In this study circle the idea of cultural recycling will be central. Cultural recycling may be defined as lifting former practices out of their previous contexts and putting them into new ones. Looking back at the different expressions, the cultural artifacts, as well as the theoretical literature of the twentieth century, there is great potential for such recyclings.

The development of a modern media culture changed most kinds of cultural expressions. The gramophone, film, and the typewriter made cultural products intimately related to industrial products. This, however, also altered the production of the so-called “non-mediated” expressions. In one way, the reproduction constituted “the original”; the gramophone established the musical concert as “live.” The “authenticity” perceived in the liveness of a concert, a theater, or a reading, changed radically, and this could also be one entry point into another important category: that of performativity. From theater studies to queer studies and beyond, performativity is one of the current theoretical buzzwords. But working with the prehistory of performativity within the twentieth century’s different cultural expressions will give the word a new kind of currency, where other dimensions and other modernisms across the cultural field are highlighted.

The theoretical and methodological framework for the study circle will be broadly interdisciplinary. Different points of departure, from cultural studies, media studies, literary studies, aesthetics, and cultural history will give the study circle multiple perspectives necessary to grasp the complexities of the twentieth century’s cultural landscape. The aim of this study circle is to establish a network across disciplines within the university. In addition to this the project is related, and indebted, to a wide range of writes, also in the fringes of academic life, including the blogosphere. It is the ambition of the study circle to participate in this blogosphere with ongoing, yearlong, NSU-activities.

Study Circle 4: Process, Design and Aesthetics

bw fms bwre fmsbewe beweretä fmsbewetä

(Kurt Schwitters, Gedicht)

Bop bopa-a-lu a whop bam boo

(Little Richard, Tutti Frutti)

US senator Joseph Lieberman (D) once described Marilyn Manson as… “perhaps the sickest group ever promoted by a mainstream record company”. The interesting part is not so much that Marilyn Manson is called “the sickest group ever” – others have done that. The controversial part is, according to Lieberman, the fact that Marilyn Manson is promoted by a major record company. So, apparently being the sickest group ever would be okay, if only you are promoted by an obscure, underground record label.

Controversy, provocation and scandal have been a part of art for a long time. In modernism and avant-garde controversy even became a goal for many artists and art-movements. Quite often the provocations were aimed at the art institution itself and the bourgeoisie audience supporting and sustaining it. The most famous example is probably Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain” – a urinal submitted for an art exhibition in 1917, but which was refused. The irony is, of course, that the controversial art, that deliberately wanted to subvert the art institution as such, subsequently has been canonized as major works of 20th Century art.

Whereas controversy, provocation and scandal more or less became an assimilated part of the art institution during the 20th Century, there was another controversy around popular culture. It is well known that Elvis Presley was only filmed from the waist up in his early TV appearances. Provocation has become an inherent part in marking in particular rock music as an underground- or subculture outside the establishment. Controversy was the sure sign of credibility. Rock has to a wide extent appropriated avant-garde strategies in pursuit of continued transgression of norms of taste and proper conduct. But even if controversy and provocation were tokens of credibility among the audience, there remained to a large extent a divide between art and pop-culture. Even if art has embraced the popular, and pop and rock has adapted to modernist and avant-garde aesthetics – and consequently we now live After the Great Divide (Andreas Huyssen) between high art and low culture – still, there appears to be an operational divide. This is the divide that Lieberman – probably unwillingly – points to when he laments that a mainstream record company is promoting Marilyn Manson.

On the one side, controversy and provocation have been canonized as part of the art institution, so controversial acts are acceptable in an underground or esoteric art movement. On the other hand, Marilyn Manson cannot be categorized as proper art, because Marilyn Manson is promoted by a mainstream record company. On the one hand, people like Lieberman lament that the forces of the free market, that we believe in and rely on as the guarantor of freedom, have been infected and contaminated by the sick and decadent that properly belong to the underground. On the other hand, artists and critics lament that controversy and provocation have been commodified and are now marketed by major, commercial companies, thus leaving no room for true, subversive art outside the market.

One artist showing yet another version in negotiating shock and commercialization is Andy Warhol. Parts of his work may be written into the art history of the avant garde. Simultaneously he employed motifs from popular culture – such as Elvis and Marilyn Monroe – and worked in ways unheard of within more “classically” trained artists, as when Xeroxing his images, thus pointing to art as one among other mass products.

Where Marilyn Manson and Marcel Duchamp definitely still are understood as existing on different sides of the “great divide”, Warhol arguably worked across it. Although statements like “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” today have become a kind of cliché, we should not underestimate the impact Warhol has had on art, popular culture and our understanding of social change at large.

