Alvin Lucier

Alvin Lucier (born May 14, 1931) is an American composer of experimental music and sound installations that explore acoustic phenomena and auditory perception. A long-time music professor at Wesleyan University, Lucier was a member of the influential Sonic Arts Union, which included Robert Ashley, David Behrman, and Gordon Mumma. Much of his work is influenced by science and explores the physical properties of sound itself: resonance of spaces, phase interference between closely-tuned pitches, and the transmission of sound through physical media.

Editing

1.Read the editing techniques presentation
2.Choose a clip e.g. trailer, advert, music video
3.Analyse the editing techniques used in your clip. Identify them and explain why they have been used.
4.Answer the following question: "How does the editing in ___________construct the meaning about the relationship between characters?"
5.Finish for homework (deadline Monday 1st March) and post on blogs.

Editing Techniques

Editing Techniques

View more presentations from guestca3b7b.

Why Bowie and the Grateful Dead are the web's real visionaries

Psst: want to know the future of cyberspace? You could try asking a rock star. Why? Well, some of them have turned out to be perceptive futurologists. Eight years ago, for example, David Bowie said this to a New York Times reporter: "I don't even know why I would want to be on a label in a few years because I don't think it's going to work by labels and by distribution systems in the same way. The absolute transformation of everything that we ever thought about music will take place within 10 years, and nothing is going to be able to stop it. I'm fully confident that copyright, for instance, will no longer exist in 10 years, and authorship and intellectual property is in for such a bashing."

John Naughton The Observer, Sunday 21 February 2010

Click on image above for full article.

Institutions and Audiences

This is taken directly from the OCR specification:

candidates should be prepared to demonstrate understanding of contemporary institutional processes of production, distribution, marketing and exchange/exhibition at a local, national or international level as well as British audiences’ reception and consumption.

There should also be some emphasis on the students’ own experiences of being audiences of a particular medium. In this case the medium is music (with reference to film too) and the institution is Warp.

Boredoms

Boredoms (ボアダムス) (or, more recently, V∞redoms) is a noise rock band from Osaka, Japan. The band was officially formed in 1986, although some date the band to bedroom tape experiments from 1982.[1][2] The band's output is usually referred to as noise rock or sometimes Japanoise, though their more recent records have been largely based around repetitive minimalism, ambient music, and tribal drumming.

The band has a vast and sometimes confusing discography. Many band members have rotated through the group over the years, often using a number of various stage names. Singer Yamantaka Eye is the closest the band has to a frontman; his style includes a range of baffling screams, babbling, electronic effects, and very heavy post-production. Drummer/keyboard player/vocalist Yoshimi P-We is featured on most Boredoms recordings.

Boredoms: 77Boadrum

Lightning Bolt: Peel Session

Lighting Bolt performs on the late John Peel's BBC radio show.

Lightning Bolt is a noise rock duo from Providence, Rhode Island, composed of Brian Chippendale on drums and vocals and Brian Gibson on bass guitar. The band met and formed in 1994, when the members of the then-trio attended the Rhode Island School of Design. The band signed to Load Records in 1997, and released their self-titled debut the same year. In total, Lightning Bolt has released five full-length albums, numerous vinyl singles, and appeared on several compilations.

Lightning Bolt are known for their guerrilla-style live performances, where they typically play on the ground rather than a stage, with the crowd gathered around them. The band's sound is typically loud and aggressive, though the group cites composers Philip Glass and Sun Ra as compositional influences.

Stockhausen: Gruppen and Helicopter String Quartet

Karlheinz Stockhausen
Gruppen, for three orchestras (1955-57)

City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra

Gruppen ("Groups") for three orchestras (1955-57)is "a landmark in 20th-century music . . . probably the first work of the post-war generation of composers in which technique and imagination combine on the highest level to produce an undisputable masterpiece" (Smalley 1967, 794). A large group of 109 players is divided into three orchestral units, each with its own conductor, which are deployed in a horseshoe shape to the left, front, and right of the audience. The spatial separation was principally motivated by the compositional requirement of keeping simultaneously played yet musically separate passages distinct from one another, but led to some orgiastic passages in which a single musical process passes from one orchestra to another.





Karlheinz Stockhausen: Helicopter String Quartet (Salzburg Festival 2003)

The Helikopter-Streichquartett (Helicopter String Quartet) is one of Karlheinz Stockhausen's best-known pieces, and one of the most complex to perform. It involves a string quartet, four helicopters with pilots, as well as audio and video equipment and technicians. It was first performed and recorded in 1995. Although performable as a self-sufficient piece, it also forms the third scene of the opera Mittwoch aus Licht ("Wednesday from Licht").

