Category Archives: Transhuman News

Synopsis | Vertigo: A Century Of Multimedia Art From Futurism To The Web
JUST A SUMMARY - THE SUMMARY YOUR FAVORITE BOOK =--- Where to buy this book? ISBN: 9788861305625 Book Review of Vertigo: A Century of Multimedia Art from Futurism to the Web by...

By: Heavy truck

Visit link:
Synopsis | Vertigo: A Century Of Multimedia Art From Futurism To The Web - Video

The Americas. This is where the End began. The West, the place of Prophecy, the place of Destiny. The genetic cellular database of Ancestral awakenings thrums in tune to the drumbeat call of generations of soul, of pain and joy rising above thespontaneouseruption of life, uncontrollable, unbounded, free of constriction or constraint in its purest form. This is the natural path life takes like water, flowing down or up whatever channel presents a path, making one where none exists, or deepening preexisting ways, widening, eroding resistance whenever encountered to open the way for a more intense flow of energy.

What doesall or any of this have to do with Hip Hop? With a bunch of kids who play their music too loud, who seem to have a fascination with cursing, disrespect of authority and women, baggy clothing, crime and material culture? How is any of this spiritual in nature and what does it have to do with consciousness? To answer these questions fully it is necessary to understand what Hip Hop is, what it really represents, where it came from and where it is going.

Loosely defined, it isthe culture of the urbanized underclass, of the disaffected and the disillusioned masses. A culture of rebellion and revolt that employs every mode of communication known to humanity in order to get its message across. Music, art, the spoken word, the beat, movement. MCing, DJing, Break Dancing/Popping/Locking and Graffiti are its major expressions, all of which encompass the primal cries of those relegated to possessing only their spirits and souls and little else of material substance. As a post-modern deconstruction of a Western European meta-narrative, Hip Hop stands as an exemplar ofthe effect upon the individual of societal ills that are now global in scope. Ageless, as an expression of African-based musical and communicative forms of expression, Hip Hop was informally born as a genre in late 1970s New York City and the surrounding region, expanding relatively quickly from a purely regional expression to its current status as multi-billion dollar music of the global youth culture. It is fair to say that Hip Hop has come a long way. But it is also fair to say that it has a way to go still before it reaches its full potential.

Afrofuturism as a movement has evolved alongside Hip Hop, similarly having no definitive beginning while simultaneously coalescing alongside Hip Hop in urban America during the late 1970s. Its formal inception occurs much later, in the late 1990s and into the 00s as the online presence of African Americans grew stronger. The application of diverse academic traditions to the same questions was the beginning of a process that sought to dissect the cultural and media-based discourse of African-originated and futuristically-themed influence in the preceding decades in the attempt to define their interests and cultural memes.

And so it was that a small, ethnically diverse but concentrated listserv, called Afrofuturism, was born and prospered, for a time. Beyond the vigorous debates, expositions of consciousness, collaborations and intellectualisms lay an underlying strata of vast potentiality and possibility, made manifest through the broad and open genres of science and speculative fiction. The movement was represented by black authors, academics, Hip Hop headz and performers alike, all sharing a similar fascination with futuristic themes and expressions of modern societal tropes under the guise of the fantastic. Afrofuturism never really coalesced as a full-blown cultural shift outside of the avant-garde arts and music scenes of the large urban areas, but the fish bowl-like arena the internet was in those days brought larger and more mainstream attention to this small collective of personalities and ideas, raised against the growing din of diverse voices the Net was soon to become.

Hip Hop and the Afrofuture cannot beseparated from the evolution of America as a nation, but they also cannot be separated from the evolution of consciousness not only of this country, but of the world. The impact of Hip Hop has been felt upon every continent, in every country. Rap is the music of the global youth culture. It is the sound ofrebellionand discontentthat can be heardwhereverthe young are gathered and wherever inequalities have resulted in the formalization of destitution. The original means by which Hip Hop formedhave been repeated in country after country,city after city as the young and the listless have found themselves with little money and no musical education but still possessed of singing hearts and dancing souls, theirs or their parents record collections and an ever-growing mass of CDs and MP3s that consolidate the Music of the Ages. The ready availability and affordability of computers, digital music and sound equipment have created theperfect environment for a large-scale explosion of beat-centered creativity as the hard, biting sounds of rap drive the air and digital-waves toward the resolution of a Hip Hop planet, born to tear down paradigms not built for their edification.

There is Russian Hip Hop, Middle Eastern Hip Hop, African Hip Hop, European Hip Hop, Latin American Hip Hop. You will find baggy jeans and ball caps worn by youth of every ethnicity, shade, size or gender in every country in the world. This acceptance of aquintessentiallyAmerican artform by two generations, X and Y, who are now birthing a third, generation Z, will take the artform into new territory as global consciousness coalesces around the ideals that undergird the very essence of Hip Hop. Freedom of expression and lifestyle choices, a disdain for centralized authority, a dearth of color consciousness and a dislike of the trappings of corporate and/or governmental culture typify the belief system of Hip Hop Headz around the globe. The continuing revelations regarding the world-wide dominance of elite, corporate conspiracies have resulted in an ever-spreading understanding of the many threads that tie in to this reality, be they economic, political or cultural in nature. A wide-spread distrust of governmental measures as well as a realization that corporate culture does not have the best interests of the individual in mind bind diverse cultures and ethnicities together in recognition of their shared servitude and bondage to global consumer culture and hegemonic political domination by a self-serving and mega-rich elite.

