Composing en plein air: a review, a preview, and a ramble

An introduction

We are at this very moment perched on the DMA version of the continental divide.

In the first three weeks (or part one) of the course we became acquainted with concepts, processes, and tools that are part of the new-media composer's toolbox or palette. In effect we set the new-media composition stage, primed the new-media composition canvas, and did some good composing as well.

A John Singer Sargent painting of Claude Monet painting en plein air

In the next two weeks (or part two) of the course we will be plying our new-media knowledge and skills to the framing and implementation of self-directed projects; in other words we will be taking up our composer's palettes and heading out into the world to paint (so to speak) en plein air. (For us this "open air" will consist of self-selected and self-directed projects.)

Plein air has additional relevance as well, in that the new-media remix ethos --which we've been exploring in projects, readings, viewings, and exemplars this week-- involves using life itself as the raw materials for composing. Contemporary life of course includes a veritable ocean of representations (billboards, magazines, the internet, TV, on and on and on) so to prevent contemporary composers from using these materials as they work directly from life would arguably be comparable to preventing plein air painters in 1880's from setting up their easels outside and painting directly from life --unless they had permission from whoever owned the views! 

A 'mobile tech' box-easel

So IMO it's interesting to ponder and compare the acoustic echo of current new-media 'street art' or 'social interventionist art' or 'remix art' (i.e., the work JR, Banksy, Gregg Gillis, and others) to the 'plein air painting' that became all the rage in France in the 1870's.

Interestingly enough, the plein air movement in France was given a boost by the new 'mobile technologies' of paint tubes and the box easel!  If we then play this echo of mobile-tech out a bit it gets pretty interesting. The advent of portable new-media (fancy fones and tablets in combination with wifi or cellnet access) may be what ultimately changes the ratio of time spent making art indoors versus time spent making art outdoors, in the open or en plein air. New-media mobile technology may the equivalent of the box-easel. The new-media ethos and tools have perhaps already unleashed a new generation of plein air artists, again including folks like JR.

BTW this type of change is by and large what Marshall McLuhan meant when  he said "The Medium is the Message." The external properties of mediums end up being more important than their internal ones. Mobile technologies (whether box-easels or mobile computing devices) change the ratios of daily and artistic life --meaning they change basic things like time spent indoors vs. outdoors-- and this ends up being much more important than the programs that run on the fancy fones and tablets. Does that make sense? If it does then you are well on your way to understanding Marshall McLuhan, new-media, and the role of media in general in human life.

A quick review

Week one: a focus on composing, what it is in general, variations in artistic/creative composing, uniqueness and principles of new-media composing. [Need to add multiplicity to the list of principles!]

Week two: a focus on ourselves as composers, influences and so forth, what we are composed of.

Week three: a zoom-in on new-media composing, review principles, add method to principles to form a stochastic filter of new-media composing, then see how the stochastic filter is self-similarly reflected and holistically embodied in genres like remix, and note issues that arise when new-media structures intersect or collide with existing laws and norms.

A Frank Gehry building addition

In some ways the intersection and collision of the old and the new noted here has been given the name 'postmodern' --and in architecture this intersection or collision is made palpable and visible in the work of Frank Gehry. In many of his architectural works, one type of form literally seems to collide and ultimately mesh with another (see image on right).
 

A quick preview

Week four: a zoom-in on the self as composer, self as medium, via self-directed projects (practical projects are a possibility here) or digital-storytelling (an established and very intriguing genre of telling a story of one's own or assisting someone else in telling their story). 

Week five: a zoom-in on further exploration of the creative-side of new-media composing, framing and working/playing on compositions that focus on the world as stage or canvas. 

So we've staged a dialogue or conversation in a way between ourselves and composing (with an emphasis on its new-media variant) and in the final two weeks of the term it shifts back to an emphasis on ourselves as composers --we get the last word or the last speech (or rant, or diatribe, or ramble :)

A closing ramble

To some extent I've composed a piece of 'wetware' (aka a conceptual framework) as my part in the summer edition of DMA. The wetware program has a method (the learning cycle), a set of principles (derived from Manovich, McLuhan, and me --and others of course), a set of exemplars (Laura Karpman, Matthew Herbert, et al), and a signature genre (remix, broadly considered). The role of genres --since genre is this week's focus I'll add this-- is IMO to create workable, usable, microcosmic forms of larger 'cosmic' forms like zeitgeists.  So in my wetware program, remix (if considered broadly enough) captures the new-media zeitgeist very well.

