·~{dRNn}~·

I can hear somebody talking but where that voice coming from ?
The black darkness emphasizes the voice more and more.
I must run away. But on the other hand I feel attached to her.
I mean it is a very comfortable feeling, her eyes, her voice, her body, her warmth.
Indeed it is the first time I feel something like that. It sounds like sunlight after storm,
like a hug or sweet chocolate…why suddenly I remember my grandmother now?

She was always scared of the nice moments. Am I old to think of this now? and tired.Perhaps it is a good idea to give in, to stop fighting, moreover to face with dignity my destiny and accept all that, all those moments are now over like tears under the rain. Rainbows last only few moments but still there is a good reason to wait for the next one.

Today we started with “Take Time” by The Books, the underlying question was: Who is your audience?. Take time in its video-version has (I found) similarities with Koyaanisqatsi, but the differences are precisely the audience and production’s process. While in the latter a big company like Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer is in the back, Take Time is based on DIY and video material taken from television, basically prayers and people doing funny things, the distribution is also self-made by their own web-site or direct contact. Locating audience might then lead to different outcomes as well as different techniques for production and material generation.

At that point quality issues become a main point for discussion, specially if mass audiences don’t have access or interest to acquire high quality reproduction devices, Should the authors downsampling their works in order to access to a broader public?. It is clear that youtube videos, mp3 players, mobile devices do not have the same quality offer by a cinema, a home theatre system or a DVD. But many people either don’t have such a equipment at home or are to lazy and not enough motivated to go to a theatre and prefer to consume media material at home in low-resolution devices. Is it a matter of content? It is a market trend?

Something definitely is happening which is not really happening at all.

Coming again to our Monday’s topic, we watched “la societé du spectacle” a film done at the beginning of the 70’s by situationist Guy Debord based on a book of the same title. Image and media have become the currency of the capitalism, consumption of visual entertainment material keeps us happy and maintains alive the money-and war-making machinery by blurring our senses, in a perpetual state of pleasure. We celebrate all production of such a material as a narcotic activity. This work remixed three layers: images coming from black and white film and tv are override by a voice over reading the very content of the book, in French, the third layer is composed by subtitles. Djrabbi group mobilised it into the net and query society, by updating contents and re contextualising it, they did a completely new piece, that highlights current digital capitalism as a central thema, but how does happen the process of creation in such a piece?.

Nowadays creativity seems then to happen into the deep waters of reusing, updating, re contextualising, and re purposing objects. I would like to drop to this discussion the idea of a creative engine as a highly distributed system, where processes of creation happen in the performance of external sources by adding distinct levels of  values to each one, here the Deleuze’s concept of assemblage comes to the surface, thus creativity shall depend on processes between decentralised systems where performers (objects and subjects) have adaptative behaviours.

This probable has happened always but it just become noticeable since the digital, by the vastness and mutability of networked environments. Are we getting closer to understand the essence of how does our brain work? Is it a step further in decoding our selves? If we finally decoded us, who is going to take control of such a code? Dangerously by that we can live (happily) in a perpetuals state of slavery.

The opening text is an Exquisite corpse, we did as starting point for our final piece. Written by three minds, and six hands.

It does not matter, quién escribió el presente texto
porque él belongs to the past, Its real owner,
que es lo único que perdura inmanente, el pasado.
Though it has many version and interpretations,
in one of those I can be recognised.
En uno de esos espejos I appear within the crowed
landscape of a latinoamerican city.
With that barahunda de gente comparto language and some traditions
like taste for coffee, dramatic ends and the monarchy of rice in our dishes.
No sería exagerado to say all they live in me y yo vivo en ellos in constant flow.
You might not see me pero si pones más atención, you shall notice me.
And a new version de mi mismo would be created.

I wrote the previous text during Mark Amerika‘s seminar “There must be a creative alternative” in Bremen. Some questions arose during the first minutes: What does mean “source material”, where do come your sources from, is there an original source?

These are hard questions specially in media practice, where the source is a readymade object and no one can assure the completely originality of her/his sources. I suggested that source materials, regardless its origin, are values imposed by the one who chose them as source materials. If so, there should be a “choosibility” as intrinsic property in any object that can make it more or less interesting for a subject. Any object is susceptible of having such a property, but it just becomes a source material once has been used for any specific purpose. Can we imagine a source material without having been used?. The source material feature is capable of triggering new beginnings, new paths either of subversive, diversive or inverse nature.