Perhaps we should not as much talk of an after the great divide, but rather an across the great divide. Perhaps we should take a new look at how pop ventures into avant-garde and vice-versa. With this seminar we do not want to denigrate the canonization of the avant-garde or the commodification of the subversive in pop-culture, but rather opt for a new, critical look at aesthetic strategies and practices across the great divide – from the earliest dada happenings to the latest Lady Gaga video.

Please send your proposal to Claus Krogholm – clauskrogholm[at]mail.dk – no later than May 15, 2010

For further information on Nordic Summer University, the Summer Session and registration, please visit http://www.nsuweb.net/wb/

]]> http://circle4.wordpress.com/2010/03/31/cfp-from-dada-to-gaga/feed/ 0 Claus Krogholm http://circle4.wordpress.com/2010/03/23/dangerous-modulations-grace-jones-corporate-cannibal/ http://circle4.wordpress.com/2010/03/23/dangerous-modulations-grace-jones-corporate-cannibal/#comments Tue, 23 Mar 2010 09:41:13 +0000 Claus Krogholm http://circle4.wordpress.com/?p=103 ]]> Open Lecture, Danish Design School, Strandboulevarden 47, DK-2100 Copenhagen

Friday 26th 2010 at 1 pm.

Professor Steven Shaviro, Wayne State University, Detroit:

Dangerous Modulations: Grace Jones’ Corporate Cannibal

More information here

The Festival seeks to highlight new and compelling work in the field of generative or process music – focusing on sound pieces which are inspired by or emulate algorithms, biology, or other defined systems.

Read more here.

“Nearer My God To Thee”

Liminal Bodies in Mark Romanek’s “Closer” and “Hurt”

This paper will discuss two music videos directed by Mark Romanek: “Closer” by Nine Inch Nails (1994) and “Hurt” by Johnny Cash (2002). The fact that Cash’s “Hurt” is a cover of a Nine Inch Nails song contributes a musical point of comparison, but it is primarily the visual dimensions I want to focus upon.

The two videos are, at least at first sight, very different. “Closer” contains strong imagery highlighting transgressions and with more than hints of sado-masochism. “Hurt” on the other hand is seemingly calm, with film from Cash’s home, but simultaneously highlights human fragility. Both videos focus on the body, as carnality and as flesh, and these bodies are displayed in both active and passive states. Discussing these bodies as liminal, as being positioned at different thresholds – between human begins and its others (insects, animals), between life and death – points to an almost baroque sensibility of allegories related to transgressions as well as memento mori.

The paper will try to unfold these allegorical installations of liminality employing theoretical literature related to the baroque (Mario Perniola, The Sex Appeal of the Inorganic; Walter Benjamin, Origin of the German Trauerspiel), discussions of the body (Steven Shaviro’s The Cinematic Body), mortality (Catherine Russell, Narrative Mortality), theology (Graham Ward, Cities of God; Roland Boer, Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door) and animality (Giorgio Agamben, The Open).

Kristine Samson

Critical Potential  and Aesthetic Innovation – with or without criteria?

WARNING: Do not to seperate the dancer from the dance!

The paper will present some thoughts on Critical potentials and Aesthetic innovation in relation to Whiteheads process philosophy.

It will raise the question whether the term “critique” is adequate in correlation to aesthetical theories, if we – at the same time – accept a Deleuzian notion of a ‘becoming’ or Whiteheads ideas of processes in reality.

If we, by other words, claim that we – as researchers, artists, academics, film directors, human beings or things (anything goes) belong to these processes in reality, why then distinguish ‘ourselves’ critically as Dancers from the Dance?

The paper will be a work in progress in my ongoing development of new performative methods in research, aesthetics and urban planning.

Lars Ylander

Attraction and Repulsion in the Universe of a City Monkey

The album ”Stadtaffe” (city monkey) by the German artist Peter Fox appeared in October 2008. It turned out to include three top-10 hits. The music style may best be described as hiphop-dancehall-pop with an abundancy of acoustic violin riffs. The lyrics are generally inspiring – be that in a reflective sense of the word where the singer e.g. in the song ”Schwarz zu blau” (black to blue) describes a walk from dusk till dawn through his city, Berlin-Kreuzberg, or be that in a sense of the word where less intellectual appeals to ”shake your booty” has proven support on Youtube from an audience who likes to do just that.

