Workshop Facilitator
Jon Smeathers
Lost Futures of Me at the Zoo: Mark Fisher, Non-Musicology & YouTube Mixtapes
A sound workshop with Jon Smeathers
vinyl crackle expresses a time out of joint.
no longer an illusion of presence..
where the mediation is being foregrounded…
A signifier of another time, a time beyond the present….
Mark Fisher, 2011
When: Tuesday the 10th of November 2020
Time: 12.30pm – 5.30pm
Location: Contemporary Art Tasmania – 27 Tasma St, North Hobart TAS 7000
The workshop is limited to 16 places and bookings are essential.
If the phonographic crackle is the index of time itself, what does it mean for us to listen through YouTube’s codec to the resonance of YouTube’s time?
Lost Futures of Me At The Zoo* (LFMZ) is a one day workshop that will speculate on YouTube as a sonic performative tool. The program will include testing YouTube’s potential as an exclusive interface to create mashups, algorithmic dj sets and envision mixtapes/collages formed from the rhythmic currents of YouTube’s tempor(e)ality.
LFMZ will use theoretical frameworks created by Mark Fisher and Francios Laurelle as means to analyse how we may engage with Youtube as an access point for creating new directions in sound collage. The workshop will also provide (non)musical historical contexts through sampling and cut-up techniques, explore listening examples in the distortion of YouTube’s codec and provide opportunities to participate in group exercises, discussions, readings and short performances using YouTube and audio mixing techniques. Recordings and data will be compiled during the workshop for use as a guide on using YouTube as sonic performance and collage tool. The guide will be published through the experimental database and archive (con)current.future/s.
LFMZ is open to all disciplines and age groups. No technical skills are required. Anyone who is interested to explore the possibilities of sound collage, the boundaries of one’s aural capacity and an ‘out of joint thinking-through-sound’ is welcome. Refreshments will be provided on the day.
Requirements**
Laptop
Headphones
* Me at the zoo is YouTube’s first published video on the 24th of April 2005 by YouTube’s co-founder Jawed Karim under the username jawed. At the time of writing this, it has accumulated 114,512,402 views. 10 million comments, 42 million likes and 120 thousand dislikes.
** We understand that not all have access to this kind of equipment. So, if you are interested in participating but don’t have access to the above requirements, follow the link to register and contact us and we will organise an alternative for you. Your presence, interest and participation is the most important to us.
Presented by Jon Smeathers, Contemporary Art Tasmania’s Cobra Project and ℭ Mixtapes.
Image credit: Beadle_design, lfmz, 2020. 3D Render: Beadle.