A detail of “Concrete Stereo”(1983) by Ron Arad — part of the exhibit No Discipline at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan through October 19:

Image from the article at nytimes.com. More on the exhibit at moma.org.
A detail of “Concrete Stereo”(1983) by Ron Arad — part of the exhibit No Discipline at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan through October 19:

Image from the article at nytimes.com. More on the exhibit at moma.org.
Kyle Gann locates some cognitive dissonance between the communal art production of Fluxus, and the rigors of copyright law:
The situation is absurd, somebody under whatever questionable chemical influences scrawls seven words on a piece of paper and 50 years later I can’t refer to that piece of paper without paying someone some money and following their prescriptions.
The gist of the situation is that Gann’s book on John Cage is being held up. Why? He explains, “[Y]ou are no longer allowed to quote texts that are entire pieces of art. This means I’ve been trying to get permission simply to refer to Fluxus pieces like La Monte Young‘s ‘This piece is little whirlpools in the middle of the ocean,’ and Yoko Ono‘s ‘Listen to the sound of the earth turning.’ And of course, Yoko (whom I used to know) isn’t responding, and La Monte is imposing so many requirements and restrictions that I would have to add a new chapter to the book, and so in frustration well past the eleventh hour, I’ve excised the pieces from the text.”
Full entry at artsjournal.com/postclassic.
Seven of the top 10 most viewed posts this past month were from the Disquiet Downstream section, one more than had been the case in June.
These range, in increasing popularity, from (1) Michael Bross‘s edits of field recordings of subways, to (2) a post commemorating the death of Danielle Baquet-Long (of the duo Celer), to (3) Alan Morse Davies‘s reworking of a 1936 recording of “Gloomy Sunday,” to (4) the textured cyberdread of 2methylBulbe1ol (aka French producer Nicolas Druoton), to (5) a found item by artist Steve Roden (a vinyl recording of the Great Stalacpipe Organ), to (6) Grassy Knoll‘s momentum-driven classic-rock mashup, to (7) percussive drones (whether or not that seems like an oxymoron) by Glenn Ryszko.
Rounding out the top 10, (8) a description of an art exhibit in Dortmund Germany, about ghost stories (with contributions by Tim Hecker and Scanner, among others), (9) a series of images of a giant microphone making its way around town, and (10) one particular week’s collected twitter.com/disquiet posts (with comments about the sound of sparking-wine riddling, Michael Mann‘s recent Public Enemies, and the eighth Parker novel, as well as an entry in my ongoing “The @rhawtin Drinking Game,” in which you try to guess what Richie Hawtin is going to DJ next, since he lists his track titles live via his Twitter account).
There are few pleasures as richly kaleidoscopic as the Rashomon of Remixing: the online beat battle.
Two of the foremost beat fight clubs are located at cratekings.com and stonesthrow.com. In the message boards at both sites, disparate producers, most weaned on hip-hop, take a shared sample and do with it what they will.
Consider the latest from Stones Throw — the 126th beat battle hosted by that great record label. The originating cut is a mostly instrumental bit of soul, “Look What You’ve Done to Me.” And as of this evening, more than two dozen renditions have been posted, key among them an entry by Theory Hazit that takes the initial funk and cuts it up into something just broken enough to be entirely contemporary
(MP3).
Then there’s DJ Earl-e, who slows it to a spartan pulse, the guitar flashing past like a distant comet (MP3), and, just to single out one other fine entry, an edit by Density & Time, which ratchets up the guitar into something approximating hard rock, though the looped beat ensures it’s never mistakable for anything but raw hip-hop (MP3).
View the full set of entries in chronological order at drop.io/stmbbattle126 — especially should the links above fail to function. Witness the original posts and voting at, respectively, stonesthrow.com and stonesthrow.com.