Aram Sinnreich

MediaCon Panel with Trevor Pinch & DJ Spooky (audio)

This weekend, I was fortunate to host a keynote discussion between media theorist (and Moog afficionado) Trevor Pinch and DJ/author Paul D. Miller, a/k/a DJ Spooky. It was part of an excellent conference called "Extending Play" organized by the doctoral students at Rutgers SC&I. 

Our panel was a lot of fun -- a freewheeling discussion that ranged from music and tech geekery to broad social theory. You can listen to the audio transcript here:

ExtendingPlay_Keynote_Sinnreich_Pinch_Miller

 

 

My new book project: PiracyCrusade.com

My new book project, loosely based on my LimeWire expert testimony, is called "The Piracy Crusade." Although it will be published as a paper book next year by University of Massachusetts Press, I'm also publishing draft chapters as I write them on an open, Creative Commons-licensed, comments-enabled platform hosted by the MediaCommons project.

This kind of prepublication is increasingly being used as "peer-to-peer review," a crowdsourced alternative to the traditional academic "peer review" process, in which 2-3 anonymous readers with unclear motives and levels of interest weigh in on your work after 6-12 months of waiting. Obviously, when you're covering something fast-moving like law, technology, culture, or all three, that kind of a waiting process can be deadly.

If you have any interest, experience, or opinions regarding music, intellectual property law, new technologies, or the digital media industry, I encourage you to take a look, and leave a comment. All constructive commenters will get a shout-out in the final version of the book's Acknowledgments section.

The first two chapters are already up, and Chapter 3 is in process. Check it out on PiracyCrusade.com!

p.s. I'm also looking for some cover art -- if you're interested in creating something (I can't pay you, but I'll give you a credit on the cover), let me know.

Audio of my artists panel at EMP Pop Conference 2011

I was in LA last week for the annual EMP Pop Conference, which was pretty awesome. My roundtable, "Look Ma, No Contract: Making Money Making Music in the Post-Label Economy," featured a diverse bunch of professional musicians, including Zoe Keating, Ahmed Best, Chris Murray and DJ Shyboy. I also added Professor Nancy Baym, who studies musical cultures, to add some extra brainpower and perspective.

They didn't take video of our panel, but fortunately, I recorded the audio of the entire conversation. You can download it here.

Video of my keynote at World's Fair Use Day 2011

Yesterday, I gave a keynote presentation based on "Mashed Up" at World's Fair Use Day, hosted by Public Knowledge. The video of the talk (introduced by my former NYU student, Katy Tasker, a PK staffer), is now available on UStream, as are the other excellent panels and presentations.

(The slides from the presentation can be accessed online here: http://bit.ly/aramwfud)

Posted at 19:01 in Aesthetic Theory, Appropriation, Art and Technology, Books, Communication Policy, Congitive/Neuropsych, Cultural Studies, DIY, Education, Free Software, Friends, Genre, Style and Taste, Hacking, Intellectual Property, Media Ownership, Music, Music History, Music Industry, Musicology, Network Society, personal, Politricks, Popular Culture, Remix Culture, Resistant Aesthetic Practices, Subcultures, viral video, work | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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Five years ago, I taught a class I loved at USC called "Music as Communication." I've substantially revamped the syllabus, and am now teaching "Musical Cultures and Industries" to my Rutgers undergrads this Spring.

Below is a draft of the syllabus. I welcome your comments.

1/18: Introduction

1/25: I Am What I Play: Music and Identity

• Turnbull, C. M. (1968). The Forest People. Chapter 4, pp 73-93.
• Lipsitz, G. (1990). Cruising around the historical bloc: postmodern and popular music in East Los Angeles. In K. Gelder and S. Thornton (Eds.), The Subcultures Reader. pp. 350-359.
• Sacks, O. (2008). Musicophilia, Chapter 29, pp. 371-388

OPTIONAL:

• Mingus, C. (1971). Beneath the Underdog. New York: Vintage. Chapter 31, pp. 283-304.

 2/1: Blinding You With Science: What Makes Music Work?