The music videos may equally be said to have varying artistic standards in and by themselves. But from a come-together of visual symbolisms, of sometimes poetic, sometimes hard, repulsive lyrics, of well-produced music and rhythms, of the identity of the performing singer and the moves of the people, musicians and other beasts who are with him, a complex sort of art-pop universe emerges. This universe has a certain attraction, that I will try to give a thought.

Linda Gedina

Analysis of the structure of the music video as an experimental provocation

I will discuss the format of music video as contemporary canvas of pixels (see NIN video Only, directed by David Fincher) where digital painters make their paintings.

Respectively I will analyze the perplexed symbolical structure of a music video.

Mostly the symbolical structure of a music video is the same as the one of its technical genesis – bricolage. The model of such symbolical structure could be Matryoshka dolls or mise-en-abyme.

My point is: video changes references of its images to non-mimetic in distroing direct meaning as well as direct reference to the song and usual cultural codes with a help of different kind of more or less extreme, shocking or unusual effects (artistic or the one of provocative social meaning or aspects, for example, invisible skateboards of Spike Jonze, watch „Holiday (So High)” of Alexander Perls) and short narrational time where the connotative frame of references is an artist song.

What music video of auters are often showing is anatomy of making video and mediated reality of social environment as well. In this sense music videos are as political as Godard`s films, for example, are.

The main concepts of my analysis are experiment and provocation. A video is self-reflexive and analytical per definitio as a kind of art

II Foreseen Expose

Inner structure and Reference

I see specification of video based of its temporal shortness – its makes summarise the messages and use different kind of tools of metaphorisation, overlapping and building (I use this spatial metaphor on purpose) several levels of meaning one on other (Michel Gondry Lego-Steine video for White Stripes ). There connection between levels is free and symbolical as well as the frame of reference could be. Video uses signs, makes appearance become sign and has its own message. And mostly all videos have a conceptualy distinct end. Auteures videos are highly conceptualised and self-referential. In the videos there is a possibility to work out one tool, one aspect and so they can be the very experimental ones. Music video must not have direct mimetic reference to the text of the song.

Making connections with theories of reference there is difference between direct and indirect, e.g. symbolical reference. The language of video is symbolical, references – indirect and the „speech act” of narration – performative.

Context: contemporary world criticism and context of art

With reference to movies I think video could be seen as interior critic of film-making and place for experiments – deconstructive as well as intense extracting of hypokeimenon of reality of film as well as mediative „constructed” world – Mitwelt of consume and attraction, and violence. Critics encounters skar its tools, strategies and point aimed at of references.

Historically, dada and formalisten have destroyed word, or sentences. Godar was in deonstracting ideological signs and established meanings, e.g., by putting on show the inner structure of the making of film, or video, or reality, e.g. some aspects of reality. In this sense music videos are political in meaning of decostructing established forms of appearance and images.

The use of the film in film or film about making film is the old and well known tool of filmmakers as well as writers of making a macro-structure or object of work appear in a micro-structure, or painters painting themselves in a picture and so changing the perspective of author.

In my paper I will pay attention to some music video which are showing kitchen of making mediated reality. I think one of the best examples could be the film of music video auteur Michel Gondry The Science of Sleep (2006).

Mads Nygaard Folkmann

Designing symbolic meaning: Aesthetic strategies in Talking Heads: Once in a Lifetime (1981)

Talking Heads’s seminal music video Once in a Lifetime (1981; directors: Toni Basil & David Byrne) combines the aesthetics of popular culture with avantgarde art performance techniques in a search for an adequate expression of its content of expressing an existential wake-up. In the video, the anguish of the singer/protagonist is expressed that ”you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile / You may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife / You may ask yourself: well… how did I get here?” The argument on the level of content, that modern man can be caught in an existential bewilderment, is supported by a metaphorics of ”water flowing underground”, designating unconscious and uncontrollable driwing forces.

On the level of visual representation there can, however, be raised a series of design related questions. The video demonstrates, that modern life is a life of consumerism where material objects (automobile, house, beautiful wife (!)) are connected with a disproportionate high symbolic meaning. The paper will discuss how the video Once in a Lifetime as a visual expression employs this kind of symbolic representation and in doing this creates its specific aesthetics: How does the video, so to speak, design symbolic meaning? What kind of aesthetic strategies does it use?

The paper will lead its discussion through applying different models of symbolism on the video.

1. Symbolic meaning in a cultural context: Within consumer theories, the symbolic is seen as meaning operating within culture, where designed objects and other material artefacts play the role of pointing to or containing symbolic meaning. In culturally oriented consumer research, the objects of consumption are seen as vehicles in the function of articulating and creating meaning and identities among consumers. This is very much the case for the video: Through objects of consumption, the protagonist is entangled in cultural, symbolic meaning.

