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FCJ-105 Materiality of a Simulation: Scratch “Reading” Machine, 1931

By ⋅ February 19, 2010 ⋅ Post a comment

Craig Saper Professor of Texts and Technology, University of Central Florida ‘Take any text speed it up slow it down run it backwards inch it and you will hear words that were not in the original recording new words made by the machine different people will scan out different words of course but some of the words are quite clearly there and anyone can hear them words which were not in the original tape but which are in many cases relevant to the original text as if the words themselves had been interrogated and forced to reveal their hidden meanings.’ William S. Burroughs, The Invisible Generation People got their opinions Where do they come from? Each day seems like a natural fact And what we think changes how we act. Gang of Four, ‘Why Theory’ In the epigram above, the post-punk band, Gang of Four, explains why we need theory […]

FCJ-104 Materialities of Law: Celebrity Production and the Public Domain

By ⋅ February 19, 2010 ⋅ Post a comment

Esther Milne Media & Communications, Swinburne University of Technology The brand’s image and its customer’s self-image will be refracted through the ‘prism’ of a star’s persona and produce a new set of perceptions … the reason it is tricky is that celebrities are unusual brands in that they talk back and they may also change their behaviour, their views and their perceived personality quite quickly, literally making them not the person they used to be and certainly not the individual with whom the brand originally partnered. — Pringle, Celebrity Sells Saddam Hussein wants to keep advertisers from using his picture in unflattering contexts. Clint Eastwood doesn’t want tabloids to write about him. Rudolf Valentino’s heirs want to control his film biography. The Girl Scouts don’t want their image soiled by association with certain activities. George Lucas wants to keep Strategic Defense Initiative fans from calling it “Star Wars.” … Uri Geller […]

FCJ-103 James Brown, Sample Culture and the Permanent Distance of Glory

By ⋅ February 19, 2010 ⋅ Post a comment

Steve Jones University of Sussex But here I am, the man Who started it all, and I’m glad, ‘Cause I’m number one, original, I know I’m bad ‘I’m Real’, James Brown Perhaps unsurprisingly, the James Brown song ‘I’m Real’ (1988) features the man himself lending a vocal turn (or two) to the track. The song contains numerous lyrics regaled from James Brown’s earlier hits (including ‘Make it Funky’ (1971)) and also James Brown vocal samples from ‘Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine’ (1970) and ‘Get on the Good Foot’ (1972). This chronologic duality is the starting point of the problem that concerns us here. Funkalicious. The question is simple (even if the answer is not). Why sample James Brown’s voice when the man himself was in the studio recording a vocal? What purpose could it serve, especially when he was already replicating moments from previous hits? During […]

FCJ-102 Sputnik Baby

By ⋅ February 19, 2010 ⋅ Post a comment

Ian Haig School of Art, RMIT University Psycho maniac interblend, shoot it up! Ever since punks were spotted walking through the rain soaked dystopic future streets in Ridley Scott’s Bladerunner(1981), a certain image of punk has been associated with ‘the future’; a kind of futuristic punk chic that also clearly owes something to the future agro of Alex in A Clockwork Orange (1971) and the Class of 1984 (1982), where punks ruled the roost in a high school teen movie set in the year of Orwell’s famous novel. We also recognise the post apocalyptic mohawked road warriors of Mad Max 2 (1981) and not to mention countless other mid-eighties sci-fi video fare, where the futuristic punk with heavy eyeliner and day glow hair has made an appearance. The images of this punk-inspired look from an already exhausted dystopic future must have activated the imagination of Tony James, the guitarist from UK punk band Generation […]

FCJ-101 How can you be found when no-one knows that you are missing?

By ⋅ February 19, 2010 ⋅ Post a comment

Lisa Gye Media and Communicatons, Swinburne University ‘What the reader sees will not be what he hears’ James Joyce may have said this of Finnegans Wake ‘Since we have already said everything, the reader must bear with us if we continue on a while. If we extend ourselves by force of play. If we then write a bit…’ Jacques Derrida, Dissemination, 1981:65 Script Don’t get me wrong. Australians make a lot of very fine and worthy films. In the torrid vernacular of Baz Luhrmann’s Australia The Movie, Crickey, you’d have to be a drongo not to know that Aussies make a shitload of bloody ripper flicks – strewth, they’re bonza mate, they’re really fair dinkum yarns with the best scenery and actors and stories that this bloody great big brown land has to offer. They’re absobloodyfuckinlutely faaaaannnntastic. Mate. Cobber. The only problem is nobody actually seems to want to see […]

FCJ-100 Cultural Modulation and The Zero Originality Clause of Remix Culture in Australian Contemporary Art

By ⋅ February 18, 2010 ⋅ Post a comment

Ross Rudesch Harley Professor of Media Arts, University of New South Wales Screenshot: ‘Astro Black: A History of Hip-Hop (Episodes 0-2)’ (2007-08) Soda_Jerk Pop Art’s ability to mash highbrow and lowbrow culture paved the way for Pop Tronic’s essentially mono-brow outlook… Pop Art strayed from Pop Tronics by whoring itself to generative creative arts such as painting. This violates the Zero Originality Clause of Pop Tronic which states “Under no circumstances must the Pop Tronicist stray from the sanctioned triad of operations: Copy, Cut and Collage.” (Soda_Jerk, 2009) 1. In this article I want to reflect briefly on a number of themes to do with the cultural modulation of post-digital remix culture in the context of Australian contemporary art. In particular, I focus on some key figures who have contributed to a particular aesthetics and politics of audio-visual remix. In linking these artistic precursors to current forms of remix, I […]

FCJ-099 The Renewable Tradition (Extended Play Remix)

By ⋅ February 18, 2010 ⋅ Post a comment

Mark Amerika Professor of Art and Art History, University of Colorado Quoting from his own short story ‘Death of the Novel’ Obviously there’s no progress in art. Progress toward what? The avant-garde is a convenient propaganda device, but when it wins the war everything is avant-garde, which leaves us just about where we were before. The only thing that’s sure is that we move, and as we move we leave things behind–the way we felt yesterday, the way we talked about it. Form is your footprints in the sand when you look back. (Sukenick, 1981: 35) The quote comes from ‘Death of the Novel’ a fictional short story by Ronald Sukenick to introduce his artist essay ‘The New Tradition’ which is collected in the groundbreaking anthology of artist poetics entitled Surfiction The New Tradition (Sukenick used to tell me) is the one we’re always on the cusp of inventing by […]

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