• Levitin, D. This is Your Brain on Music. Chapters 1 & 3
• Sacks, O. (2008). Musicophilia, Chapter 4

2/8: The Song Remains the Same: Where Music Comes From

• D'Olivet, F. (1997). The Secret Lore of Music (J. Godwin, trans.). Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions. Chapter 4.
• Dylan, B. (2004). Chronicles, Volume One. Chapter 5.
• Carter, S. (2010). Jay-Z: Decoded, pp. 22-31; 54-59
• Demers, J. (2006). Steal This Music. Chapter 2

2/15: A Love Supreme: Music and Spirituality

• Hebdige, D. (1987). Cut 'n' mix: cultural identity and Caribbean music. London: Comedia, Chapters 5-6, pp. 29-44)
• Berendt, J.-E. (1983). The World is Sound: Nada Brahma (Insla Verla, trans.). Rochester, VT: Destiny Books. Chapter 11, pp. 173-182
• Shaw, G. B. (1990). “A Messiah for Heathens” in J. Sullivan (ed.), Words on Music. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press. pp. 76-79
  
  OPTIONAL:
• d'Olivet, Chapter 6-7, pp. 94-109

2/22: Babylon Burning: Music and Politics

Guest: Vivien Goldman, Veteran Punk Journalist

• Goldman, V. (2006). The Book of Exodus. Chapter 9.
• Scherzinger, M., & Smith, S. (2007). From blatant to latent protest (and back again): on the politics of theatrical spectacle in Madonna's ‘American Life’. Popular Music, 26(2), 211-29.
• Crist, S. A. (2009). Jazz as Democracy? Dave Brubeck and Cold War Politics. The Journal of Musicology, 26(2), pp. 133-174.

3/1: Music Industry, Side A: 20^th Century Lockdown

• Caves, R. E. (2002) Creative Industries. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Chapters 3 & 9 &18 (music sections thereof), pp. 61-67, 146-160, 286-296
• Dannen, F. (1990). Hit men: power brokers and fast money inside the music business. New York: Times Books. Chapter 1, pp. 3-17.
• Albini, S. (1997). The Problem of Music. In Thomas Frank and Matt Weiland (eds.) Commodify your dissent: salvos from the Baffler. New York: Norton. pp. 164-176.

3/8: Music Industry, Side B: 21^st Century Freakout

Guest: [name redacted], VP, VH1

• Sinnreich, A. (2011). Written testimony in Arista Records v. Lime Group.
• Charnas, D. (2010). The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip-Hop. Chapter 8.

SPRING BREAK

3/22: FIELD TRIP: TBA

 Take-home Midterm Due

3/29: Pretty Fly for a White Guy: Music and Race

• Kun, J. Audiotopia: Music, Race and America. Chapter 2.
• Cateforis, T. Performing the Avant-Garde Groove: Devo and the Whiteness of the New Wave. American Music, 22(4), 564-588.
• Kelley, R. D. G. (1994). Race Rebels: Culture, Politics and the Black Working Class. Chapter 8.

OPTIONAL

• Saul, S. (2003). Freedom Is, Freedom Ain’t: Jazz and the Making of the Sixties. By Scott Saul. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Chapter 2, pp. 61-96

4/5: I Wanna Be a Macho Man: Music, Gender and Sexuality

• Frank, G. (2007). Discophobia: Antigay Prejudice and the 1979 Backlash against Disco. Journal of the History of Sexuality, 15(2), pp. 276-306
• Ehrenreich, et al. (1992). Beatlemania: A Sexually Defiant Consumer Subculture? In K. Gelder and S. Thornton (Eds.), The Subcultures Reader. pp. 350-359.
• Peter Watrous (1994). Why Women Remain At the Back of the Bus. New York Times
• Von Bingen, H. (1994). The Letters of Hildegard of Bingen (J. L. Baird & R. K. Ehrman, trans.). New York: Oxford. Letter # 23, pp. 76-80.