2. Symbolism as epistemology: The philosopher Ernst Cassirer developed a theory of symbolic forms where the symbolic is given the function of being a general schemata for man’s apprehension and being in the world. The symbolic forms of ‘images’ and ‘signs’ have the function of mediating between the “things” and a larger totality of the “spirit”, that Cassirer aims at. Cassirer claims that we understand through the symbolic forms that are human creations but at the same time frame human cognition. This can prove productive for a theory of design as symbolically signifying objects: Seen as expressions of symbolic forms, design objects fundamentally contribute to the shaping not only of the world, but they also give feedback to our understanding and perception of the world. In the context of the Talking Heads video, I will discuss how it creates symbolic objects as symbolic forms and itself in its creation of meaning functions as a symbolic form.

3. Symbolism as aesthetic schematism: Going one step behind Cassirer, Kant in his Kritik der reinen Vernunft proposes schemata as on the one hand results of the imagination and on the other hand as translating between the sensual material and the concepts. I will suggest that this notion can be ’aesthetizied’ in order to look at how the Talking Heads video creates an aesthetic, schematic representation that oscillates between the concrete, sensual appearances and the abstract concepts in order to question what concepts in the video are and how they are visually ’symbolized’ in the medium of the video.

Mathias Bonde Korsgaard

Beyond Television: Contemporary Music Video

Today, music videos flourish in many different media environments. They come to us through an array of different delivery technologies, ranging from television to DVDs, and from portable media players to streaming services on the internet such as YouTube, Vimeo and MySpace to name but a few. In this way, music videos have moved way beyond television, so that they now inhabit many other media sites.

In its partial relocation from television to the internet, the music video has undergone a series of transformations. It has tried to adapt itself to the new premises of the digital media landscape on more than one level, and this has led to changes in both the form and aesthetics of music video and in the ways that music videos are produced, distributed and consumed. In this sense, the medium of music video has responded to processes of both convergence (Jenkins 2006) and remediation (Bolter & Grusin 2000).

In this paper, I seek to examine exactly these processes of convergence and remediation that surround music video today. In addition to this, I undertake an exploration of the new types of music video that have emerged in the form’s encounter with the internet and the new digital technologies. Through its translocation to the internet, music video has experienced a veritable renaissance, partially because the technological restraints of the streaming services have made it difficult to stream feature length films, thus generating a need for short format films.

As a consequence of this process, music video has been revitalized and new types of music video that feature some of the traits of digital media have surfaced. While the audiovisual language of many of the present-day music videos still shares many traits with the music video language as it has developed through the decades, many of these new music videos differ from earlier kinds of music video in that they incorporate aesthetic strategies associated with digital media. Examples of this include the use of database structures (for instance Deerhoof: “My Purple Past”), digital image manipulation (for instance Chairlift: “Evident Utensil”), and interactivity (for instance Arcade Fire: “Black Mirror”).

Since its birth as a medium, music video has been able to create unique audiovisual configurations of music and images that in part has shaped some of the ways in which we conceive of audiovisuality in general today. Having always provided ample room for audiovisual experimentation, it has often anticipated stylistic developments within cinema and popular music. Correspondingly, music video has been one of the filmic forms to most eagerly explore the possibilities of digital cinema. In recent years, music video has thus served as a place for experimenting with different kinds of digital imagery, contributing greatly to the development of the language of digital cinema. This has led Lev Manovich to describe music video as “a living and constantly expanding text-book for digital cinema” (Manovich 2001:311).

With interactive videos by MGMT and Cold War Kids (“Electric Feel” and “I’ve Seen Enough”) as my examples, I aim to interrogate the layering of multiple and mutable images and sounds. The aforementioned Lev Manovich proposes that the constant changing of images (and sounds, I would add) is a key component of contemporary (audio)visual culture (see Manovich 2007). Furthermore, in my paper I investigate the way in which such interactive videos encourage the user’s active participation, thus obscuring the traditional opposition between producers and users. In this way, the interactive music videos inscribe themselves into what Jenkins has termed ‘participatory culture’ (Jenkins 2006:3), alongside other relatively new types of music video, for instance fan videos, various remix and mash-up formats (for instance ThruYou by Kutiman), and videos that consist of ‘user-generated content’ (for instance Carpark North: “Save Me From Myself”).