The material and mainstream response to the impact of Hip Hop began early in its modern evolution. With the success of the Conscious Hip Hop movement in the United States in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a concerted effort was made on the part ofthe Music Industry to derail the movement by changing the focus of the music from positive messages, African history and evolved states of being to that of material wealth, violence and hyper-sexuality. According to music industry insiders, there was asuccessful attempt to provide monetary incentives and change the focus of individual Hip Hop artists to rap more about these topics and also to contract artists that would create the type of music that glorified self-hate and violence in many forms. This era was accompanied by rising drug use, gang violence in many inner cities and the destruction of previously cohesive neighborhoods by gentrification and urban renewal projects that diffused black power by moving populations out of the urban center and into suburban apartment complexes. The simultaneous influx of illegal drugs as well as the continuing unavailability of stable sources of income into these uprooted communities contributed heavily to the continuing dismantling of black political power. But what the Powers-That-Be did not take into account was the expansion of Hip Hops influence out of the black community and into the white community and from there, into the rest of the world. Even though the possibility of this happening was evident from its earliest beginnings as exemplified by its multi-ethnic composition in the early to mid-80s as it spread like wildfire across America the change in the focus of Hip Hop from a black consciousness to a gangsta/thug mentality that glorified the patriarchy and material accumulation appealed to the children of the suburbs, the children of affluence, the white children of th establishment. Their rebellion against their parents and dedicated economic commitment to Hip Hop raised theart formto national and internationalprominence, if not in spite of, thenbecause of the negative direction the Industry chose to force the music into.

As Hip Hop has evolved within the crucible of a planet in the throes of change, it has come to represent a shifting of consciousness, being the musical form best suited for political and social challenges. Its hard, eviscerating beats, biting and rough dictions and choruses, are theperfect backdrop to a world on the cusp oftransformationalchange. While mainstream Rap still possesses that material edge that glorifies bling, the dollar bill and the objectification of women as sexual objects, underground Hip Hop culture remains conscious and concerned with the plight of the underclass the world across. With the spread of Internet access across the planet, that underclass has realized that they hold common cause with each other, no matter their country or origin or color. A global political consciousness is a precursor to a global spiritual consciousness as people become aware that politics is only the outermost layer of an affliction that goes much deeper. The speculative aspects of the Afro-future arise in this space created by infinite potentiality as artists meld their conceptions of the present with ideas about what could be, in a perfect world. The addition of both New Age and Afrocentric spiritual ideals, as well as the culmination of the Age centered around the 2012 fulcrum combine to create a discourse ofextraordinary exceptionalism that surpasses nation-hood and represents an elevated sense of connection, of oneness, of common cause.

There is a revolution of the spirit as well as the body that is overcoming the dictates of materiality, of modernism and the consumer culture. While there are many causative factors that have contributed to this awakening, the impact of African-related innovations and movements in the West have been strongly felt. From the Haitian revolution and the victories of TouissantLOuverture, to Nat Turner, the Civil War and the Civil Rights movement, there is a connection. From Jazz to Country to New Age genres, there is a connection. From Fats Domino, Little Richard and other African-Americans impact upon the evolution of Rock and Roll to the evolution of electronic and computer-based music and art forms, there is a connection. This connection is the expression of the Souls of Black Folk, the visceral nature of their interactions with the world, the spirit-filled mass consciousness that resists all attempts at suppression, repression and genocide. It is, in microcosm, representative of the human spirit in macrocosm, it is what happens when a group of people is put upon for centuries at a time and their desire for utter freedom grows beyond the capacity of any seeking control over them to contain. It is when expression becomes mandatory, wherenot even death is threat enough to maintain silence, that the extraordinary becomes mundane and wonder fills the world to overflowing on a daily basis.

Go here to read the rest:
Afrofuturism

Posted: March 19, 2011 | Author: Theodor Pavlopoulos | Filed under: Visual Arts | Tags: Art, Cubism, Futurism, Geometry, Mathematics, Visual Arts |

A Protocubist anecdote

Henri Matisses and Leo Steins reaction at first seeing Pablo Picassos Demoiselles D Avignon (1907) at the Bateau Lavoir was to half jokingly exclaim that the painter was trying to create a fourth dimension. The art of Painting may indeed be considered as a pathway across dimensions, as it has been for millennia the pursuit of convincingly squeezing the three dimensional world perceived by humans onto a two dimensional surface. Yet any discussion about a fourth dimension in Painting appears paradoxical: Painting is about reducing dimensions rather than expanding them.

