Thoughtful Preparations: Media Spin Blog

The sculptures of Devorah Sperber have a Renaissance sensibility, a da Vinci mixture of art and science. Her mosiacs made of spools of colored thread suspended on wires are copies of famous paintings, and composed upside down and backwards so that the familiar image appears correctly when viewed through a crystal ball.

A clever achievement and sure to be popular with science class field trips. In the art world as with show business, it is a challenge to stand out. Looking at this work, I am reminded of the words from the Broadway show Gypsy, You Gotta Have a Gimmick. Much of modern art’s progress is in developing new processes and exploring new ways of seeing. In her craft Sperber has succeeded in putting a new spin on old art, while keeping any personal statements or expressions invisible.

Here is a wonderful oppportunity to view the brief film snapshots of avante-garde filmmaker, Jonas Mekas. His web site project presented by the Maya Stendhal Gallery contains sample clips of portraits, happenings,performances, travel, filmmakers, cinema, and perhaps most notably, autobiographical themes. Many of these films consist of flashes of images of New York, Fluxus, Elvis Presley, Jackie Kennedy, Alan Ginsburg, as well as some of modern art’s most prestigious ground-breakers including Salvador Dali, Andy Warhol, George Maciunas, Hans Richter, Hollis Frampton, Harry Smith, Robert Frank, Edie Sedgwick, Lou Reed, Robert Breer, Mary Menkin, Stan Brakhage John Lennon, Nam June Paik, Nico.

Scottie arrives on Tubular TV with his own brand of hyperactive analysis on Show #3. Actually he reminds me a whole lot more of William Shatner; got to get him some work on a fan-flick as the re-incarnation of Captain Kirk.

Anyway… in this program we unveil our high tech, multi-guest character-generator, “Stickhead,” who appears as President Bush, Barack Obama and a surprise guest who screams about popcorn. Scott also gets to vent about cell phone usage and how to take freedom of speech and media back into the hands of the people. We look forward to lots more from the multi-talented Scott-O on Tubular TV.

With the advent of the audio CD, copy protection of digital media has become a major concern for the media business. Napster’s peer-to-peer file sharing of music across the Internet created a firestorm, lawsuits and new efforts to get the genie back into the bottle.

Encryption codes and DRM (Digital Rights Management) software have been created to protect DVDs, CDs and their respective filtypes from copying, and there are always ambitious hackers who enjoy the challenge of cracking the secret codes.

The iPod and its iTunes music and movie download system has been a great success. Part of that success means working with the content owners so that they do not get ripped off. Steve Jobs recently published his views on music and DRM on the Apple web site. It is a clear and interesting view on digital media and concludes that DRM really is unnecessary. There are 2 settings to every bit, so that discussion will go on for some time.

To shoot film or to shoot bits, that is the future Hollywood is confronting. Clearly, digital distribution to mall screens or iPods is the direction we are heading. New Yorker film critic gives a deeper look in his recent article, Big Pictures: Hollywood looks for a future.

Innovative filmmaker David Lynch seems to love the speed and control of DV production tools in making his new movie, Inland Empire. See details in this Videography article.