Karlheinz Stockhausen

Karlheinz Stockhausen (22 August 1928 – 5 December 2007) was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Another critic calls him "one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music" (Hewett 2007). He is known for his ground-breaking work in electronic music, aleatory (controlled chance) in serial composition, and musical spatialization.

Flight Of The Conchords songs

Flight Of The Conchords

Flight of the Conchords is a New Zealand comedy duo composed of Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement. Billing themselves as "Formerly New Zealand's fourth most popular guitar-based digi-bongo acapella-rap-funk-comedy folk duo" the group uses a combination of witty observation, characterisation and acoustic guitar music. The duo's comedy and music became the basis of a BBC radio series and then an American television series, which premiered in 2007, also called Flight of the Conchords.

Fight Club (end)

Fight Club -The Postmodern Dilemma Of Manhood and Postmodernism and Violence

.

Fight Club and the Postmodern Dilemma of Manhood


Postmodernism and Violence

Two essays that may prove helpful when writing your essay. Click on images for links.

Essay

Discuss two or more media texts that you would define as ‘postmodern’ and explain why you
would give them this label. Cover at least two media in your answer.

Use the resources that I have posted connected to Fight Club, Memento and Pulp Fiction. You don't have to refer to all the films, you can focus on one of them. Make sure that you also refer to your individual work on postmodern music. That way you will have covered two types of media.

Fight Club trailer

Fight Club is advertised as a heart-racing thrill ride. Is this different to the reality of the film itself? The voiceover describes the narrator as "tired of his job, sick of his stuff, looking for something new. But he wasn't ready for what he found." The trailer accentuates the action elements of the film. In reality the film subverts the generic conventions of an action film and is something a lot darker and more disturbing.

If Filmmakers Directed The Super Bowl

The auteur's Super Bowl. A reimagining of the Super Bowl influenced by the film style of Quentin Tarantino, David Lynch, Wes Anderson, Jean-Luc Godard and Werner Herzog.

Fight Club: a postmodern consumer fable

Fight Club Disinfo

Magazine covers

Click on the image to view a small selection of covers from Raygun a short lived American magazine (1992-1995).

The rest of Chris Ashworth's website is worth a look too.

Double Page Spreads

Contents page ideas

A couple of ideas to help with contents page layouts. Click on either image to view the site.

Planning and Research mark scheme

Marking Criteria for the Presentation of the Research and Planning

Rankin: covers portfolio

A gallery of Rankin's magazine covers. A great place to look for ideas. Click on image to access gallery.

Magazine layouts

Click on link above to view a really helpful blog that has posted inspriration for magazine layouts. You would be foolish not to have a look and utilise some of the ideas.

AS Foundation: coursework lesson

Today you need to ensure that you are completely up to date. Check the coursework schedule for a reminder of the work you need to have already completed.

Ideally this week you should be filming and editing if you are making the film opening and taking photos and deciding on layout if you are making the magazine cover.

On Friday 12th I am expecting a draft version of your work. Wednesday's lesson will be a theory lesson so you will need to use you own time effectively to complete the task.

Make sure that you post updates of progress and examples of your work on your blog as you go. This is extremely important. Ensure that all posts are labelled correctly and that you all have a link list and a label list.

Fight Club

Some points to consider when watching the film today:

In what ways can Fight Club be considered a postmodern text?

* Identify the postmodern aspects of the text.
* Who (audience types) would categorise this film as postmodern?
* What other readings of the text could one make?

Caught In The Web

Double Edge

This is brilliant example of a film title sequence. Everything in this piece is to a very high standard. The idea, camera work, editing, script, acting and music is all superb. This is the sort of work you need to make to achieve a top grade.

Field Music - Them That Do Nothing

AS foundation portfolio to do list

• create a label list
• make sure all posts are labelled correctly
• create a link list
• add a link to: http://fordlcmedia.blogspot.com/2009/12/g321-as-foundation-portfolio.html which is the course schedule
• read the schedule and make sure you are up to date
• access this sheet (audience profile) via scribd http://lcasmedia.blogspot.com/2010/01/audience-profiling-sheet.html and complete.
• upload your completed audience profile to scribd and embed in your blog.
• create a short term (one week) to do list and add a to be completed by date

It is really important that you don't fall behind. You all have a lot to do and a clearly defined period of time to do it in. You need to use your own time more productively to ensure all tasks are completed.

