NEWSgrist - where spin is art

Bill Jones releases 'Burma Road'

Burma Road: monument to fallen empires

Music and video performance by Bill Jones
iPhone videography by Daryl Wein

Bill Jones releases his third solo “album” of music/video performances titled Burma Road after the infamous war-torn passageway that runs from Burma (Myanmar) to China.

Fourteen years ago, Jones, a visual artist and conceptual photographer, embarked on a collaboration with composer, producer and mutantrumpeter Ben Neill.  In 2012, Jones started working solo, producing the music and video for his VJ performances and music/video recordings.

Each music/video track employs a single 20-second loop of video that was shot for Burma Road by noted director Daryl Wein (Sex Positive (2008), Breaking Upwards (2009), Lola Versus (2012), Food (in pre-production)) on his iPhone while traveling in Myanmar in early 2014. Jones then stretched each of the 6 short loops into 5-minute music/video performances using the VJ (video jock) software modul8. Jones records both video and sound on two linked computers, producing the sound (Logic Pro X) and video (modul8) simultaneously. Each music/video track is recorded in one take with Jones manipulating the moving image and “scratching” the recorded sound on the video loop with a midi-keyboard.

The “album” of six extended music videos is available exclusively on the streaming media sites Vimeo and YouTube.

“The performance work I did for many years with Ben Neill was best when experienced in the context of the music scene, in clubs and theaters,” says Jones. “We performed our work in a number of gallery and museum shows, but it was really made for music venues. I saw myself as a visual artist having a one night show. The kind of hybrid, fusion work I’m doing now fits best online, where it is most accessible. I want to make work that is available to everyone.”

Burma Road on Vimeo

Burma Road on YouTube

More about Bill Jones on Wikipedia

Artist's website: http://bill-jones.com

Daryl Wein on Imdb

 

Now Out: VIRILIO AND THE MEDIA, by John Armitage (Polity: 2012)

Cover image by Joy Garnett.

 

NEWSgrist is pleased to announce the publication this week, in Polity’s Theory and Media series, of VIRILIO AND THE MEDIA, by John Armitage.

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Polity

Amazon.com

Amazon.co.uk

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Description 

In books such as The Aesthetics of Disappearance, War and Cinema, The Lost Dimension, and The Vision Machine, Paul Virilio has fundamentally changed how we think about contemporary media culture. Virilio’s examinations of the connections between perception, logistics, the city, and new media technologies comprise some of the most powerful texts within his hypermodern philosophy.

Virilio and the Media presents an introduction to Virilio’s important media related ideas, from polar inertia and the accident to the landscape of events, cities of panic, and the instrumental image loop of television. John Armitage positions Virilio’s essential media texts in their theoretical contexts whilst outlining their substantial influence on recent cultural thinking. Consequently, Armitage renders Virilio’s media texts accessible, priming his readers to create individual critical evaluations of Virilio’s writings. The book closes with an annotated and user-friendly Guide to Further Reading and a non-technical Glossary of Virilio’s significant concepts.

Virilio’s texts on the media are vital for everyone concerned with contemporary media culture, and Virilio and the Media offers a comprehensive and up to date introduction to the ever expanding range of his critical media and cultural works.

 

Reviews

'If Paul Virilio is the essential guide to understanding the digital future that is the 21st century, then John Armitage's brilliant account of Virilio and the Media explores the essence of Virilio's intellectual vision: its aesthetics, new media critique, political theory, cinematic analysis, and creative technological disturbance. Here, the writing of Paul Virilio becomes a vivid, haunting reminder of that which has been lost and gained with the disappearance of culture, society and politics into the language of new media.'

~Arthur Kroker, Canada Research Chair in Technology, Culture and Theory, University of Victoria, Canada

 

'Paul Virilio is a canary in the mine of contemporaneity. For him, new communications media have remade the world as speed, accident, ubiquitous militarisation and the loss of the dimension of the real. Armitage is uniquely positioned to articulate the richness and urgency of Virilio's media critique.'

~Sean Cubitt, University of Southampton

 

'John Armitage proves himself the leading English-language interpreter of Virilio's unique body of work. Focusing on Virilio's pioneering understanding of the transformative impact of media technologies, Armitage establishes a cogent and clear-sighted trajectory, and makes a powerful argument for both the strategic and ethical value of Virilio's thought.'

~Scott McQuire, University of Melbourne

 

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1 The Aesthetics of Disappearance

2 Cinema, War, and the Logistics of Perception

3 New Media: Vision, Inertia, and the Mobile Phone

4 City of Panic: The Instrumental Image Loop of Television and Media Events

5 The Work of the Critic of the Art of Technology: The Museum of Accidents

Conclusion

Guide to Further Reading

Glossary

References

Index

 

Author Information

John Armitage is Professor of Media at Northumbria University.

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Artists opposing the PROTECT-IP / SOPA Act

Artists opposing the PROTECT-IP / SOPA Act [petition link at bottom]

Congress needs to hear from Artists!

The PROTECT-IP act would censor the net, in the name of protecting "creativity" (read: copyright). The law would let the government or corporations censor entire sites-- they just have to convince a judge that the site is "dedicated to copyright infringement."

The law could definitely pass, but it's close.

• * Artists (musicians, actors, writers, media-makers, etc) need to speak out against the law. Your statement is powerful because the corporate music and film lobbies push these laws in your name.
• * The copyright lobby say that this bill is written in your name to protect "creativity". If you're an artist that believes the government and corporations should not have the power to censor the internet in your name, you need to sign.

GO to the PETITION....

TO members of the United States Congress

We, the undersigned artists, have all been empowered by the Internet. Today, artists can reach large audiences and make a living because the Internet and digital tools have democratized the means to create, distribute, and promote our work.