When I refer  to objects I mean anything that exists outside a subject and can affect its perception (material objects), but as well anything that results of mind’s work: methods, tactics, strategies, ideas, beliefs, knowledge (non-material objects).  Taking this wide definition for object we can give the source material’s value to any of them and as a consequence of that we could mix and combine them into new objects. Cultural progress depends extensively on that assumption, we live in constant state of remixing and recombining source material in order to produce new objects. These objects might be new forms, new contents, existing contents into new forms, new contents in existing forms, new contents into new forms.  Working in such a way would mean a translation of forms or contents, treating them as living and malleable matters rather than dead ends.

Remixing, recombining, remediating all forms appears as a constant post-production state, it seems that the digital object brought it and made it evident by slapping it to our faces, discovering that history of mankind is a flow of revaluing ideas, objects, experiences as source materials for producing a next generation of things. Think in the Romans, they used the classical Greece as source material and mixed it with other source materials to develop what we call the Roman classical culture, they were later re- mixed, layered, interpreted, re-… and we keep doing so, assigning/adding the source material value in different forms and levels to all surrounding objects.

The opening text a remix of a suggested source material by Borges: Borges and I

This piece experiments and explores with video-games sources of sound. It does exploit the video game as a main source for creation, through using its inner elements. It does not exploit the video games as a environment for performing and creating sound. Instead of participating in the video-game, I use its readymade sound-objects in order to repurpose them in a sound landscape that depicts the tension in the machinic dialogue between player and game. In this work I stop interacting with the video-game object, to explore other aesthetic dimensions in the performance of its elements, not dependent on the conditions and parameters impose by the participation in the video-game. It seeks for new forms and sources in sound creation and experience in digital media.

As a landscape this piece has two different layers in a cybernetic state.  One layer is the game sound and the second one the player sound. The former use Unreal Tournament 2004 as source and the latter use human body sounds as source. Those are the two sonic dimensions of a cybernetic exchange in a video-game playing session, they have to be played simultaneously in an installation arranged for four loudspeakers as can be seen in conceptual drawing, that opens this post.

It is based on the Sonichima concept.

Sound credits:
Unreal Tournament 2004 sounds extracted using: Dragon UnPACKer v 5.2.0b “cinthia” by Alexander Devilliers. Unreal Tournament 2004 by Epic Games

Unreal Tournament original soundtrack by: Kevin Riepl

Human sounds: Heart sounds recorded by Morton E. Tavel, M.D., professor or medicine, Indiana University, School of medicine and consulting cardiologist with Northside Cardiology Inc Indianapolis, USA. Lungsounds recorded by Dr. G. Wuertemberger, Freiburg, Germany and professor R.L.H. Murphy, jr., Boston, USA.

Mixed bY Ricardo Cedeño Montaña.

The first track is already mixed for two loudspeakers, second and third tracks are the two separate layers for performing in the original arrangement. Here they can be downloaded: Human – Machine

HI, next Thursday in the Breminale, under the X-SCREEN program, is going to be the première of one of my video productions: Healing.

Healing is a fictional short (8.30) conceptually based on the Dante’s journey in “La Divina Commedia (Divine Comedy)”

A short synopsis: A girl goes through a city to forget. She is throwing away her past. She got a lost and she is not strong enough to live with these feelings, they are too painful for her, therefore she goes through a city to bury her past, her memories.

Where? When?Check Google map

Healing/ Cast: Anna Bernhardt, David Black. Music-sound: David Black. Camera: Vita Amanda Putri.  Edited: Ricardo Cedeño Montaña. Script: Ricardo Cedeño Montaña. Director: Ricardo Cedeño Montaña. Bremen 2008.

Many thanks to Vita Amanda, David, Anna, Joachim, Holger and Claudia for advices, support and encouragement. I hope to see some of you there.

Here is the entire X-screen program.

HI,  I did picture gallery that due to my hard disk accident I had to re-write, today I want to publish all files as well as a short documentation about this small project, it is quite probable that I continue updating this project in the future, so if you are interested stay tuned to the project web-page:

dRNn photo gallery system’s web-site

I’ve been using this system in my blog to publish and share my picture, you can find some examples of its applicationhere: [new system] and [old system].

Thanks a lot for any comment, suggestion or news about it.