4/12: Do You Believe in Bed Intruders? Music, Authenticity and Technology

• Barthes, R. (1977) Image, Music, Text (Stephen Heath, Ed. and trans.). New York: Hill. Chapter: “The Grain of the Voice,” pp. 179-189
• Sterne, J. (2003). The Audible Past. Chapter 5.
• Auner, J. (2003). Sing it for me: Posthuman ventriloquism in recent popular music. Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 128, 98-122.

4/19: Two Turntables and a Microphone: Mixing and Mashing

• Sinnreich, A. (2010). Mashed Up: Music, Technology, and the Rise of Configurable Culture. University of Massachusetts Press.
• New York Times, 2011. The Recombinant DNA of the Mash-Up.

4/26: Conclusion: Listening Party

Recently, I gave my "Music in the Network Age" talk for Evan Korth's "Computers and Society" class at NYU's Comp Sci department. I was honored to be one of Evan's speakers -- his list is deep and impressive.

Below is the video, courtesy of Joly MacFie:

Previously: [Lecture] Today is Opposite Day: Music in the Network Age (audio + slides)

I first gave this lecture as the keynote at the 2008 Halifox Pop Explosion conference, but since then I've reprised it a number of times, especially for Martin Scherzinger's NYU Steinhardt class (which I've been voluntarily roped into for the past three semesters).

Below is the latest version of the deck, which you can view as you listen to the audio (in Apple's AAC format) from my presentation in Martin's class on October 21st, 2010. 

Audio link: http://bit.ly/9ke9IR 

It's so simple, it's brilliant. Nick Pittsinger used an open-source sound-stretching program called Paulstretch to slow down Beeeeeeber's "U Smile" to 12.5% of its original speed. The result is kind of like Vangelis meets Philip Glass. It also kind of reminds me of Bill Viola's video installation series The Passions and V/VM's audio destruction in his guise as the Caretaker. 

There's been a lot of interesting research on acoustics and genre over the years, but maybe it all just comes down to tempo and its effect on timbre...

J. BIEBZ - U SMILE 800% SLOWER by Shamantis

(Seen on Gawker)

The San Francisco Bay Guardian reports that the SFPD has begun routinely seizing DJs laptops at house parties. Like the ACTA treaty our federal government is currently pursuing, it's representative of a disturbing new trend in law enforcement -- one in which our digital civil liberties, or "e-speech," are not accorded the same protections that they would be in our physical lives or traditional communications media.

However, there's also something very familiar about this story. As I discuss in my forthcoming book, Mashed Up, musical practices and technologies have always been subjected to government regulation, often at gunpoint, from ancient times to the present. This is because music acts as a kind of social and psychological blueprint, and new musical ideas nearly always carry with them new social ideas, which threaten established institutions.

In the case of DJ- and laptop-based music, the new musical ideas are sufficiently threatening to destabilize all of today's modern institutions -- in the government, the marketplace, and even houses of worship. No small wonder, then, that the police would begin to confiscate and criminalize these devices. 

Of course, the flip side of regulation is resistance. Even history's most dispossessed peoples (e.g. slaves in the antebellum South) have responded to musical subjugation with innovative and canny countermeasures. I'm kind of looking forward to seeing how the SF DJ scene starts to hide its contraband...

Today I spent an hour on MPR's "Midmorning" (along with Daniel Radosh and Jason Della Rocca) discussing the soon-to-launch Beatles Rock Band, and some of its bigger-picture implications for the media industry and society at large. We also responded to a lot of listener questions. Altogether, it was a nice, freewheeling conversation, aided by host Kerri Miller's terrific moderation.

Here's the stream of the show:

New Syllabus: Musical Cultures & Industries

Five years ago, I taught a class I loved at USC called "Music as Communication." I've substantially revamped the syllabus, and am now teaching "Musical Cultures and Industries" to my Rutgers undergrads this Spring.

Below is a draft of the syllabus. I welcome your comments.

1/18: Introduction

1/25: I Am What I Play: Music and Identity

• Turnbull, C. M. (1968). The Forest People. Chapter 4, pp 73-93.
• Lipsitz, G. (1990). Cruising around the historical bloc: postmodern and popular music in East Los Angeles. In K. Gelder and S. Thornton (Eds.), The Subcultures Reader. pp. 350-359.
• Sacks, O. (2008). Musicophilia, Chapter 29, pp. 371-388

OPTIONAL:

• Mingus, C. (1971). Beneath the Underdog. New York: Vintage. Chapter 31, pp. 283-304.

