Friday, October 26, 2007

Friday Downstreams (I got millions of images and they are all free)

Late today due to an afternoon and evening of HUMlab open house and dinner. A great way to end the week. Media this week is from the strange to the sublime. Several films from the great social documentary drama genre that is strong in Sweden and exists elsewhere as well. Whilst I do not agree with the entire content of all media here, I think it is all worth considering. Let turn our heads towards the sun and open wide our eyes:

Lawrence Lessig on Corruption, Networks, Technology, Information and Democracy
Lessig is drawing a broader theme on law. He has recently moved his focus from just copyright and IP law to the corruption which exists in policy making. He has a wiki where a book is being put together and this is a video excerpt of an interview from Danish TV where he explains his recent change of direction.

The Corporation Part 1
The Corporation is a 2003 Canadian documentary film critical of the modern-day corporation, considering it as a class of person and evaluating its behaviour towards society and the world at large as a psychologist might evaluate an ordinary person. This is explored through specific examples.

Manufacturing Consent
Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media (1992) is a documentary film that explores the political life and ideas of Noam Chomsky, a linguist, intellectual, and political activist. Created by two Canadian independent filmmakers, Mark Achbar and Peter Wintonick, it expands on the ideas of Chomsky's earlier book, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, which he co-wrote with Edward S. Herman.
The film presents and illustrates Chomsky's and Herman's propaganda model, the thesis that corporate media, as profit-driven institutions, tend to serve and further the agendas of the interests of dominant, elite groups in the society. A centerpiece of the film is a long examination into the history of The New York Times's coverage of Indonesia's invasion and occupation of East Timor, which Chomsky claims exemplifies the media's unwillingness to criticize an ally.

Surplus: Terrorized into Being a Consumer
Surplus: Terrorized Into Being Consumers is a 2003 Swedish documentary film on consumerism and globalization, created by director Erik Gandini and editor Johan Söderberg. It opens with footage of the protests at the 27th G8 summit in Genoa and prominently features the views of anarcho-primitivist John Zerzan.
Zerzan argues that peaceful protest has almost no impact because people don't take it seriously. He advocates "property damage" and "property destruction." While condemning violence against people, he claims "you can't violate a building or a window." He favors dismantling technology and returning to a way of life in-tune with nature.
The documentary relies heavily on fast-paced audio-visual collage techniques, resembling MTV videos and commercials. It uses lip-synching in a distinctively Swedish attempt to subvert the ideas of those in power, like having George W. Bush speak for Adbusters or Fidel Castro mouth the words of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer: "I love this company! Yeah!" It also uses music to emphasize action.

You Ain't Going Nowhere Compilation
Lee Hazelwood and Nancy Sinatra: Sand
The Beatles: Tomorrow Never Knows
Santana: Soul Sacrifice
Nina Simone - Funkier Than a Mosquito’s Tweeter
Bo Diddley - Elephant Man

Alice's Adventures Under Ground: Being a facsimile of the original Ms. book afterwards developed into "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"Book from Project Gutenberg: Alice's Adventures Under Ground: Being a facsimile of the original Ms. book afterwards developed into "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" Note: With 37 illustrations by the author.

The Last Supper by da Vinci (16 Billion Pixels)
Tomorrow October 27th at 09:30am CEST a 16-17 giga pixel scan of The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci (1498) will be posted on the linked site. Located in a former monks' dining hall adjacent to a church in Milan, the 500-year-old mural by Leonardo Da Vinci depicts Jesus Christ when he predicts that one of his apostles will betray him. In the Gospels, the Last Supper (also called Lord's Supper) was the last meal Jesus shared with his Twelve Apostles before his death. The Last Supper has been the subject of many paintings, perhaps the most famous by Leonardo da Vinci. In the course of the Last Supper, and with specific reference to taking the bread and the wine, Jesus told his disciples, "Do this in remembrance of me", (1 Corinthians 11:23–25). (The vessel which was used to serve the wine is sometimes called the Holy Chalice.) Many Christians describe this as the institution of the Eucharist.

The Dialect of the Black American (mp3s)
This 1970 public service disc was produced by Western Electric for libraries and schools. Essentially a long essay on how American society deals with Ebonics, The Dialect of the Black American is fairly radical in its message...and very entertaining in its presentation. That one of America's biggest companies produced such a document is testament to how liberal the country had become. Decades of agitation from Labor, the Civil Rights Movement, and the New Left had brought the country to its most enlightened state since anarchists, socialists, Wobblies, and labor forced FDR into the New Deal. Two years after this record's release, the Conservative Rollback, ushered in by the election of Richard Nixon, had begun, bringing us to the mess we are in today. The thought of Citigroup, Exxon Mobil, or Walmart-Stores producing anything like The Dialect... - either in style or content - is nothing less than absurd.


V/A:Sex & Bestiality,4xtape,1984,France
Four tapes of industrial/ synth/ noise/ experimental madness ,gathering the most important acts of this scene .Released in 1984 by the cult Bain Total label packaged in videotape box,it was dedicated to Mr. Genesis P. Orridge and was limited to 666 copies.For T.O.P.Y. enthousiasts note that the code number of the tape is K23!

Context Free Media
Context Free Media as the name suggests disregards the context(s) within which it exists. A California-based record label, Context is a platform for music which presents the listener more musical questions than answers. While Context has strong roots in dance music, most notably techno, it explores uncomfortable areas where this definition makes no sense. With disregard to the name itself, Context is more interested in sonic expressionism and the structures that it might lead to rather than conceptualism superimposed on sound.

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