"Kick Echoes 2"

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"Kick Echoes 2" [mp3 removed]

The Doepfer A-112 sampler module has a delay effect and it's literally that. An incoming sound is sampled, put in a ROM slot and played...once. How soon after the original sound comes in can be set by a knob. To get feedback (where the delay is mixed with the original sound and/or multiple repetitions of the sound) you have to use a separate mixer. In any case, once the feedback starts you can mess with it until it becomes staccato white noise with very little resemblance to the original sound. For this track I set the repeats for infinite, let it run, and came back three times to capture what the output was doing. The pitch and timbre were both slowly changing but the change is more noticeable when you leave for awhile and check back in. Each captured increment here differs from its predecessor.

The other thing I was doing was adding pitch and filtering steps to the repeats in real time via MIDI-triggered control voltage changes. So the staccato white noise can be made to play simple tunes. Some additional percussion is added via multi-tracking.

Musically this is kind of "no wave."

facebook II: theorist of the damned

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Recently a teaching assistant at NYU published an essay saying that his generation mediates all its art through Facebook. Do you agree?

No. That guy hates his own generation and is selling them short with that theory. Also considering the timing of the publication [coinciding with Facebook's IPO] it reads like a long ad for Facebook. You can almost hear the PR flack: "850,000,000 users and even artists like it!"

So you think an artist, or a "young artist," as the expression goes, can exist outside of Facebook?

Please. There are thousands of places where your "online expressions" will look better than they look on Facebook, with its cramped page design and cumbersome navigation. Facebook actually puts up obstacles for animators, or anyone who likes to work large. Just hypothetically, one could be active on tumblr, twitter, dump.fm, a group site such as phone arts or Loshadka, and/or have a Word Press or Google blog and get all the exposure and interaction you could want -- assuming you had something to say.

What about the idea that "the economy of liking" is a new kind of conceptual/performance art?

That's just cynicism and self-loathing raised to the level of a theory. This generation deserves more enthusiastic spokespeople, willing to go outside one social media enclave for a few minutes.

Why do you hate Facebook?

It's fine for people have a place to hang out and talk shop and keep up with their friends and frienemies. Claims that this is somehow art, or a replacement for art, are just too depressing to be considered.

private prison divestment

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Encouraging news on the Gulag USA front:

Early this year, the United Methodist Church Board of Pension and Health Benefits voted to withdraw nearly $1 million in stocks from two private prison companies, the GEO Group and Corrections Corporation of America (CCA).

The decision by the largest faith-based pension fund in the United States came in response to concerns expressed last May by the church’s immigration task force and a group of national activists.

“Our board simply felt that it did not want to profit from the business of incarcerating others,” said Colette Nies, managing director of communications for the board.

Update: The bad news is CCA is offering to buy whole prison complexes from cash-strapped states in exchange for promises that the prisons will remain 90% full.