Literature:

Bolter, Jay David & Grusin, Richard: Remediation, Cambridge & London: The MIT Press 2000

Jenkins, Henry: Convergence Culture, New York & London: New York University Press 2006

Manovich, Lev: The Language of New Media, Cambridge & London: The MIT Press 2001

Manovich, Lev: “Understanding Hybrid Media”, 2007 (through manovich.net)

Videos:

Arcade Fire: “Black Mirror”, dir.: Olivier Groulx & Tracy Maurice (rorrimkcalb.com)

Carpark North: “Save Me From Myself”, dir.: Lau Højen (carparknorth.dk/#musicvideos)

Chairlift: “Evident Utensil”, dir.: Ray Tintori, 2009 (vimeo.com/3139412)

Cold War Kids: “I’ve Seen Enough”, dir.: Sam Jones, 2009 (coldwarkids.com/iveseenenough)

Deerhoof: “My Purple Past”, dir.: Asha Schechter, 2009 (youtube.com/watch?v=6lt4nsoIo9g)

Kutiman: “ThruYou 01: Mother of All Funk Chords”, dir.: Kutiman, 2009 (thru-you.com)

MGMT: “Electric Feel”, dir.: Ray Tintori, 2008 (whoismgmt.com/efvideo)

Tau Ulv Lenskjold

This proposal explores Music videos on Youtube as malleable social objects through which critical discourses pertaining to larger themes of controversy can unfold.

The success of Youtube and social network services like Myspace and Facebook, has mostly been associated with their capacities of facilitating  social relationships among people who share interests or activities. To counter this popular understanding, in which the ‘networks’ consists of representations of the users and the ‘social‘ basically means (a lot of) people – an alternative approach to social networks could instead emphasis the importance of the objects or media artefacts that mediates ties between people. The view follows what sociologist Karin Knorr Cetina has called ‘sociality with objects’, and others ‘object centred sociality’.

According to the network-centric understanding amateur music videos on Youtube are often seen as expressions of individuality by the performer or producer of the video (usually the same person). The ‘me-centric’ perspective is further enforced by the possibilities of making and subscribing to channels, and self evident in Youtube’s corporate slogan “Broardcast Yourself”.

However, by shifting focus and examining amateur videos as social objects in an object-centred environment, I want to explore how amateur videos can function as critical objects that assemble and translate ideology and discourses. An object oriented sociality also brings into question the role and agency of the people involved with creating, sharing, selecting and commenting on the videos. How do they affect and in turn become affected by the videos? And in what ways do different music videos related to the same subject matter correspond and interact, and thus expand the critical discourse?

Thure Munkholm

Psyched up on 16mm

Ofte underkendt som det egentlige arnested for musikvideoen er slut-50’erne og især start 60’ernes scopitones: Illustrerede musiknumre optaget på 16mm-film, som kunne ses på små skærme i helt særlige jukeboxes. Fra France Gall og Gainsbourg til Procul Harum er flere af tidens store popnavne foreviget på disse strimler, men også talrige andre og ofte langt mere obskure navne brugte scopitones i kampen for at få slået deres navn fast. I dette paper vil jeg kort opridste scopitone-filmenes kulørte historie – for  efterfølgende at undersøge den som en (musikvideo)æstetik in the making. Uden egentlige forgængere opfinder scopitone-filmens (i langt de fleste tilfælde) ukendte instruktører et særegent æstetisk univers, der skal illustrere det pågældende numre, og som jeg ønsker at placere i krydsfeltet mellem surrealisme og popkultur.

Troels Degn Johansson

Laid-Back Avant-Garde: Lars von Trier’s “Bakerman”