 2/1: Blinding You With Science: What Makes Music Work?

• Levitin, D. This is Your Brain on Music. Chapters 1 & 3
• Sacks, O. (2008). Musicophilia, Chapter 4

2/8: The Song Remains the Same: Where Music Comes From

• D'Olivet, F. (1997). The Secret Lore of Music (J. Godwin, trans.). Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions. Chapter 4.
• Dylan, B. (2004). Chronicles, Volume One. Chapter 5.
• Carter, S. (2010). Jay-Z: Decoded, pp. 22-31; 54-59
• Demers, J. (2006). Steal This Music. Chapter 2

2/15: A Love Supreme: Music and Spirituality

• Hebdige, D. (1987). Cut 'n' mix: cultural identity and Caribbean music. London: Comedia, Chapters 5-6, pp. 29-44)
• Berendt, J.-E. (1983). The World is Sound: Nada Brahma (Insla Verla, trans.). Rochester, VT: Destiny Books. Chapter 11, pp. 173-182
• Shaw, G. B. (1990). “A Messiah for Heathens” in J. Sullivan (ed.), Words on Music. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press. pp. 76-79
  
  OPTIONAL:
• d'Olivet, Chapter 6-7, pp. 94-109

2/22: Babylon Burning: Music and Politics

Guest: Vivien Goldman, Veteran Punk Journalist

• Goldman, V. (2006). The Book of Exodus. Chapter 9.
• Scherzinger, M., & Smith, S. (2007). From blatant to latent protest (and back again): on the politics of theatrical spectacle in Madonna's ‘American Life’. Popular Music, 26(2), 211-29.
• Crist, S. A. (2009). Jazz as Democracy? Dave Brubeck and Cold War Politics. The Journal of Musicology, 26(2), pp. 133-174.

3/1: Music Industry, Side A: 20^th Century Lockdown

• Caves, R. E. (2002) Creative Industries. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Chapters 3 & 9 &18 (music sections thereof), pp. 61-67, 146-160, 286-296
• Dannen, F. (1990). Hit men: power brokers and fast money inside the music business. New York: Times Books. Chapter 1, pp. 3-17.
• Albini, S. (1997). The Problem of Music. In Thomas Frank and Matt Weiland (eds.) Commodify your dissent: salvos from the Baffler. New York: Norton. pp. 164-176.

3/8: Music Industry, Side B: 21^st Century Freakout

Guest: [name redacted], VP, VH1

• Sinnreich, A. (2011). Written testimony in Arista Records v. Lime Group.
• Charnas, D. (2010). The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip-Hop. Chapter 8.

SPRING BREAK

3/22: FIELD TRIP: TBA

 Take-home Midterm Due

3/29: Pretty Fly for a White Guy: Music and Race

• Kun, J. Audiotopia: Music, Race and America. Chapter 2.
• Cateforis, T. Performing the Avant-Garde Groove: Devo and the Whiteness of the New Wave. American Music, 22(4), 564-588.
• Kelley, R. D. G. (1994). Race Rebels: Culture, Politics and the Black Working Class. Chapter 8.

OPTIONAL

• Saul, S. (2003). Freedom Is, Freedom Ain’t: Jazz and the Making of the Sixties. By Scott Saul. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Chapter 2, pp. 61-96

4/5: I Wanna Be a Macho Man: Music, Gender and Sexuality

• Frank, G. (2007). Discophobia: Antigay Prejudice and the 1979 Backlash against Disco. Journal of the History of Sexuality, 15(2), pp. 276-306
• Ehrenreich, et al. (1992). Beatlemania: A Sexually Defiant Consumer Subculture? In K. Gelder and S. Thornton (Eds.), The Subcultures Reader. pp. 350-359.
• Peter Watrous (1994). Why Women Remain At the Back of the Bus. New York Times
• Von Bingen, H. (1994). The Letters of Hildegard of Bingen (J. L. Baird & R. K. Ehrman, trans.). New York: Oxford. Letter # 23, pp. 76-80.

