from the Blip Festival and loud 8-bit music blares into my phone receiver. In past years I wasn't home and my answer machine recorded it. Tonight I am home and liveblogging it. According to the schedule Tonylight* is playing. Just heard a rousing cheap synth version of Hotel California. The crowd sounds are like a Beatles concert back in the day--or maybe it's just the phone and there are five people in there screaming. Possibly at this point Aron doesn't realize his phone is still on. I'm hanging up soon.

Update: previous years' calls.

*Update 2: Glomag, Aron says.

Here is the web page for the show I'm doing at Telic Arts Exchange's Distributed Gallery.
The interview Sean Dockray did with me covers: (i) Relationship of art to blogging, (ii) Relationship of art to blogging - showing whole blog in gallery, and (iii) Translating art from blog to public space (specific GIFs). At the end I give an impassioned defense of animated GIFs as a non-retro practice. I'll post an excerpt soon but the Q&A isn't overlong and easy to page through, so please give it a look.

PS I swear I know how to spell Bourriaud, just not consistently.

blog to the oldskool highlights hardcore/jungle tracks from the early '90s. (via blissblog)
See, e.g. hardcore versions of Enya (only really liked the first one, by DJ Trace, but whoa).
In a post on my old blog from 3 years ago, was wondering what gear/software the jungle producers used (it came up in the context of current trackers using samples).

Here is a list from an interview with Bay B Kane, UK oldskool hardcore/junglist from 91-96:

--my mixing desk was a 24 into 8 into 2 SECK with a totally silent phantom power unit…i really loved that mixer.
--AKAI S900 and an S950, giving me 16 separate sample outputs
--Roland JUNO1 as my main keyboard and midi controller
--Alesis Qudraverb and a Midiverb II for effects
--KORG M1 rack module
--ATARI-STFM computer which I ran strictly and only CUBASE on for sequencing and arrangements

Part 3 of the interview, about his departure from the scene, is also interesting.

Thanks to folks who linked to, or posted thoughts on, this recent screed.

John Michael Boling said: "I'd like to propose a third non-gendered 'dude with computer' class of cultural practitioners." Thought I did that with the self-taught but OK.

Ceci Moss* at Rhizome.org tested the argument with actual examples of artists' work, something the original post avoided. Paul Slocum is of course that rare bird flying between the art and new media realms. Joan Leandre is comparatively mired in a particular set of geek assumptions. Go to his site and you find, for example, dozens of .exe files with the warning that downloading them can harm your computer if you don't "choose each file to a High Density fat32 and run New World's install program." Whether or not that is a joke, this is the essence of geekdom and most art world people will not go there, particularly any art world person with Windows who survived the Internet Exploder era. Leandre's "Velvet Strike" is more credible at least on an anecdotal level: the artist hacked into hard core war game nerd sites and put antimilitary graffiti on the virtual walls, pissing off many players.

cf. "New Media vs Artists with Computers" with Guthrie Lonergan's "Hackers vs Defaults" table. That table may have been read as two different flavors within new media, and therefore benign, but this blog would like to claim it as another example of "stark polarization," to use Moss's term. Also cf. Net Art 1.0 vs 2.0.

*Update, 2011: The Rhizome link above redirects but just for the record the new post is http://rhizome.org/editorial/2008/dec/3/thoughts-on-quotnew-media-artists-vs-artists-with-/