This paper seeks to discuss in serious terms a statement made in the late 1980ies by Danish film director Lars von Trier—that Danish pop-duo Laid Back for him, at the time, should be considered a prominent example of contemporary avant-garde art. At the time, von Triers’ statement was deliberately controversial. Whereas Laid Back has been one of the largest commercial successes of the Danish music industry due to the success of a handful of pop hits (in Germany, mainly), the duo has never been recognized for its artistic contribution. A few years after his public statement, von Trier directed the official music video for Laid Back’s Bakerman single, where the duo and a backing group dressed up as bakers is seen performing while skydiving. Rather than approaching this video as an illustration of the song, the paper suggests that the Bakerman video should be seen as the result of a curatorial act where Lars von Trier seeks to elaborate on his particular fondness of the values that this pop duo seems to represent for him; simplicity, popularity (in Danish “folkelighed”), and irony. In this sense, by promoting the Laid Back single by means of a music video, von Trier’s contribution leads us rather to develop our understanding of–von Trier; apparently not of Laid Back. The paper thus seeks to approach von Trier as a conceptual artist with a special interest in the notion of developing society (the avant-garde position) and being a popular figure (“folkelig”, appreciated by the people) at the same time; an interest which historically both evokes ideas of pop music and pop culture, the role of the artist in a national, social-democratic context, and the role of the avant-garde artist after the completion of such projects as situationism and the American neo-avant-garde. In this manner, the paper finally seeks to discuss Lars von Trier’s contribution to the current debate on the status of the avant-garde. Should the avant-garde qualify as such by being revolutionary or at least systemically subversive (Mikkel Bolt) or does it suffice to let laid back artists (or just bodies) undergo a free fall through the lower parts of the atmosphere. Supposedly, the length of the standard skydiving experience (the parachute part exclusive) could be compared with that of the standard pop song and thus with that of the music video. Could sky diving constitute a critical potential of the music video? References to other skydiving music videos (e.g. Boards of Canada) and to von Trier’s work (e.g. Element of Crime) will be discussed by means of a perspective.

The paper will draw on a collection of press material concerning von Triers life and work collected by the author until ca. the mid1990ies.

Claus Krogholm

Aesthetization of the Apolitical or Anesthetization of the Political – Laibach, Neue Slowenische Kunst and Music Video

In their 1983 manifesto 10 Items of the Covenant (Nova revija, No. 13/14), Laibach claims: “All art is subject to political manipulation (indirectly – consciousness; directly), except for that which speaks the language of this same manipulation.” Thus, it should be no surprise that Laibach manipulates materials such as: “Taylorism, bruitism, Nazi Kunst, disco…”. Nevertheless, there has often been confusion as to what Laibach is all about: fascism, totalitarianism, kitsch…

A substantial part of Laibach’s work is cover versions, adaptations or manipulations of pop and rock songs by artists such as Queen, Rolling Stones, Europe – and even the entire Beatles album Let it Be (sans the title track). “LAIBACH excludes any evolution of the original idea; the original concept is not evolutionary but entelechical, and the presentation is only a link between this static and the changing determinant unit.” When it comes to music video the strategy is not so much manipulations of specific videos, but more the language and iconography of music video as such; or, perhaps rather a strategy to actualize tendencies and potentialities inherent in the visual language of music video.

This paper examines this strategy as an attempt to conflate the totalitarian with the popular, völkisch with kitsch – and the political with the aesthetic in the larger context of Neue Slowenische Kunst.

Steven Shaviro:

POST-CINEMATIC ARTICULATIONS OF SOUND AND VISION

The Music Video: Critical Potential and Aesthetic Innovation

DEAD LINE EXTENDED TO DECEMBER 10th.

3^rd Winter Symposium of the Nordic Summer University’s aesthetics studies circle, Process, Design, and Aesthetics.

The Danish Design School, Copenhagen, March 26^th-28^th, 2010

The modern music video has undoubtedly been very important for the development of pop-culture and of popular music since the emergence of the MTV television channel in the early eighties. At least, the modern music video has been crucial for some of the most dominant and innovative stars of popular music since then—from Madonna and Michael Jackson to Grace Jones and David Bowie whose careers all intertwine with important steps in the development of the music video.

Nevertheless, the scholarly informed critique of popular music and visual media has found it difficult to take music video seriously as a genre or indeed as an “art form.” Whereas “true” music aficionados (the rock critic, the performing artist, etc.) have seen the music video as an unfortunate diversion of the “pure” musical expression, film directors and their audiences have in turn bemoaned the music video as a degeneration of the feature film as the ultimate form of (narrative) cinema. And the world of fine art has looked down on the music video as a mere illustration of another artist’s work, or even worse, as a simple advertisement where the artist’s will is tied up with commercial interests. The music video thus seems to have been met with distrust—or even disgust—from traditional critique. Coinciding with the emergence of the discourse of post-modernity, it was easy for the philosophically informed critique in the beginning simply to reject the music video as a symptom of a culture that has been corrupted by capitalistic systems of production and, consequently, of regressive systems of representation (simulation). Finding it difficult to assert any real value or meaning in the music video, this genre could at least be celebrated as a nihilistic contribution—but as well, of course, studied critically as an increasingly dominant cultural system of representation involving an alienated consumer subject (Kaplan 1987, Kinder 1984). When not discredited, the music video was celebrated as the epitome of the emergent post-modernist aesthetic. The music video has been recognized – sometimes with regret – as the driving force behind a new aesthetic that has come to dominate cinema, TV and other visual media – and aesthetic practices in general. Whereas the 20th century in some respects can be described as cinematic, perhaps we are now witnessing a new post-cinematic aesthetic.