Praga, República Checa. 30 de diciembre 2007 – 01 de enero 2008.

Las únicas fotos que me quedaron. En la noche del 31 de diciembre en un descuido, durante la euforia de la celebración alguien aprovecho y me robo mi cámara de fotos.

Solo diré que la ciudad es preciosa y vale la pena visitarla. Los dejo con las fotos.

El sistema de fotos está renovado, luego de un accidente en el que perdí todo mi disco duro externo, aproveche para rehacer la galería e integrarla directamente al blog. En una próxima entrada publicare los archivos y la documentación de la galería.

This is time for: “IT WAS A PLEASURE TO BURN”.

Fahrenheit 451 was written by Bradbury in 1953 and is one of his master pieces next to The Martian Chronicles. In F-451 is depicted a weird future where firemen don’t put out fire but burn books. It happens in a hedonistic society where all intellectual work is suppressed, it is said that books make one thinks, and because of that one gets sad. Anyone caught reading book is taken to mental facilities and books are burned, in contrast a television-driven entertainment is everywhere. This society-description is related, in my opinion, to the one found in the works of Huxley and Orwell, and is not too far away from today’s entertainment culture and gives some hints to criticise our current model of values.

An excerpt from its beginning.

It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and change. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history.

In 1966 Truffaut directed a film version of Fahrenheit 451 here two short clips.

451 is the temperature at which paper autoignites.

HI, recently I did a small contribution to one event here in Bremen, it was called “Shamba”. Among other seven teams I was invited to do an installation in a Garden inside a building close to the University of Bremen.

My work was a video-installation, a video-object to be accurate, that rebuilt the sight of a tab, which is the source of water for a small creek on the given garden. The two basic concepts to be explored were: firstly, the representation of an object (idea of meaning) and secondly, the reason (idea of truth) of the video image.

Here the text included in the program for visitors.

“This video installation plays with the dialectics of distance in time and space, an allegory, of our memories. A little creek running and murmuring through the garden is always welcome as a beautiful attraction. The running water is counterbalance by the running images of three screens. Each one of them displays the water as it leaves its metal source. The images are in fact the same. As the visitor walks along the creek’s bank towards the source the video image looks more blurred and loses detail, the closer he/she gets. When he/she walks away, the video runs faster and gains detail. The displayed images contradict our perception, which is blurred and slow from a distance.
Video installation in colour, three video screens.”

Finally pictures of the place and my running video-installation I include the videos I screened, too.

the three videos:

What a daring and challenging novel!. It is one of my SF favourite books, I read it years after playing Shadowrun and watching The Matrix and Ghost in the shell, and anyhow still caused a strong impression on me.

I was aware of the term Cyberpunk through other stories, but never went direct to the source. Though that term appeared slightly for first time in Burning Chrome, it was in Neuromancer were Gibson gave birth to a new topic in SF literature.

As excerpt, I would like to share just its beginning, it is in my opinion one of the most hallucinating sentences I ever read in SF, coming from a TV culture and 8-bit video games consoles:

“The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”

Neuromancer was the first novel to win the three most important prizes in SF – Hugo in 1985 , Nebula in 1984 and Philip K. Dick awards in 1984- It just burst into the field opening new narratives and styles. Neuromancer has a techno-poetic prose not easy to read and to follow, fragmented and plenty of not finished sentences that remember the tv-zapping or surfing in a global see of information; most likely one of the most influential SF novel during the last times, that has encouraged several discussions about our relation with technology.

Here it can be read in an on-line version.

Here an interesting analysis I recomend.

Finally: a movie based on Neuromacer is coming soon.

I’ve been a big fan of Asimov since I can remember, he was probable one of the first authors in science-fiction I read and always his stories lured and excited my mind. In fact I managed to convince my good friend Javier, around the 98, to do our Design thesis based on one of his Books, I should add here that we succeeded in doing an astonishing work.

I want to introduce one of his favourites short stories: The last question published in 1956. As in many other of his tales, we find a super-intelligent-computer: Multivac, which purposes are to answer any question stated by a human being and to help mankind to solve its more complex problems, in this case the questions is about the end of the universe or better: Can entropy ever be reversed?, at the same time the all-mighty Multivac finds out new ways to provide energy to mankind, in that way are described different stages of human civilizations based on the Kardashev scale. Definitely a worth-reading story.

Here at the multivax website, can be read an on-line version.