Kennedy's Revival

This weeks class was quite two sided to say the least. Starting off with the film Media Burn was a bit on the lighter side as it did a parody of President Kennedy and his speech that introduces the special built car to drive through a stack of TV sets. This while pretty funny and light hearted it did have a good message and presentation of it. The sale of novelties among other things were quite funny for such an event. But the real film of the class that I feel had a significant impact on me was by far the "Kennedy Report." This film... where to start with it. The fact that it started with a lot of audio and little to no video was haunting for the most part. The film consisted mostly of audio clippings from news broadcasts or interviews regarding the Kennedy Assassination and the events leading up to it. The film itself had this nerve racking feel though.. emphasized even more by certain elements, the countdown for one was very disturbing to watch actually due to the fact that you get into this rhythm that it will reach one and possibly something will happen. At that moment I truly did think the movie would show the infamous clip of JFK being shot, which more or less I did not really want to see, but with these build ups and countdowns, not to mention the audio discussing the shooting it was hard not to think about how it was all going to end. It was unsettling to say the least but also very well done in its presentation. The audio/video matching was amazing (really liked the old commercial footage spliced with presidential audio).

Over all going from Media Burn to the Report was pretty two sided, but it was good to see a different side maybe even different interpretation of each event in completely different contexts. Over all though I really did enjoy these films.

This is a Blog about an outside event I saw

Since I will most likely be one blog short this semester I will write a little bit about the show I saw over the weekend. The show in question that I saw was by a electronic Musician by the name of Meat Beat Manifesto aka Jack Dangers. The reason I decided to discuss this performance was that it was not played out like most concerts. First off the entire stage area was covered with two giant Projector screens. Then they had three people behind this screen for the performance. First off obviously Jack Dangers was behind there as he is the man behind the music, next there was Lin Farmer who was doing live drums in the center stage area, then there was the man who I would like to discuss, Ben Stokes is the man behind the visuals. Ben has done visuals for almost all Jack Dangers shows and DVD's and other artists including DJ Shadow, and Cut Chemist. Here is a small example of the stage layout so you can have a visual.



The thing that makes these visuals so incredible is that Jack Dangers emphasizes the use of 100's of samples and clips that he uses in his music. The thing that blows me away is Ben Stokes has a visual clip of every single sample used in the music and plays them live with Video DJ software and hardware. It is a surreal experience to be real honest. Seeing all these visuals played out while the music plays with a very large amount of bass. I have seen a couple shows now that have had Ben doing live visuals and every time he blows me away even more... The amount of time and editing and practice it must take to be able to perform this live visual performance is unimaginable. It reminds me a lot of NegativeLands style of performance and they both are quite similar. Negative land tends to use a lot more audio samples and Ben obviously is more visual, but both of their use of samples is very close in nature and I think that over all cluster montage style is something I would really like to mess around with myself. I will end this with some photos and videos of the show for people to get an idea of what I saw.

Negativland

Most people even after watching this film will probably be still asking "what exactly is negativeland?" Well to be honest its hard to describe them, they wouldnt really be classified as a "band" perse, but more of a group of artists. This is confusing because most people can buy their Cd's in record stores these days so why are they not considered a band? The group portrays "bootleg" collage's in an audio and visual assault on the senses. They are activists in a sense as they portray a ton of anti corporate and anti governmental information thrown together into a so called "media blender." In reference to their website., "their art and media interventions have (often naively) posed questions about the nature of sound, media, control, ownership, propaganda and perception, with the results of these questions and explorations being what they release to the public." The group also would like to point out they are artists first, and activists second, never the other way around.

"Without ideological preaching, Negativland often becomes a subliminal culture sampling service concerned with making art about everything we aren't supposed to notice." This statement alone can sum up a lot of what Negativeland's goal is. They take media that is easily accessible, then use unusual ways to restructure such things and combine them with their own music and art, and mass media transmissions, to completely re construct their meanings. "Negativland re-arranges these bits and pieces to make them say and suggest things that they never intended to. In doing this kind of cultural opposition and "culture jamming." (quoted from negativeland's website)

Lastly I would like to post a example of a piece of their work entitled "Truth in advertising" which plays on the idea of censorship in advertisements and the media, and it uses a lot of audio/video samples from outside sources just like explained above.

Infinite Possibilities

At first this lecture just completely caught me off guard. This film maker walks into a film class and starts off by just stating " I could explain to you how this applies to film, but that will take to long, so I'm going to just do math." Now dont get me wrong I was way more into this then the last guest speaker we had, just for the fact that even if he wasnt 100% talking of film, his methods of thinkign and problem solving kept me listening. This whole lecture he did on explaining algebra and numbers really got the class discussing problem solving as a whole. This is where I believe he truly shined as a lecturer. I thought past all the numbers he was discussing and took more of a look at how he was solving problems and the methods he used. It almost irritated me when someone would ask a question regarding numbers being right or wrong in his equations, because I feel that wasnt the point at all. He took a very unique approach to a subject most reject and hate. Not only did I approve of this method, its how my brain wanted to think since I ever started math of this caliber. Why cant I divide by this number? Why cant I put this into that equation? All things I felt restricted by in math classes he just came and tore those barriers down, especially when he got into infinite and imaginary numbers. I heard a few people discuss how they felt it was annoying that he would stop in the middle of an equation and go to a new idea or thought and not conclude the previous steps. I truly liked this because it truly shows that his mind is racing with new ideas and processes, and he can change those in a snap (much like directing). This all boils down to how I feel that the creative nature and random changing of thoughts and ideas, bundled with amazing problem solving and an open mind is what make James Benning a truly gifted film maker and more importantly a teacher.