So, although the music video now has been a central stage for the development of audiovisual culture as well as of new technological and stylistic means of cinematic expression for almost three decades, critical literature on this genre is still limited. Most work so far seems to have been done within studies on popular (consumer) culture (Goodwin 1993, Kaplan 1987), audio-visual communication (Højbjerg 2008), and visual culture and subjectivity (Fausing, Kinder 1984). In the rearview mirror, it is regrettable that the early critique of the music video did not include voices from scholarly fields that might have been able to assert the cultural richness and depth of the music video, or at least would have been able to identify its importance and recognize the value of this genre to contemporary youth culture.

Especially, the music video calls for contributions from interdisciplinary cultural analysis where the music video could be studied in terms of the genre’s possible cultural complexity as well as its impact and innovation; in short: the possible critical potential of the music video. Do this genre and its dominant channels of distribution offer a platform for a critical artist subjectivity that is capable of challenging contemporary culture in an interesting, innovative way? Does the music-video in this sense form out an interesting alternative to traditional avant-garde strategies, or could actual music-videos themselves be seen as the expression of avant-garde positions?

Another voice which has been missing is that of interdisciplinary research into the communication design of the music video. Whereas the music video has long been problematic to students of cinema and fine art, designers and design students do, in turn, not seem to have had much reservation as for experimenting with and contributing to the development of this genre. The reasons for this are probably many, but one could mention the significant heritage of illustration within design education as well as the traditional, interdisciplinary thinking of designers; that this profession in many cases has been used to adapting to very different institutional contexts and very different media (from graphic design to craft and industrial design; from print to mass produced objects as well as crafted artifacts). In short, the critique of the music video is short of a voice of the doers (or at least of voices which are capable of talking about doing). Music videos thus relatively early developed into a medium of auteurs. In 1992, MTV thus began listing the director along with artist and song credits, and quite a few recognized film directors started their career as the directors of music videos, e.g. Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze, David Fincher and Mark Romanek. And film directors on the other hand took a shot at the music video (David Lynch, Lars von Trier, Martin Scorsese and others).

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the critique of the modern music video needs to consider the meaning and value of those new ways of producing and distributing works that have lead the culture of the music video to flourish again. Whereas in the eighties, MTV and a few other, competing television channels (VIVA, MGM, etc) were the dominant networks for distributing music videos, Internet-based channels like Youtube and social media like Myspace and Facebook have brought about entirely new ways of sharing, selecting, enjoying, and reflecting on works of music video. Moreover, it has become much easier for amateurs, individual artists, as well as small, independent production companies to produce their own music videos due to easy access to inexpensive, digital video equipment. This is contrasted by the fact that music videos today play a relatively limited role compared to reality shows and documentaries in MTV’s transmissions. Moreover, whereas in the MTV days, the genre was dominated by very costly productions for artists like Michael Jackson and Madonna, the culture of the music video today thus seems more and more to be characterized by what the layman lover of music and video wish to share—that may be videos which are not necessarily new, and it may be videos which have been made by fans to interpret a favorite song.

The music video – and MTV – got a lot of attention in cultural- and critical studies during the 1980′s and 1990′s, but apparently a lot less here in the first decade of the 21st century. We would like to see a new departure for music video studies now that the music video has come of age. The research seminar circle, Process, Design and Aesthetics (2008-2010) thus calls for papers for a research symposium on the modern music video with special reference to its critical potentials as well as its potential to develop new form and facilitate new aesthetic positions. The symposium will be held at the Danish Design School in Copenhagen on March 26^th-28^th2010.It will be funded partially by the Nordic Council of Ministers by means of the Nordic Summer University (http://www.nsuweb.net/wb/). The call for papers is particularly orientated towards scholars who would like to take the opportunity to share and discuss their new ideas by means of a working paper. Presentations should be in English, should not exceed 30 minutes, and should be based on the analysis of one or more works of music video. Abstracts should not exceed more than 4000 characters and be submitted for review before December 1st, 2009 to Claus Krogholm (clauskrogholm@mail.dk)/Troels Degn Johansson (tdj@dkds.dk).

Please post your comments and suggestions for further reading below.

