User:Riviera/Caretaker meeting for week 3 broadcast
On Monday 25th September I, along with Senka and Lorenzo, volunteered to be a caretakers for week three's radio broadcast. We met on Wednesday 27th to discuss ideas and structure the broadcast. There were three of us and 120 minutes of airtime to fill. Therefore we divided our broadcast into three 40 minute segments. We detailed what we would do in each segment on an Etherpad (https://pad.xpub.nl/p/plan-broadcast3). The pad became a record of our conversation. A trace of where our ideas came from.
Discussing Texts
Discussing The Death of the Author
We began by discussing Barthes' text The Death of the Author. I commented that I first encountered this text several years ago. At that time, I considered that the death of the Author entailed the death of the intention inherent in the author. In the Laurence Rassel Show the relationship between authorship and copyright is briefly discussed. The discussion in the radioplay, which critiques anti-copyright licenses for not abolishing the concept of authorship, resonates with Constant's Collective Conditions for Reuse (CC4r). Particularly the statement that '[t]he CC4r considers authorship to be part of a collective cultural effort and rejects authorship as ownership derived from individual genius'(Constant 2023). Barthes' concludes that the birth of the reader is on the flip side of the death of the author. Like Jacques Rancière's emancipated spectator the reader becomes an active participant, shaping the meaning of the text. In the context of anti-copyright licensing this has several implications. Taking software as an example, the reader can become a programmer, study the code comprising the software and make contributions to developing the software. In a cultural context the reader may be engaged in alternative ways. Consider, for example, a publication appropriately licensed and hosted on a git repository. Here arises the possibility for the reader to edit or add to the publication. The death of the author shifts the focus away from authorship towards readership.
Discussing The Ontology of Performance
The crux of Phelan's argument is her opening statement that 'Performance cannot be saved, recorded, documented, or otherwise participate in the circulation of representations of representations: once it does so, it becomes something other than performance.' (Phelan 1993, p.146). Phelan's argument proceeds through an analysis of several artworks including Angelika Festa's 1987 performance Untitled Dance (with fish and others). Phelan holds that '[t]o the degree that performance attempts to enter the economy of reproduction it betrays and lessens the promise of its own ontology' (Phelan 1993, p.146). During the discussion I aimed to articulate, and provide arguments which supported, Phelan's position. Senka disagreed with Phelan arguing that performance is something which can be reproduced. Senka stated that they were reading Phelan's text adjacent to Boris Groys' Religion in the Age of Digital Reproduction (2009). Groys argues 'a digital image that can be seen cannot be merely exhibited or copied (as an analogue image can) but always only staged or performed'. In this sense, Senka argued, performance is reproducible. The digital image can be replayed and thus performed again. In response to this, I turned to the meontological writings of Nishida Kitarō who writes that in the physical world time is reversible and in the biological world time is irreversible (1987). I suggested that reproducibility and reversibility are analogous. Performance in the biological world is therefore non-reproducible whilst performance in the physical world is reproducible. Lorenzo suggested that the text was biased towards the medium of performance. I agree that Phelan may be biased, though not towards the medium of performance. I suggest that Phelan's biases are towards performance in the biological world.
Synthesising Ideas
This was a key section of our Etherpad in which we developed a structure for the broadcast.
| Time | Content |
| 0-10 | Introduction |
| 10-40 | Sound boards / Ursula Franklin |
| 40-80 | Imaginary Future protocols and live coding archive remix |
| 80-120 | Phelan reading |
We developed protocols to facilitate with structuring the broadcast. Following a suggestion in the group's reflective discussion we decided we would ask our peers to contribute material for the radio show.
Imaginary Future Protocols Protocol
- Write down a protocol on this wiki page https://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mediadesign/Personal_Protocols. (It could be a routine, personal protocol, or one that relates to our group).
- Record yourself expanding on the meaning of the protocol (Why this protocol? What does it mean to you?)
- The protocols are only accepted when done voluntarily (you don't have to)
- Post the recording on the wiki page.
Shell commands to activate the archive
find
The command find is an effective way to retrieve a list of .mp3 files in the Worm Radio Archive.
tree
Tree displays the structure of files and subdirectories for a given directory.
In the above command, two options have been passed to tree, -i and -f. The manual page for tree details what these options do:
Prints the full path for each file.
-i
Makes tree not print the indentation lines, useful when used in conjunction with the -f option.
ffmpeg
This command makes it possible to convert files from one audio format to another.
This command also takes many options. If you need a different sampling rate for better resolution, say 48000 Hz, use the following
Preparation for the Broadcast
In preparation for the broadcast, Senka and Lorenzo were kind enough to provide audio snippets from files retrieved from the recycle bin. Lorenzo and Senka took different approaches. Lorenzo sent 64 files of lengths varying from two seconds to five minutes. Senka sent eight files the longest of which was 11 seconds.
47 files from Lorenzo
$ ll ~/Music/SI22/broadcast3/wormrecording-2/ -rw-r--r-- 1 riviera riviera 24M Sep 29 15:35 export-wormrecording-2cut-01.wav -rw-r--r-- 1 riviera riviera 21M Sep 29 15:35 export-wormrecording-2cut-02.wav -rw-r--r-- 1 riviera riviera 23M Sep 29 15:35 export-wormrecording-2cut-03.wav -rw-r--r-- 1 riviera riviera 22M Sep 29 15:35 export-wormrecording-2cut-04.wav -rw-r--r-- 1 riviera riviera 43M Sep 29 15:35 export-wormrecording-2cut-05.wav -rw-r--r-- 1 riviera riviera 16M Sep 29 15:35 export-wormrecording-2cut-06.wav -rw-r--r-- 1 riviera riviera 53M Sep 29 15:35 export-wormrecording-2cut-07.wav -rw-r--r-- 1 riviera riviera 26M Sep 29 15:35 export-wormrecording-2cut-08.wav -rw-r--r-- 1 riviera riviera 5.5M Sep 29 15:35 export-wormrecording-2cut-09.wav -rw-r--r-- 1 riviera riviera 11M Sep 29 15:35 export-wormrecording-2cut-10.wav -rw-r--r-- 1 riviera riviera 1.1M Sep 29 15:35 export-wormrecording-2cut-11.wav -rw-r--r-- 1 riviera riviera 6.1M Sep 29 15:35 export-wormrecording-2cut-12.wav -rw-r--r-- 1 riviera riviera 1.2M Sep 29 15:35 export-wormrecording-2cut-13.wav -rw-r--r-- 1 riviera riviera 6.0M Sep 29 15:35 export-wormrecording-2cut-14.wav -rw-r--r-- 1 riviera riviera 6.6M Sep 29 15:35 export-wormrecording-2cut-15.wav -rw-r--r-- 1 riviera riviera 429K Sep 29 15:35 export-wormrecording-2cut-16.wav -rw-r--r-- 1 riviera riviera 7.6M Sep 29 15:35 export-wormrecording-2cut-17.wav -rw-r--r-- 1 riviera riviera 16M Sep 29 15:35 export-wormrecording-2cut-18.wav -rw-r--r-- 1 riviera riviera 2.8M Sep 29 15:35 export-wormrecording-2cut-19.wav -rw-r--r-- 1 riviera riviera 154K Sep 29 15:35 export-wormrecording-2cut-20.wav -rw-r--r-- 1 riviera riviera 2.9M Sep 29 15:35 export-wormrecording-2cut-21.wav -rw-r--r-- 1 riviera riviera 5.8M Sep 29 15:35 export-wormrecording-2cut-22.wav -rw-r--r-- 1 riviera riviera 8.5M Sep 29 15:35 export-wormrecording-2cut-23.wav -rw-r--r-- 1 riviera riviera 3.3M Sep 29 15:35 export-wormrecording-2cut-24.wav -rw-r--r-- 1 riviera riviera 5.2M Sep 29 15:35 export-wormrecording-2cut-25.wav -rw-r--r-- 1 riviera riviera 