So at this point in the term I am in effect doing a 'wetware distribution'. I am more or less saying 'here is the program, here is the conceptual framework, go test it, try to break it, see if it works!' In some ways I guess that makes you guys, all of us really, beta testers :)

A Frank Gehry dwelling on the Venice Beach CA boardwalk

This is a point worth dwelling and elaborating on since this is a media studies course. Wetware --once it reaches a certain level of organization-- can potentially be developed into software. If I were a software designer, I would have the beginnings of a piece of software, or an app, or perhaps even a game called "New-Media Composer" or something like that. That's part of the wonder of software: it materializes concepts and dematerializes material things. There is now something --arguably a dominant-something-- in-between the strictly-material and strictly-immaterial. It's become a liminal world perhaps.

As we move into and through the next two weeks I will continue to share readings and things like that with you, and we will continue to have conversation and sharing on Facebook, but your blog posts will all be related to framing, talking, gathering, creating, and reflecting in relation to your own projects.

In regard to additional themes and topics I want to introduce or elaborate on, here are a few examples:

1. We gave somewhat short shrift to the topic of processes so I'll share some materials I have, and a perspective I've developed, on the creative process in particular and its relationship to processes found in other ways-of-knowing or WOKs. This will amount to a short exploration of theory of creativity.
2. There is a history of worries about new-media --worries about it ruining our ability to concentrate, destroying our social life, making us into addicts, etc. These tend to come in waves, and their history is only mildly interesting IMO, but it probably needs to be introduced just so you will know a bit of it.
   
   Implicit in what we do in DMA is the idea that it makes sense to optimize the internet by adding creative-intellectual-work/play to your internet rounds, and editing out stuff that wastes time or distracts from substantive work/play. My main advice is to exercise common sense, and if you can't do that, at very least don't blame the medium! Knitting can be a dangerous distraction, as can TV and a whole host of other things. You can probably tell from my tone that I have been round and round with various worries about new media since 1993, and IMO they all pretty much resolve to human factors that can be managed with balance and minimal resolve. Walter Ong reminds us that the ancient Greeks worried in the same way about the introduction of writing. This kind of history lesson helps us keep it real I think!
3.  I'm very interested in where education will end up in the wake of its great intersection or collision with new-media, so I'll share some of the resources I have on this topic with you (for those who are interested in these types of things). As you know the DMA summer edition is a kind of educational-composing prototype for the revised class that I plan to roll forward into the regular term (with adjustments as needed for the different circumstances). I will continue to ask for and rely on your perceptions to help me shape and roll the prototype forward.
4. I will also do a short introduction to programming since this is one of the places creativity is moving. Likely programming will get easier and easier to do as more graphical models are developed, but it will likely always be a good thing to know how the code works behind the graphic interfaces. I learned basic good 'ole HTML coding in 1993 and while lots of tools have come on board to do the coding for us, I have never stopped using plain old code for some things. So we'll do a quick introduction to HTML and also a quick intro to a current programming language called Processing.
5. Finally there are IMO interesting parallels to be speculated on between and among: 1) our immersion in externalized electrical circuitry via regular use of innumerable electronic devices, coupled with immeasurable time spent with electronically-mediated representations, 2) our brain synapses, and 3) quantum phenomena. For example the brain could come to be understood as a sensory organ --honed for sensing the quantum realm. We tend to frame 'thinking' as opposed to 'sensing'. But what if thinking turns out to be a form of sensing? So we can share some speculative ideas and meanderings and gleanings on this topic if a good occasion arises and if some of you are interested.  

None of the above five topics are in the wheelhouse of the DMA course, but they are worth noting, and worthy of further exploration IMO.