Literature

Beebe, Roger & Jason Middleton (2007) Medium Cool: Music Video from Soundies to Cellphones, Duke University Press

Frith, Simon, Andrew Goodwin & Lawrence Grossberg (1993) Sound & Vision. The music video reader London: Routledge

Goodwin, Andrew (1992) Dancing in the Distraction Factory: Music Television and Popular Culture University of Minnesota Press

Kaplan, E. Ann (1987) Rocking Around the Clock. Music Television, Postmodernism, and Consumer Culture London & New York: Routledge

Kinder, Marsha (1984) “Music Video and the Spectator: Television, Ideology and Dream”, in Film Quaterly, vol. 38, no. 1, 1984

Movin, Lars & Morten Øberg (1990) Rockreklamer – om musikvideo, Amanda

Shaviro, Steven (2008): “Grace Jones, Corporate Cannibal“, The Pinocchio Theory (http://www.shaviro.com/Blog/?p=653)

Strand, Joachim (2008) The Cineastic Montage of Music-video: Hearing the Image, Seeing the Sound, VDM

Vernallis, Carol (2004) Experiencing Music Video: Aesthetics and Cultural Context, Columbia University Press

It has often been said that the computer, the world wide web and digitalization has revolutionized the way we access and use media and consequently the way we see ourselves and the world around us. Digitalization differs from all previous media revolutions, because all previous media are translatable to digital code. Whereas media used to differ in material expression – paper for print, the screen for TV – then digital media needs just one platform: the computer. Text, images, sound can all be produced and reproduced on the computer.
It has been predicted that digitalization and the computer would make all other media obsolete. However, we can observe today how this is not the case. Despite being declared dead with the emergence of the CD, records are still printed on vinyl – and in increasing numbers. Audiophiles prefer the analogue sound of vinyl to the digital sound of the CD or mp3. Some musicians insists on using old Moog synthesizers for authentic sound. And architects has substituted 3-D computer models for hand drawn sketches.
This could be interpreted as a revolt against the more or less complete computerization of everyday life. But, as Marshall McLuhan observed, new media does not so much make old media obsolete as they transform and reconfigures the way we perceive and use them. Not just does new technology change the social world around us, it changes our senses as well. And consequently: “When technology extends one of our senses, a new translation of culture occurs as swiftly as the new technology is interiorized.” (The Gutenberg Galaxy).
Going back to analogue should not be conceived as some kind of retro-movement. To use analogue media in a digital or post-analogue culture is not necessarily seeking refuge in the pre-digital. Despite the prefixes, the notions of pre-digital and post-analogue is not used to suggest any kind of chronology or temporal linearity. The analogue has been transformed, reconfigured or transfigured by the digital without necessarily becoming digital or post-analogue; and without by necessity remaining pre-digital.
We would like to suggest that it is a process of disjointed temporality and spatiality. Or, in the words of McLuhan: “What we are considering here, however, are the psychic and social consequences of the designs or patterns as they amplify or accelerate existing processes.” (Understanding Media). We call for papers that examines how this disjointed temporality and spatiality affects the aesthetic processes in art, film, literature, design, architecture, music and so on. This could be under the auspices of  “the time is out of joint” (Shakespeare), “nostalgia for the present” (Fredric Jameson) or the “Ungleichzeitlichkeit des Gleichzeitigen” (Ernst Bloch) – or some other conception of time and space in contemporary aesthetics, be it theoretical, analytical or practical.
How does the use of analogue techniques, methods and media influence the aesthetics of art, design and architecture in a digital age? – in form as well as content. And vice versa: how does the use of digital tools and media affect aesthetic processes expressed in analogue material (ceramics, paper, concrete and so on)? To what extend has our senses been changed by digitalization and how is this expressed in the way we perceive and construe time and space? Are we really experiencing a new disjointed temporality and spatiality?

Literature
Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema 1 – the Movement-Image. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson & Barbara Habberjam. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986.

Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema 2 – the Time-Image. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson & Robert Galeta. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989.

Hatherly, Owen. Militant Modernism. London: O Books, 2009

Hayles, N. Katherine. How We Became Posthuman – Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.

Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. 1. ed. London New York: Verso – Duke University Press, 1991.

McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media – the Extensions of Man. London: Routledge Classics, 2001.

Shaviro, Steven. Without Criteria – Kant, Whitehead, Deleuze, and Aesthetics, The MIT Press, 2009

Weheliye, Alexander G. Phonographies – Grooves in Sonic Afro-Modernity. Durham: Duke University Press, 2005.

Please mail your abstract to Kristine Samson (kristine@ready-made.dk) and Claus Krogholm (clauskrogholm@mail.dk), dead-line May 15th.

Registration for the Summer Session http://www.nsuweb.net/wb/sommar/?action=register, dead-line June 1st.