Girl Talk: Everyone Borrows Intellectual Property, Even Kings of Leon

Remix master Gregg Gillis of Girl Talk doesn't buy into the traditional notions of copyright and intellectual property and says that even Kings of Leon are recycling when they borrow their sound from Creedence Clearwater Revival.

Girl Talk-Feed The Animals

Still Here



Like This

Two remix videos to go with two of the tracks from Feed The Animals by Girl Talk.The videos themselves are visual examples of sampling (from the origianl band/artist promos) and work beautifully with the music.

AS coursework schedule

I have added the AS coursework schedule as a link. (see my link list).It would be sensible to add it to your own link lists. That way it is always on your homepage.

Who Sampled

Who Sampled is a database of sampled music and covered songs. This will be useful when researching various elements of postmodern music.

Cut Chemist

Kraftwerk-Trans Europe Express

Afrika Bambaataa and Soul Sonic Force-Planet Rock

Bowie, Iggy and Egon Schiele

David Bowie-"Heroes"

David Bowie-Be My Wife

David Bowie-Golden Years

David Bowie-Fame

David Bowie-Rebel Rebel

David Bowie-Jean Genie

David Bowie 1970s discography

Studio albums:

The Man Who Sold the World (1970)
Hunky Dory (1971)
The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972)
Aladdin Sane (1973)
Pin Ups (1973)
Diamond Dogs (1974)
Young Americans (1975)
Station to Station (1976)
Low (1977)
"Heroes" (1977)
Lodger (1979)

David Bowie album cover art

Postmodern music

Identify an artist who may be thought of as being postmodern. The theory can link to a song or songs, an album or a series of albums.

Be clear about why this artist is postmodern. Use lots of examples from the research you conduct.

I will post the examples linked to David Bowie that i talked about in Friday's lesson.

Fight Club

In what ways can Fight Club be considered a postmodern text?

• Identify the postmodern aspects of the text.
• Who (audience types) would categorise this film as postmodern?
• What other readings of the text could one make?

You Got The Love … but have you got all the mixes?

Florence And The Machine hit, recently remixed by The XX, has a long and convoluted history

The XX's terrific, chilly two-step remix of Florence And The Machine's You've Got The Love is one of the defining tracks of 2009. It's also probably the only ever example of a remix of a cover version of a refix of a mash-up of an a cappella of a song originally written for a diet video.

You Got The Love is the anthem that refuses to die. Every few years, someone finds a new way of throwing their hands up in the air and saying, Lord, they just don't care. It's now raided the UK top 40 in four different guises, been covered by everyone from Joss Stone to Kasabian, and soundtracked the series finale of Sex In The City; a far cry from its original setting, accompanying footage of a morbidly obese man waddling along a beach.

Candi Staton was one of the leading female singers of the disco era, but by the mid-1980s, her best days were reckoned to be behind her, which is probably why she agreed to lend her vocals to a song for a video about the world's fattest man trying to lose weight. Penned by a songwriting team calling themselves the Source, the original You Got The Love is a perky disco-pop track, generous with the slap bass, although Staton's gospel-tinged wail carries it. The song was released as a 12-inch on Streetwave, but an a cappella version also surfaced on Source Records, becoming a favourite tool for UK house DJs in the late-80s. Paul Simpson was first to use it, layering it over his own track Musical Freedom, although it was DJ Eren – a resident at London house night Solaris – who first twinned the You Got The Love a cappella with the instrumental version of Your Love, a Chicago house track credited to Frankie Knuckles (later discovered to be the work of a lesser-known producer, Jamie Principle).

This mash-up's potential was spotted by DJ John Truelove, who pressed it on to vinyl in 1989, retaining the name The Source Featuring Candi Staton. It was a slow-burner, but You Got The Love's status as a guaranteed floorfiller saw it stumble into the UK top five in February 1991. "They were calling saying I had a number one record in England," Staton told the Guardian in 2006. "I said, 'What song? I haven't released any.' When they told me it was You Got The Love, I said I'd never made a record called that. Then I got off the phone and realised – it was the one from the diet video! Which was never supposed to be a record."

Truelove developed a close relationship with the song, recording a more euphoric backing track in 1997, taking it back into the top five. This was the version covered by Florence (who oddly felt compelled to correct the title's charming grammatical sloppiness).

"It's cool that Florence has been able to take the song somewhere else again, in a very positive way," says Truelove, reflecting on You Got The Love's enduring power to unite crowds in end-of-the-night exaltation, "it certainly has led a charmed life."

The Guardian, Saturday 28 November 2009

Sam Richards

Postmodernism and Music research

Research