THEY GOT ME IN CHAIIINNZZZZZ!!!!

quite the opposite!! (from my title i mean)

yes! how refreshing it is to break the ice and get posting on this and adjust the slightly "differing level of contribution" to this blog.. ah, see what I did there? hopefully people are reading this blog from last to first posting and understand that. Perhaps we should deliberately reorder it so that it makes sense to those reading it from top to bottom.
Or not,

I do what I feel like
-Bart Simpson

The last post looks good, lots of good ideas there. With regards to our Specific Topics we could discuss, and #1) Creative Production. I would like to spend some time introducing Ryuichi Sakamoto's incredibly inspiring and influential project: Chain Music.

http://www.sitesakamoto.com/chainmusic/

I believe Mr. Sakamoto describes the project best in this succinct excerpt from the site i just posted:

"The idea is to chain musical pieces from one artist to another, like a chain letter.

The purpose is to musically mark the passage of time that Iraq is in a state of war, to mark the steps to peace, to take each day that there is war and build a musical memorial to the desire for peace as well as to mark off the time of war.

So far 35 artists have contributed their musical pieces, adding on to the existing work vertically as well as horizontally, overlaying or extending the existing creation.

There are no rules how to contribute musically, except that the contributor must not eliminate any of the existing music as he or she adds to it, because the existing music is the result of the artistic contribution of the other artists."

To give a bit of background on Sakamoto, he is a gifted musician with an impeccable ear for technical production. He has had a successful career working along side such artists as David Bowie and David Byrne and probably several other 'David's' (just to give you an idea of the scope). He has composed music for films as well and even did some acting. He draws from a multicultural influence when he creates and is of course, somewhat of a philanthropist. I could go on, but that's the short version. (his bio is all on the internet if you are curious to know more).

Chain Music is a great example of a situation where artists from anywhere in the world could potentially collaborate on the same work of audio without ever having to leave their studio… or even their bedroom in some cases.

Having lived through highly transitional periods of the Analog to Digital progression, Sakamoto is admittedly an 'early user' to forms of new media and seemingly gravitates toward them impulsively. Utilizing these digital tools as not just a means to an end but also as a kind of watermarked story telling, shows a full integration of these new forms of networking into the creative process. These watermarks of course, are created by the only rule for the project, which was; disallowing each contributor in the sequence to take away a past contributors addition to the piece, which in turn created a evolving sense of morphosis - which my spellcheck adamantly believes is not a word.

CHAIN MUZAK AWE-DIO - http://www.sitesakamoto.com/chainmusic/qt.mov

The ability to make digital copies of a work in progress, put them in folders, and trade them over the internet with ease and speed, opens up limitless possibilities for creative collaboration. Chain Music is a great example of these creative possibilities.

more to come…

-Rene
"RIIIIGHT GUYS!?"