The Revolution Will Be Televised
The first release from Airburst Orchestra, with profound apologies to Gil Scott-Heron. He rapped about a revolution owned by the oppressed and the downtrodden masses who would break free of established narrative and media cliche. In contrast, what I see today is a world where any ostensible revolution, whether political or technological, is turned on its head to profit the rich and powerful, the tech giants and demagogues. Cynical moi?
By the way, lest you think I support conspiracy theories, what I see is they're in fact just another fake revolution, another turning of reality on its head. Most conspiracy theories are a conspiracy to mislead and enslave people to crazy ideas that benefit the influencers and social media stars who spread them. What can you do against all that? Like Public Enemy said "Don't Believe The Hype".
The words are mine but the voice is text-to-speech AI. The audio was put together in the free editing app Audacity. The video was assembled in Clipchamp and some of the "effects" and animations were created with PowerPoint.
In case YouTube gets uppity about snarky references to Google et el and takes it down you can download the file directly here
Experimental 8mm movie
A project from the late 1980s. I found an old unused reel of 8mm film at my parents' house and decided to make an art movie. The camera I borrowed to do it was about as basic as they come, so the only way to do stop-frame stuff was to dab the trigger and hope it shot off as few frames as possible. I also tried sellotaping the camera to the footpeg of my mighty Honda CG125 motorbike for some "action" shots. Finally, with the last few feet, I just pointed the camera at the TV screen and the mismatch between frame rates created a sort of pulsing effect. The soundtrack was meant to be a sort of "electropunk" thing influenced by (among others) Cabaret Voltaire and Jesus & Mary Chain. Unfortunately, back then, I had no way of editing the footage or combining it with the audio from my dilapidated 4-track portastudio, so everything was slung in a box and forgotten about.
Move forward a decade or so and home computers had advanced enough to give me potential editing options, so I got the film digitised. Unfortunately I think it had deteriorated a bit in the meantime. Also, my 4-track had died long ago. I bodged together a soundless edit with Windows Movie Maker, then got frustrated and chucked it back in store. Finally, having found myself with time on my hands for health reasons and equipped with some modern kit, I've grafted together something that bears a distant relationship to the original maniacal auteur concept.
Whalesong experiment
An experiment with the Wingie 2 synth/effects unit made by chinese artist/developer Meng Qi. And in the process a tribute to some magnificent creatures. I wonder if this can be thought of as an odd take on one of those "trad arranged" tunes? If there's a copyright in the underlying song then it belongs to a humpback whale somewhere out there in the ocean, possiby handed down to that whale in some form by generations of whales before it. I suppose I could claim to have added something by programming the harmonics and note sequence in the Wingie 2 but I'm not really seeking great credit and certainly not profit.
The video footage came from The Internet Archive and as far as I'm aware it's public domain. It was an hour-long documentary about whales and the people who film them. I just cut it down to underwater shots - pretty much in the sequence they appear in the original. I replaced jump cuts with fades because that seemed to make it flow better. The original source is credited at the end. If any copyright holder has problems with my use of this footage then let me know and either we can work something out or, if you want, I'll remove the video.
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