8.4M Sep 29 15:35 export-wormrecording-2cut-26.wav -rw-r--r-- 1 riviera riviera 3.8M Sep 29 15:35 export-wormrecording-2cut-27.wav -rw-r--r-- 1 riviera riviera 2.5M Sep 29 15:35 export-wormrecording-2cut-28.wav -rw-r--r-- 1 riviera riviera 5.9M Sep 29 15:35 export-wormrecording-2cut-29.wav -rw-r--r-- 1 riviera riviera 7.4M Sep 29 15:35 export-wormrecording-2cut-30.wav -rw-r--r-- 1 riviera riviera 4.0M Sep 29 15:35 export-wormrecording-2cut-31.wav -rw-r--r-- 1 riviera riviera 4.5M Sep 29 15:35 export-wormrecording-2cut-32.wav -rw-r--r-- 1 riviera riviera 16M Sep 29 15:35 export-wormrecording-2cut-33.wav -rw-r--r-- 1 riviera riviera 3.2M Sep 29 15:35 export-wormrecording-2cut-34.wav -rw-r--r-- 1 riviera riviera 14M Sep 29 15:35 export-wormrecording-2cut-35.wav -rw-r--r-- 1 riviera riviera 7.4M Sep 29 15:35 export-wormrecording-2cut-36.wav -rw-r--r-- 1 riviera riviera 7.7M Sep 29 15:35 export-wormrecording-2cut-37.wav -rw-r--r-- 1 riviera riviera 12M Sep 29 15:35 export-wormrecording-2cut-38.wav -rw-r--r-- 1 riviera riviera 9.7M Sep 29 15:35 export-wormrecording-2cut-39.wav -rw-r--r-- 1 riviera riviera 15M Sep 29 15:35 export-wormrecording-2cut-40.wav -rw-r--r-- 1 riviera riviera 6.6M Sep 29 15:35 export-wormrecording-2cut-41.wav -rw-r--r-- 1 riviera riviera 8.2M Sep 29 15:35 export-wormrecording-2cut-42.wav -rw-r--r-- 1 riviera riviera 704K Sep 29 15:35 export-wormrecording-2cut-43.wav -rw-r--r-- 1 riviera riviera 6.9M Sep 29 15:35 export-wormrecording-2cut-44.wav -rw-r--r-- 1 riviera riviera 7.7M Sep 29 15:35 export-wormrecording-2cut-45.wav -rw-r--r-- 1 riviera riviera 7.8M Sep 29 15:35 export-wormrecording-2cut-46.wav -rw-r--r-- 1 riviera riviera 4.9M Sep 29 15:35 export-wormrecording-2cut-47.wav
Sorting by file size
Given the uniformity of these files I decided to reorganise them by file size, which correlates with the duration of the files. I used Emacs to edit the textual output of the above command to sort the files by size.
154K Sep 29 15:35 export-wormrecording-2cut-20.wav 429K Sep 29 15:35 export-wormrecording-2cut-16.wav ... 53M Sep 29 15:35 export-wormrecording-2cut-07.wav
Renaming the files so that they are in order of file size
I wanted to reorder the files so that the smaller files had low numbers as suffixes and larger files had higher numbers as suffixes.
export-wormrecording-2cut-20.wav -> wormrec-1.wav export-wormrecording-2cut-16.wav -> wormrec-2.wav ... export-wormrecording-2cut-07.wav -> wormrec-47.wav
wormrec.fish
As such, I wrote the script wormrec.fish to make these changes.
set i (math $i + 1);
mv (printf "export-wormrecording-2cut-%s.wav" $n) (printf "wormrec-%d.wav" $i);
end
Bibliography
Constant. 2023. “CC4r * COLLECTIVE CONDITIONS FOR RE-USE.” https://constantvzw.org/wefts/cc4r.en.html.
Grojs, Boris. 2009. “Religion in the Age of Digital Reproduction.” E-Flux, no. 4.
Phelan, Peggy. 1993. “The Ontology of Performance: Representation without Reproduction.” In Unmarked: The Politics of Performance, 146–66. London ; New York: Routledge.
Nishida, Kitarō. 1987. Last writings: nothingness and the religious worldview. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.