Webspinna & Experimentation

Hey, isn't it cool that we made this?

Also, remember how we also went to the MOA and looked at this...

And this...

Those are cool. In fact all of the Heroes and Monsters exhibit is pretty cool. But we're not just interested in them because they're cool.

 

Someone asked, "So, is this just cross-media inspiration or are we going to make something visual like this?" Good question. At this point, we're not going to experiment with image or video (although, I think it would be awesome to incorporate live glitch-video mash-up mixes into our Webspinna performances in the future). But the Webspinna correlates with our discussion because, while last week we were interested in stripping a medium down to its bones and exploring its fundamental elements (its roots, as it were), this week, we're interested in pushing a medium's boundaries (exploring its branches). 

So for example, digital media--video, image (and I suppose sound, in this over-auto-tuned age of pop music) can be characterized by the opportunity the media provide its authors to hyper-idealize artistic work to seamless, unified perfection. Then, glitches are typically understood as malfunctions, cracks in the veneer. But glitch artists see these imperfections as opportunities to experiment, play, and in doing so, critique the hyper-ideal-ity (I think I just made that word up) of contemporary media.

Or another example, if sculpture is traditionally thought of in terms of physical objects, inhabiting three dimensional space, made of stone or bronze or clay, sitting on pedestals, etc....how might the sound installation we visited in the HFAC be considered sculpture? In what ways does it push 'sculpture's' boundaries and potentially redefine what we understand 'sculpture' to be?

In regards to the Webspinna, we typically use the web for information and communication--mostly through image and text. But what if we use the internet for creation and expression--entirely through sound and music? In media production, we typically write, stage, record, edit, etc. (pre-, production, and post-). But what if our media production is performative--composed but not edited--allowing for improvisation, subject to artist error/technical malfunction, and (like the Lucky Dragons performance we viewed) more reliant on the context--artist and audience, eating, talking, sharing in a dark room with loud music?

So for Thursday--Come with your links to your sounds on your blog, so you can share your Webspinna with another person. You may also choose to come with headphones, so you don't have to share earwax with another person. The workshop will require you to perform your mix at least once before Friday night's event, and it will hopefully provide you with the chance to share cool ideas, resources, techniques, etc. with each other, and thereby enrich your mix.