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/

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-==Thinking Through Images==
+==Mp3s Are My Salesman==
+===Project Summary===
 <i>1. Please summarize your project and describe how it fits into the project area you’ve designated (300 words max):</i>
-===<b>Mp3s Are My Salesman</b>===
+''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.
-rd Draft - 09/02/2012
-====What====
-Mp3s Are My Salesman consists of an investigation on music blogs, written by individuals who make available to online users tracks from long out-of-print vinyls and cassettes, ranging from 1970s Thai and African pop, to obscure new age soundscapes *. The investigation will be centered on the motivations that drive these blogs' authors to spend large amounts 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.
-====How====
-Mp3s Are My Salesman will depart from the questionable premiss that these blogs attempt to creates the conditions for the "original" records and cassettes to become collectors' items. Under such hypothesis these records and cassettes' digital incarnations, circulating freely online, become promoters, strategically aimed at increasing "originals" value. Worthless mp3s (accompanied by descriptive texts and cover images) become the salesmen of the "original" obsolete media of music distribution. Through attentive observation of this online phenomena, interviews with blog owners and users, and by drawing parallels to online institutional archives Mp3s Are My Salesman will attempt to access the validity of such statement and shade light on other motivations behind these online activities.
+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?
-====Why====
-The motivation for this project lies in great part in my work as a sound artist, in which I have been employing field recording and found radiophonic sounds. Such practices are not that distant from appropriation and recombination of existing compositions. Why then should one be more legitimate than the other? Why is musique concréte considerate composition and slowed down hip-hop songs by DJ Screw simply as remixes? What if we extrapolate these debatable notions to other realms of cultural production.
+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.
-* Important to discussion the dualist position which we currently inhabit:
+*Some examples can be found at: http://www.awesometapes.com/ http://crystalvibrations.blogspot.com/ http://monrakplengthai.blogspot.com/ http://toysandtechniques.blogspot.com/
-** faced with the desire to access and possess digital culture objects (such as mp3s, film's mp4s, e-books), while at the same time we still want to hold the physical objects, the rare vinyl record or beautiful hardcover book.
-** And what is it that makes a physical mass produced object reclaim the status of original, while is digital counterpart is seen as a replica?
-OLD
-====why====
-I believe such research to be relevant and worth undertaking since such online activity is not solely relevant to the music field, but to contemporary culture at large. Topics such as the notion of original, the creation and access to audiovisual digital archives, and appropriation as a creative practice inevitably come into questioning when we begin to make close and attentive readings to this phenomena.