We write to you today because we are concerned with S.968, the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA). Copyright law exists to promote the arts, but the new penalties in PIPA could be used against the new social media channels we depend on to make a living, and endanger freedom of expression.

PIPA creates new penalties against sites dedicated to infringing activity, but we worry it will be abused to attack legitimate sites we rely on. Many trailblazing social media websites could look like piracy havens to judges unfamiliar with the Internet. In the past, music and film companies have attacked many new technologies - like the VCR and MP3 player - claiming that they were tools for piracy. Recently, these same companies have sued video hosting platforms like Veoh and YouTube.

We use online video sites, file hosts like Dropbox and Mediafire, and online music communities like Soundcloud to host our work, collaborate with others, and build a community. We fund our work with services like Kickstarter and Flattr. We publish our work on sites like Tumblr, Wordpress, and Blogger. Any one of these services could be sued under PIPA.

SOPA: Where We're At (via @Techdirt)

Via Techdirt, 1/12/2012:

SOPA/PIPA: How Far We've Come; How Far We Need To Go

from the not-over-yet dept

On October 26th, I was flying from San Francisco to Washington DC to meet with folks in the House of Representatives to explain why they should be careful about making the same mistakes as the Senate with its anti-piracy bill, PROTECT IP (PIPA). We had been assured by Rep. Bob Goodlatte that Congress had heard the myriad complaints about PIPA and that the House version would take them into account. Instead, as the plane I was on flew over the Rocky Mountains, I started getting a flood of emails from people sending me the first release of the House's version of the bill, now known as SOPA (originally, the E-PARASITE bill, a name they dropped immediately when everyone started mocking it). Thanks to the wonderful innovation of WiFi-in-the-sky, I was able to sit in my cramped seat, read the bill, and write up my horrified post explaining just how much worse SOPA was than PIPA (an already disastrous bill).

The next day, October 27th, a small group of entrepreneurs, investors, innovators and creators spent the day meeting with members of Congress to express our concerns about the bill (which we'd just seen the afternoon before), as well as the whole approach to the crafting of both bills. The one thing we heard over and over again that day: "well this is the first time we've heard anything about this from the internet community."

I think it's safe to say that's no longer the case.

As I type this, I'm taking that same flight, preparing for my debate tomorrow over these bills against an MPAA representative and a US Chamber of Commerce representative, I'm sitting in that same cramped seat (actually, I think I'm on the opposite side of the plane), and thinking just how far we've come in just three and a half months.

Make no mistake: when the Senate introduced PIPA in May, it was widely assumed that this bill, and any companion bill would sail through Congress easily. Sure, some "tech-friendly" officials may express some concerns, but, as one lobbyist told me directly, "no one takes you people seriously anyway." It was this kind of hubris that we saw throughout the year with these bills. We were told repeatedly to shut up and take it, because the bills were going to pass, Obama would sign them, and piracy would magically disappear.

Instead, a funny thing happened on the way to the death of the internet: the internet woke up. While folks online may be political, it's not often that they truly get activated over internet-related issues. But in an era of bottom-up movements facilitated online, the timing was absolutely right for the massive groundswell of support from all corners of the internet to suddenly speak out in near unison to say of these bills: DO NOT WANT.

Still more to do:

At this point, it's impossible to deny that we, as a group, have had an impact. Contrary to the claims of some of the bill's supporters, we showed that this isn't just a "Google" issue. This is an internet issue. And we care about the internet and we care about innovation, and we're not going to take it lightly when elected officials, who admit they don't understand the technology, come along to say they're going to mess with it, just because their biggest campaign donors don't want to adapt to these wonderful new innovations.

But, not everyone in Congress has an understanding of what's happening online. Even with Reps. and Senators backing away from the bills, and asking leadership to slow things down... and even with Rep. Smith and Senator Leahy trying to "delay" the DNS implementation in order to get the bills passed... some in Congress still think that the outcry is minor or limited or that it's all Google.

That's why Harry Reid intends to move forward with the bill, pretending that the complaints only come from Google and Facebook... and that they're minor and easily fixed with a couple of amendments. I believe he's misjudged the internet, just as many others in Congress have misjudged the internet over the last few months. The people speaking out are not just "Google and Facebook," and they're not just speaking out for the hell of it. They're seriously pissed off at Congress for even thinking of going down this path in the first place, and simply killing the bills is unlikely to get the people online back on their side.

But there's a bigger point in the "more to do" section of this post. This isn't about one bill. This isn't about one issue. This is about an entire process. This is about the public -- not the big corporations -- finally saying "enough is enough" and making Congress recognize that crony capitalism, where subsidies and protectionism are doled out willy nilly to favorite campaign contributors, is not acceptable to the people they're supposed to represent.

This is about recognizing that the internet and the massive amount new innovation and services -- and the worldwide ability to communicate with others -- is a game changing innovation for everyone. And we're going to work damn hard to make sure that it remains open and free.

But, to do that right, this is going to take much more than stopping one bill. This is going to take prolonged effort. This is going to take an ongoing effort to make it clear that no elected official can ever again feel comfortable bragging that they don't understand the internet, as they seek to regulate it. This is about making it 100% crystal clear to those who seek to clamp down on the true engine of free expression -- the internet -- that we, the people, aren't going to be fooled with bogus claims and bogus stats in an effort to limit this wonderful platform.

This isn't over yet -- not by a long shot. But just look at how far we've come in just three and a half months, and think what we'll do in the next few months -- and years -- ahead. These bills tried to kill the "internet as we know it." But, in some ways, these bills helped birth a new kind of internet: one that doesn't let Congress screw it up without taking action.

Stop SOPA Infographic

Via:

http://sopacountdown.com/