4/12: Do You Believe in Bed Intruders? Music, Authenticity and Technology

• Barthes, R. (1977) Image, Music, Text (Stephen Heath, Ed. and trans.). New York: Hill. Chapter: “The Grain of the Voice,” pp. 179-189
• Sterne, J. (2003). The Audible Past. Chapter 5.
• Auner, J. (2003). Sing it for me: Posthuman ventriloquism in recent popular music. Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 128, 98-122.

4/19: Two Turntables and a Microphone: Mixing and Mashing

• Sinnreich, A. (2010). Mashed Up: Music, Technology, and the Rise of Configurable Culture. University of Massachusetts Press.
• New York Times, 2011. The Recombinant DNA of the Mash-Up.

4/26: Conclusion: Listening Party

[Lecture] Today is Opposite Day: Music in the Network Age (NYU Video)

Recently, I gave my "Music in the Network Age" talk for Evan Korth's "Computers and Society" class at NYU's Comp Sci department. I was honored to be one of Evan's speakers -- his list is deep and impressive.

Below is the video, courtesy of Joly MacFie:

Previously: [Lecture] Today is Opposite Day: Music in the Network Age (audio + slides)

[Lecture] Today is Opposite Day: Music in the Network Age (audio + slides)

I first gave this lecture as the keynote at the 2008 Halifox Pop Explosion conference, but since then I've reprised it a number of times, especially for Martin Scherzinger's NYU Steinhardt class (which I've been voluntarily roped into for the past three semesters).

Below is the latest version of the deck, which you can view as you listen to the audio (in Apple's AAC format) from my presentation in Martin's class on October 21st, 2010. 

Audio link: http://bit.ly/9ke9IR 

Justin Beeeeber at 1/8 speed sounds like a Kubrick score

It's so simple, it's brilliant. Nick Pittsinger used an open-source sound-stretching program called Paulstretch to slow down Beeeeeeber's "U Smile" to 12.5% of its original speed. The result is kind of like Vangelis meets Philip Glass. It also kind of reminds me of Bill Viola's video installation series The Passions and V/VM's audio destruction in his guise as the Caretaker. 

There's been a lot of interesting research on acoustics and genre over the years, but maybe it all just comes down to tempo and its effect on timbre...

J. BIEBZ - U SMILE 800% SLOWER by Shamantis

(Seen on Gawker)

SF Police Seizing DJs' Laptops -- Why Am I Not Surprised?

The San Francisco Bay Guardian reports that the SFPD has begun routinely seizing DJs laptops at house parties. Like the ACTA treaty our federal government is currently pursuing, it's representative of a disturbing new trend in law enforcement -- one in which our digital civil liberties, or "e-speech," are not accorded the same protections that they would be in our physical lives or traditional communications media.

However, there's also something very familiar about this story. As I discuss in my forthcoming book, Mashed Up, musical practices and technologies have always been subjected to government regulation, often at gunpoint, from ancient times to the present. This is because music acts as a kind of social and psychological blueprint, and new musical ideas nearly always carry with them new social ideas, which threaten established institutions.

In the case of DJ- and laptop-based music, the new musical ideas are sufficiently threatening to destabilize all of today's modern institutions -- in the government, the marketplace, and even houses of worship. No small wonder, then, that the police would begin to confiscate and criminalize these devices. 

Of course, the flip side of regulation is resistance. Even history's most dispossessed peoples (e.g. slaves in the antebellum South) have responded to musical subjugation with innovative and canny countermeasures. I'm kind of looking forward to seeing how the SF DJ scene starts to hide its contraband...

My radio interview on Beatles Rock Band

Today I spent an hour on MPR's "Midmorning" (along with Daniel Radosh and Jason Della Rocca) discussing the soon-to-launch Beatles Rock Band, and some of its bigger-picture implications for the media industry and society at large. We also responded to a lot of listener questions. Altogether, it was a nice, freewheeling conversation, aided by host Kerri Miller's terrific moderation.

Here's the stream of the show: