We wanted to make an experimental film that would explore extremes: normal/abnormal, alone/not alone. Most of us moved to New York City especially to study at ITP. For the first weeks here, we all felt that even if we were always surrounded by people anywhere and anytime, we also felt loneliness. In a City like New York, you quickly feel like you have no past and no future. As soon as you move here, you feel like you belong to the City. There is so much diversity, you could become or be whoever you wanted to be.

There is diversity in the city but it still feel “normal”. Everybody walking, working, in the streets and the subway. Crowds. Crowds of people. Of people alone. What is it that they have in mind? Was is it that trouble them?

This short film is an attempt to explore the weird site everybody carries but never show. Like in this great novel I have been reading: “Remainder” by Tom McCarthy. e all carry an abnormal self. What if we would start sharing it? What would happen?

This video was made for the Comm Lab Video and sound taught by Marianne Petit.

When I first arrived in NYC to study at ITP, I stayed for a week on Havemeyer Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. It is a very lively hood where freshly arrived hipsters mix with the Puerto rican and dominican communities living there for 3 or 4 decades already. The neighborhood has changed a lot in the last 10 years. On the corner of South 3rd and Havemeyer, you can sit at a trendy-but-low-key cafe and watch the puerto rican elders play cards outside in the sun. I wondered how the puerto ricans felt about the gentrification of the area.

My colleague Caroline and I went for a walk in the hood and interviewed a recent immigrant from California and two puerto ricans. They explain how they feel about the changes the area is going through.

Click here to hear the track.

Here are some important things to know/remember concerning audio recording:

• Audio Recording Basics, a presentation by the residents
• Microphone at ITP 
• Pro Tools Tutorial and Pro Tools shortcuts
• Zoom 

Audacity:

• save the project first. If not the files are saved at an obscure place on your hardrive
• All the changes are destructive

General:

• Always cut a sound when it hits the zero point on the wave. Not above and not under.
• Online sources: Creative Commons, Archive.org

Boom. Beck did it.
Did what? The best thing that happened to the music industry since the invention of Internet. By publishing his next album only on music sheets, Beck is giving the industry majors the blow Web 2.0 had to give them one day. Anyone can preorder the album sheets and start working on their own interpretation of the artist’s compositions as from today (months before the release – of shows only). Although the idea of using and selling music sheets as the main materialization of a musical composition has been used for a long time, it gains a different meaning in our interconnected era.

The democratization of media tools (cameras, microphones, recording softwares, etc.) combined with the social potentialities of the Web 2.0, transform Beck’s idea into something revolutionary: using the social networks to enhance the everlasting desire of humans to reinterpret their own way a piece of art and make sense with it. Instead of considering the reuse/reinterpretation of his art as piracy, Beck invites his fans and any musicians to do it. The act of using his art IS part of his creative process. To hear Beck, go see his concert. In the meantime, enjoy the global online and archived concert made by his fans.

I agree with Jonathan Lethem when he says that after an idea has been expressed in an art piece, the reaction of the public cannot be controlled. Most of the time, the rights owners who want – and can – track down copyrights pirates are companies or rich people.
Paradoxically, I also agree with Susan Meiselas when she explains she would like her work to be clearly identified when used as a creative source by someone else. She comes from the documentary perspective and wants to make sure the social context in which she produced the image is understood. She did not want money. She wanted respect for a human struggle.

This means, the way we interpret the concepts of piracy and rights is complex because “copyright is an ongoing social negotiation, tenuously forged, endlessly revised, and imperfect in its every incarnation“. As long as there will be a legal framework shaping the way acts of creation and reinterpretation will exists, there will be conflits. (For an overview of those particular to our era, I recommend this great film by Brett Gaylor: RIP! A Remix Manifesto. Free to watch online, of course.).

For a long time, the industry has been considering the laws as the Truth. When confronted to the law, any act that does not fit into the framework is considered as piracy. But in the era of interconnection and self media, it is now time to assume that the act IS the the framework. That every tool, invention, gear, art, reinterpretation is in fact a response to made within a context, a response to a possibiity. In our case, acts by humans having acces to infinite content from a free worldwide database that runs 24/7.

Reinterpretations, resuses are gesture made by humans in response to the shape of their environment. Controlling those creative acts by imposing Dos and Dont’s does not make sense. Take the laws out of the equation and let people behave. Their Will to exist and express themselves leads to new forms of communication and storytelling (and fun), all of them originally unoriginal. It is on those that we have to shape the industry, not the other way round. (Although everyone unconsciously obeying the copyright framework every time they retweet and share via someone on social platforms which are still based on this concept. It is so important to make sure everyone knows we are intelligent enough to know where we can find the great ideas we do not have ourselves.)

In the meantime, if you happen to be here, and need help, call here.