Re: [-empyre-] "a time to assemble and a time to insert"

[Barbara Lattanzi <threads@wildernesspuppets.net>]

Hello Jon and everyone.

apologies for sitting so much on the sidelines ... reading the posts with 
much interest (and reading with appreciation, Jon, both yours and Ben's 
responses to some earlier questions of mine).

Now something about your recent post, Jon, using example from Radical 
Software volume2,  responding to Christina's challenge to get messy...

-----CUT N PASTE  FROM JON CATES POST-----------

http://www.radicalsoftware.org/volume2nr1/pdf/VOLUME2NR1_art16.pdf

in which the compilers of Radical Software (Volume 2 Number 1) included
instructions developed by various people hacking the hardware of video,

[...]

 the development of new strategies.

"Example: Woodstock Community Video has used this technique in what they call
assembly editing. For example, they tape a straight interview. They also tape
some visuals they'd like to see included in a presentation of the interview.
When they begin to edit they start by selecting the visuals they want to 
use and
lay these down with or without the audio that goes with them. They then go back
to the interview itself, and audio dub its sound over those selected visuals.
Next, they switch back to the interview setting itself continuing the sound
which goes with the interview, without stopping the machine, and without 
causing
any sound delay. To reiterate, they go from "audio dub" to "record" 
sequentially
without stopping the machine."

-----end of CUT N PASTE  FROM JON CATES POST-----------


Suddenly it occurs to me that I have seen that particular Woodstock 
Community Video technique revived in some work I know from the 1990s.

Then it occurs to me that the technique I saw was "copied right".  This 
means that not only was the technique treated as "copy left", open source 
material, but that the videos made with this appropriated technique 
(updated on 1990s analog equipment) did not bother to point to Woodstock 
Community Video as the source and inspiration.

Without going into details, I am registering my surprise to realize the 
lineage of the unnamed 1990s videos and my disappointment not to have 
recognized the leap of imagination that enabled the videomaker to connect 
with and refunction that past.  In other words, in the wider cultural 
context I am "cool with" (i.e., feel I can deconstruct) displays of 
originality but am mystifyingly shaken up with displays of brilliant 
copying...as if I have some right to pedantically know the source.

I am not sure how this thought connects to criticalartware...

Maybe there is new media that is ignorant of its lineage and maybe there is 
cultural work which, for reasons that have nothing to do with opportunism, 
knowingly and performatively witholds explicit hyperlinking to any other 
representation of the past than itself - as if in itself.

...borrowing from your excellent subject line, Jon:

There is a time to assemble a history and a time to insert... hmm...presence?

Barbara

-------------------------------------------------
Barbara Lattanzi
www.wildernesspuppets.net