RMIT Copyright Management Service guide for students is here:
http://www.rmit.edu.au/copyright/informationguides/students

And you can download an ‘Artistic Works on Websites’ PDF here: RMITartistic_work_websites

If you do need extra content and are unable to generate it yourself, have a look at these Creative Commons options (and ensure you ‘attribute’ or reference the original author):

• Creative Commons (Info about Creative Commons licenses, links, general good stuff)
• Flickr (search Creative Commons photos)
• Freesound.org (Creative Commons-licensed sounds)
• The Prelinger Archives (open source videos, audio and images)
• Freeloops.com (Creative Commons licensed audio samples)

Still unsure? Have a look at this Week 7 ‘Copyright, Intellectual Property’ post. Or get in touch via email.

Then – fun! We will go an a field expedition to see the Next Wave Festival Keynote lecture by Sydney artist Deborah Kelly. In Kelly’s cross-media work lies the energy and activism that provides a much-needed antidote to the widespread apathy and safety in mainstream society.

Manifesto man.i.fes.to (noun): a written statement declaring publicly the intentions, motives, or views of its issuer (from the Webster Dictionary Online)

The manifesto has featured throughout the history of politics, religion, art and technology. Arguably, today the term has communist or anarchist connotations, but here are a select few examples of the manifesto from both sides of the political spectrum:

• The United State Declaration of Independence (USA, 1776)
• The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizen (France, 1789)
• The Fascist Manifesto (Italy, 1919)
• The Communist Manifesto (London, 1848)
• The SCUM Manifesto (New York, 1967)

Explore the links above or research other known manifestos and write a blog post about your findings – are these concepts still relevant?

Let’s look at a few interesting examples:

The Futurists (1909 – 1944)

Futurism was an international art movement founded at the turn of the 20th Century in Italy. Futurism became interlinked with the Mussolini’s Fascist dictatorship in Italy in the lead-up and during World War II. The futurists worked to push their radical views across painting, sculpture, cinema, music, sound art, and architecture. The Futurists championed:

• speed, noise, machines, pollution, and cities
• the ‘new’ over the traditional or classic
• war and violence
• youth
• technology, autonomy, aggression

A Futurism resource can be found here: http://www.unknown.nu/futurism/manifesto.html

From the hyper-masculine, we go to the cyber-feminist…

Donna Haraway – The Cyborg Manifesto

Donna Haraway is currently a professor and chair of the History of Consciousness Program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Born in 1944, Haraway is most famous for her essay ‘The Cyborg Manifesto’ in which she uses the metaphor of a cyborg to challenge feminists to engage in a politics beyond traditional notions of gender and ‘the natural’ and ‘the essential’.

The Cyborg Manifesto (via Standford University)

From radical feminism, we step back to the early godfathers of of electronic music/sampling…

Musique Concrete (1948 – )

In 1948, Pierre Schaeffer composed Etude aux Chemins de Fer (Railroad Study), the first recorded assemblage of sounds.  Schaeffer coined the term ‘musique concrète’ to describe a music made ‘concretely’ by working directly with sounds, as against music made ‘abstractly’ by working with symbols for sounds (as in a musical score). In 1951, he organized the Groupe de Recherche de Musique Concrète, the focus of which was working with tape recorders (via EMF Institute).

Dogma 95 (Lars Von Trier, Thomas Vinterberg 1995)

The ‘Vow of Chastity’ for filmmakers who included Danish directors Lars Von Trier, Thomas Vinterberg and Soeren Kragh Jacobsen. The manifesto of Dogme 95 stated that its films must only include:

Love or hate Dogme 95 films including The Celebration, Breaking the Waves and The Idiots, this manifesto focused on ‘creativity through restraint’ and marked a strong departure from the glitz, budgets and celebrity of Hollywood.

An article from BrightLights film journal on Dogme 95.

Wikileaks.org

Some of you may already know about Wikileaks.org and have seen the Dateline (SBS) feature on Julian Assange or read about him in the Age on the weekend. Assange is an enigmatic figure with no fixed address, who’s involvement in Wikileaks has exposed leaked documents from (amongst others): the US Government, the Church of Scientology, and the Swiss Bank. WikiLeaks’ biggest coup to date was obtaining ‘Collateral Murder‘ classified military documentation of the unprovoked killing of Reuters staff and innocent children in Iraq (please note, this is actual documentation and may be distressing to some).

(From the Age Newspaper, May 22, 2010):

It [Wikileaks] acts as an electronic dead drop for highly sensitive, or secret information: the pure stuff, in other words, published straight from the secret files to the world. No filters, no rewriting, no spin. Created by an online network of dissidents, journalists, academics, technology experts and mathematicians from various countries, all with similar political views and values apparently, the website also uses technology that makes the original sources of the leaks untraceable.

