Originally broadcast on CBC Radio One’s “Definitely Not The Opera” (DNTO), this pieces explores the meaning and essence of that sitcom staple, the laugh track. It briefly explores the origins of the laugh track before examining the new crop of laugh track-less situation comedies emerging on the airwaves. The piece was written and performed by Martin Horn and produced at CBC studios in Montreal and Winnpeg. It features an interview with Ken Levine, a television writer with credits including Frasier, Cheers, and The Simpsons.
Death of the Laugh Track
0 Comments | Posted by: martin on Wednesday December 05th 2007
Post-millennial technophilia and the ubiquity of laptop computers conspired to form a new class of electronic musician, the laptop musician. Often times their faces were obscured by their screens as they sat on stage and played intensely sophisticated compositions focused on timbre, pulse and collage. Are these people actually performing? Are they just pressing play? What is the difference anyway? This short documentary sought to explore these and other questions surrounding the laptop scene that was peaking in 2004.
1 Comment | Posted by: ali on Monday December 03rd 2007
In art school, one is generally expected to privilege symbolism over narrative, medium over message and circular over linear. In art school, the term “abstract” is often perverted not to mean “essential” but to mean “ephemeral”. This video was a reaction to a particularly frustrating art class. Rahman decided to buck convention and make a relatively convential video. It was originally projected on three-screens synched to a single soudtrack. The framing, editing and rapid-fire narrative all demonstrate Rahman’s comfort with the medium and with himself as subject. Even if the content seems a little
puerile now. Chalk it up to youthful indiscretion.
0 Comments | Posted by: ali on Monday December 03rd 2007
The Fondation Langlois makes the MMFA a site for e-adventures
I was 19 when I saw a Bill Viola retrospective at the Whitney in New York. Stoned, alone and young as I was, it represented the pinnacle of a pure aesthetic experience for me. I was not left with memories of the pieces, but impressions juxtaposed upon television reflections, scattered and meaningful white noise. Pieces of the pieces. All I remembered when I left was that, at the moment I was there, I understood something.
Read the full article
0 Comments | Posted by: ali on Monday December 03rd 2007
Emi Honda’s post-urban intervention is no waste of space
Urban Detroit is overgrown. After decades of decay the inner city is experiencing something of an eco-renaissance. Vacant lots have been converted into community gardens, vines creep up through derelict buildings, small forests are pushing their way through deserted industrial parks. Artist Emi Honda would perhaps be at home in post-industrial Detroit.
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0 Comments | Posted by: ali on Monday December 03rd 2007
Midway through the preview screening of her video Probably Better Than Bonham, artist Bridget A. Moser pauses the tape and looks quizzically at the gathered few.
“Did I cut off a piece of my own hair and tape it to my face to make my handlebar moustache? Yes I did.”
The video pits the artist against the spirit of legendary Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham as she attempts to prove that she is the superior musician. The piece fits uncomfortably in the tradition of early Dadaism, minus the conscious attack on the institution. When asked about her motives, the cryptic Moser offers: “I wanted a platform to showcase my preternatural talent. That is all.”
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0 Comments | Posted by: ali on Sunday December 02nd 2007
By Ali Rahman, Seb Speier & Darren Ortiz
(Unfinished) 2004
Until the computer age, narrative form has always been the standard for communicating and sharing knowledge and ideas. Facts were imparted in the form of a storyline complete with characters, climax, and a moral. Now, we are having to become accustomed to a new form of storytelling…the database.
The storyline is non-existent in a database driven world. Information is presented in a non-linear format where one bit/byte of info bears no more significance than another. The database and narrative formats are forced to live together in our world yet are in direct juxtaposition with each other.
Nonversations seeks to address the opposition between database and narrative, in the context of the electronic age. It does this by directly challenging the concept that a story/information cannot be told in both a database and a narrative format at the same time. Nonversations is a storyline complete with characters, plot, subplots, etc… yet is presented in a non-linear database format.
Our story is set in an apartment complex, inhabited by the various archetypal characters. Each character has been written with their own individual back-stories, and each into a larger unspoken narrative.
The form of the videos is designed to reflect the scattered and fragmented nature of the postmodern experience. They deliberately distort traditional perceptions of time, identity, and interaction. They abstract the experience of the characters until they turn into nothing but scattered, dichotomized data bits. These characters hardly know themselves let alone each other. They don’t really care about each other, they couldn’t really give a damn about what the other is saying. They aren’t really having conversations, they’re having “nonversations”.
Note: Nonversations was never finished. Many interactions are inactive. That said, it was a tremendous endeavor. Writing a non-linear script required two hundred pages of notes alone. Execution of the project with a two week timeline taught us a great deal about logistics, casting and pre-production.
