User:Andre Castro/research/1.2/Canopy-draf01: Difference between revisions

Latest revision as of 12:06, 14 February 2012

Mp3s Are My Salesman

Project Summary

1. Please summarize your project and describe how it fits into the project area you’ve designated (300 words max):

Mp3s Are My Salesman is an investigation into music blogs written by people who make available to online users tracks from long out of print vinyl and cassettes, ranging from 1970s Thai and African pop, to new age soundscapes*. The investigation will be centered on the motivations that drive the authors of blogs to spend a great deal of time digitizing their analog music archives and making them publicly available.

Mp3s Are My Salesman will depart from the premise that these blogs create the conditions for the "original" record and cassette to become a collectors' item. According to such hypothesis these objects' digital incarnations, circulating freely online, become promoters, whose aim is to increase the originals' market value. Worthless mp3s become the salesmen of the "original" obsolete media of music distribution. The investigation will assess the validity of such statement and shade light on other motivations behind these online activities. The work will be conducted through attentively observation of blogs, interviews with its owners and users, and exploration of the meaning of the original in this particular context.

I believe that investigating this particular phenomena will not only bring an insight into it, but foster discussion on our positions towards the digital. Hopefully clarifying why while we wish to freely access mp3s, movie's mp4s, e-books, we still desire the physical object, the rare vinyl record or the beautiful hardcover book. What is it that makes a mass-produced object claim the status of original, while its digital counterpart is seen as an infinitely reproducible replica?

The project final form will be presented a podcast (sound essay) weaving together narrated parts of text with examples of music found on the blogs.

Some examples can be found at: http://www.awesometapes.com/ http://crystalvibrations.blogspot.com/ http://monrakplengthai.blogspot.com/ http://toysandtechniques.blogspot.com/

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-<b>1st Draft - still to organize, think through, rewrite - 02/02/2012</b>
+==Mp3s Are My Salesman==
-In this investigation I will like to take as a starting point blogs that offer their readers digitized music from long out-of-print vinyls and cassettes ranging from western XX century avant garde, to African productions on cassettes, to obscure new age soundscapes.
+===Project Summary===
-Some examples at: http://www.avantgardeproject.org http://www.awesometapes.com/ http://crystalvibrations.blogspot.com/
+<i>1. Please summarize your project and describe how it fits into the project area you’ve designated (300 words max):</i>
+''Mp3s Are My Salesman'' is an investigation into music blogs written by people who make available to online users tracks from long out of print vinyl and cassettes, ranging from 1970s Thai and African pop, to new age soundscapes*. The investigation will be centered on the motivations that drive the authors of blogs to spend a great deal of time digitizing their analog music archives and making them publicly available.
-These records, in their original formats, have gained an aura, an authority due to its rarity, which has turned them into collectors items, whose value has raised to similar quantities as original works of art, due to its statues of rarity. However when such an object is digitized it totally looses its economic value, to the point that often the owners of these rarities are happy to share them through their sites blogs.
+''Mp3s Are My Salesman'' will depart from the premise that these blogs create the conditions for the "original" record and cassette to become a collectors' item. According to such hypothesis these objects' digital incarnations, circulating freely online, become promoters, whose aim is to increase the originals' market value. Worthless mp3s become the salesmen of the "original" obsolete media of music distribution. The investigation will assess the validity of such statement and shade light on other motivations behind these online activities. The work will be conducted through attentively observation of blogs, interviews with its owners and users, and exploration of the meaning of the original in this particular context.
-It is curious to note that those who decide to share that musical rarities online do not resume themselves to this action. Besides making it available to anyone they include extensive contextual information on the music, edition and conditions under it was found. It is as if to acquire the "original" statues, the context for it to happen has to be created.
-Sharing the digitized songs and information on these records works in two direction: on the one hand it extends the collective archive and on the other hand it creates the conditions for the value of their item to reach that of a original work of art.
+I believe that investigating this particular phenomena will not only bring an insight into it, but foster discussion on our positions towards the digital. Hopefully clarifying why while we wish to freely access mp3s, movie's mp4s, e-books, we still desire the physical object, the rare vinyl record or the beautiful hardcover book. What is it that makes a mass-produced object claim the status of original, while its digital counterpart is seen as an infinitely reproducible replica?
-As stated by Jaques Atalli music is prophetic, it senses what is still to happen. Perhaps this mode of exchange where digital sharing opens way for the physical object to gain the value of unique art piece will be a more widely spread practice in the future.
+The project final form will be presented a podcast (sound essay) weaving together narrated parts of text with examples of music found on the blogs.
+*Some examples can be found at: http://www.awesometapes.com/ http://crystalvibrations.blogspot.com/ http://monrakplengthai.blogspot.com/ http://toysandtechniques.blogspot.com/