Vintage Commercial

Here is a terrible commercial Boing Boing posted yesterday.

Bring Da Noise

Sound art is pretty much located exactly where I thought it was, with a few minor exceptions. John Cage is still the top dog apparently. The most interesting facets of this detailed history are just how far back sound art goes. Nothing was too shocking, I think I expected to find out that the Futurists had a sound art aspect, they had their hands in everything else, but I guess what is surprising to me is the lack of documentation on this art. Maybe not documentation, but discussion. No one talks about Duchamp's sound art or Fluxus' sound work. We hear only the 2d, 3d or conceptual. It's surprising most because sound art is perfectly suited to a lecture art class, one needn't even have a good view to critique the work. All in all, it's a really good and detailed history and is quite inspirational.

On Lev Manovich's What is Digital Cinema

Lev Manovich's What is Digital Cinema presents an interesting idea, that due to advances in technology, cinema is "regressing" to its roots, the days of painted frames and loops. It's an intriguing idea, that like early films, the history of cinema is a loop. I can't help but thinking if Lev's argument isn’t a bit flawed. While yes, the manipulation of digital images by a computer is like painting, it isn't. And while digital images are distinct from analog film, they really aren't that different. The way he talks about pixels makes me wonder if that's the way early film makers would talk about grain on a film strip. It's a compelling argument but at times seems wishy-washy and not very dense, almost like he doesn't have enough to enforce his claim or that he's really stretching to make things work. I dunno. I think I need to ponder it a bit more.