Assange claims that WikiLeaks has to date leaked more sensitive documents than the world’s press combined.

Some more manifesto links from Sean and I:

More Manifesto links

• The Guardian (on musicians and manifestos)
• 100 Years of Design Manifestos (excellent resource to manifestos from the last 100 yrs)
• The Assembled Web: Notes Toward a Manifesto
• The anti Web 2.0 manifesto

HOMEWORK:

write your own Manifesto and post it on your blog. What do you stand for and believe in? Silly or serious, construct a Manifesto

I’m unable to teach on Monday due to a final rehearsal for a performance at Next Wave Festival which opens this week. Apologies, and a bit more info on the project here.

I will post class-related links later this week but in the meantime, Sean will cover HTML troubleshooting, web and social media economics/ethics and you will have the opportunity to work on your Final Projects during class while getting valuable advice/help from Sean.

In summary:

• Think small: much online video is around 320 x 240 pixels (small!)
• Remember video will need to be highly compressed in order to stream/download from the web
• general things to avoid: small or fine stripes/detail, too much camera or subject movement, wide shots, too low or too high contrast images
• Plan your shots: in-camera composition, use storyboards
• Use the best equipment possible and use a tripod!
• Once you understand the basic rules, experiment. Try and break these rules and see what you can create.

Some You Tube-based split screen tools:

Check out SplitScreen blog for an introduction to some interesting You Tube-based tools for working with multiple layers/sources of video:

http://www.splitscreen.us/2009/05/youtubebased-tools-for-split-screen.html

For the rest of the class, let’s delve deeper into sound and image:

- in live performance
- in video/film

The Illusion of Sound in Film/Moving Image

Let’s refer to that veritable bible of Film Sound. Here, let’s look at this succinct diagram and explanation of ‘sound illusion’ by Sven E. Carlsson. Carlsson tells us that:

• In real life, sound and image are perceived as one
• In media production, sound and image are separated
• thus, new possibilities for ‘reassociating’ images and sounds
• back in the movie theatre, TV screen or laptop, image and sound are made ‘one’ again  – an illusion because sound and image sources are actually separate

Case Study: Mary Poppins versus Scary Mary

The Original 1964 Disney Trailer for Mary Poppins
Soundtrack by Irwin Kostal

What can we notice about the impact emotionally, psychologically of the updated edit? How can we apply these ideas to your audio remixes or the way in which you visually represent your music?

Thriller Acapella

An homage to MJ’s Thriller by the seriously dedicated Francois Macre:

Creative Approaches to Audio and Image:

Case Study #1:
Benjamin Ducroz (MELB)

Benjamin is a local Melbourne artist and motion graphics designer whose kinetic work is a good example of a considered and sophisticated approach to sound and image across many forms: in video, motion graphics, installation and live performances. Let’s look at his website
and discuss his Showreel and installation work 1:1.

Discuss:

• Creative approaches to videos or imagery for your band/production/label. Thinking beyond the traditional video clip of the band.
• Installation: considering space and audience in a gallery context
• Collaboration: working with friends or seeking out visual artists. Some sites to check out:
• Noise online: Australian-based international community of artists, designers, filmmakers, musicians, writers under the age of 30
• Australian InFront: Similar to above but not age restrictive

Case Study #2:
The Light Surgeons

Formed in 1995 and based in the UK, The Light Surgeons work across film, TV, motion graphics, live performance and installation. They are specialists in creating multi-layered and immersive audio-visual works and have exhibited and performed internationally.

Let’s look at a recent live AV performance the Z-axis. Z-axis draws from King Vidor’s 1949 film adaptation of Ayn Rand’s seminal book ‘The Fountainhead“

THE Z-AXIS from THE LIGHT SURGEONS on Vimeo.

Discuss:

• Creative approach to live performance: how to think beyond ‘the laptop’ or ‘the band’ or bland visuals
• Narrative: creating a story across time and space, thinking about a performance as a ‘whole’ and giving it a beginning/middle/end
  
• Reinterpretation: of audio and of image – possibilities for adding new meaning/context to your music through visuals
  

1. Read film critic/theorist David Bordwell’s article ‘The Boy in the Black Hole’ in which he talks with Hong Kong sound designer Mark Chappell. http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/?p=2212. Write a blog post about your thoughts on Chappell’s ideas and comment on a film soundtrack which you think is a strong example of an audio-visual relationship.

2. Watch Good Copy Bad Copy, a documentary about ‘copyright and culture’: http://www.goodcopybadcopy.net/. Write a blog post about your thoughts and the two-sides of copyright: the corporation versus the creator. Where do you fit in?

3. Read about remix and mashups in the journal article from QUT: http://eprints.qut.edu.au/4239/. Also look at other remix resources: remixtheory.net and The American University Centre for Social Media and excellent article outlining Lessig’s theories from masternewmedia.org