Giacomo Balla, "Girl Running on a Balcony", 1912

Dalis Corpus Hypercubus

Salvador Dali, "Corpus Hypercubus" (1954)

Following the development of Mathematics, where spaces with more than three dimensions are routinely addressed, the unfathomable, metaphysical character of possibly unperceived dimensions attracted wider attention and, not surprisingly, some of these mathematical ideas found their way towards artistic expression. A notorious example is Salvador Dalis Crucifixion or Corpus Hypercubus (1954), a painting where Jesus Christ is depicted crucified upon the cross like three dimensional net of a hypercube, the four dimensional analog of a cube. Though some mental gymnastics have been created to assist, after considerable exercise, towards the understanding of the nature of objects inhabiting a world our mind is not tuned to, full perception of objects such as the hypercube may be even impossible. Yet some at least superficial understanding may be achieved by creating analogs in spaces of lower dimensions. A cube for example, the 3D analog of the hypercube, can be formed by properly folding a 2D net consisting of six squares. When rotated, a cube casts shadows of a variety of geometric shapes on a 2D wall, two of them being a hexagonal shape and a square. Similarly, a hypercube, inhabiting a 4D space, casts shadows of a variety of three dimensional shapes upon 3D space and it can be formed by properly folding a 3D net consisting of eight cubes (though this kind of folding is far from possible to imagine), such as the one depicted in Corpus Hypercubus. From this point of view, Dalis painting represents a pathway from 4D space (hypercube) towards 3D space (hypercube net) and then towards 2D space (the canvas surface).

A two dimensional projection of the three dimensional "shadow" cast by a rotating hypercube

A view from a higher dimension

Elementary Mathematics provide the means of understanding any point in 2D space (the plane) as represented by two numbers (coordinates), one for each of the two dimensions of the 2D space, namely length and width. The first number (abscissa) measures the horizontal displacement while the second (ordinate) measures the vertical displacement with respect to a fixed point selected as the origin. A distance in 2D space can be measured by simply applying the Pythagorean Theorem and, as it easily turns out, it is the square root of the sum of squares of the two displacements (coordinates). Similarly, any point in 3D space can be specified using three coordinates, each representing the displacement corresponding to each of the three dimensions of 3D space, namely length, width and height. A distance in 3D space is thus the square root of the sum of squares of these three coordinates. Though it is impossible to visualize where a fourth dimension (beyond length, width and height) would extend to, mathematicians routinely manipulate points and objects in 4D space, represented by four coordinates, and accordingly measure distances as the square root of the squares of those.

See the article here:
The Fourth Dimension in Painting: Cubism and Futurism ...

Der Futurismus war eine aus Italien stammende avantgardistische Kunstbewegung, die aufgrund des breit gefcherten Spektrums den Anspruch erhob, eine neue Kultur zu begrnden.

Der Einfluss des Futurismus geht wesentlich auf seinen Grnder Filippo Tommaso Marinetti zurck und dessen erstes futuristisches Manifest von 1909. Die Bewegung endete mit dem Tod Marinettis im Jahre 1944.

Am 20. Februar 1909 publizierte der junge italienische Jurist und Dichter Filippo Tommaso Marinetti in der franzsischen Zeitung Le Figaro sein futuristisches Manifest und begrndete damit die futuristische Bewegung:

Trotz der hufigen Verwendung von Wir hat Marinetti das Manifest allein konzipiert (Pluralis Modestiae). Es spiegelt die berzeugungen und die Verfassung eines jungen Millionrssohnes wider, der mit siebzehn Jahren auf sich allein gestellt im Paris des Fin de Sicle Erfahrungen sammelte. Geprgt wurde er dabei von seinem literarischen Freundeskreis, zu dem vor allem Symbolisten wie Guillaume Apollinaire, Joris-Karl Huysmans und Stphane Mallarm gehrten, die sich, zur Gewalt bekennend, gegen die herrschende brgerliche Ordnung auflehnten. Mit ihnen stand Marinetti auch den Anarchisten wie Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Michail Bakunin und vor allem Georges Sorel nicht fern und begrte die Attentate ihrer Aktivisten. Im Manifest findet man auch Gedankengut von Friedrich Nietzsche. Wie Nietzsches Zarathustra, streben Marinettis Helden ihre Ziele allein gegen eine feindliche Welt ohne Rcksicht auf ihr Umfeld gewaltttig an.

Neben der Ablehnung der (christlichen) Moral und der Abneigung Marinettis gegenber Frauen zeigt sich im Manifest das Fehlen jeglicher sozialer Bezge. Nach einem vollendeten Jura-Studium fasste er den Entschluss, nicht in die Fustapfen seines erfolgreichen Vaters zu treten, sondern eine neue Kulturrichtung ins Leben zu rufen.

Das Manifest war als provokativer Tabubruch konzipiert, der Jugend, Gewalt, Aggressivitt, Geschwindigkeit, Krieg und Rcksichtslosigkeit verherrlichte und den als Passatisten (Anhnger des Vergangenen) bezeichneten etablierten Kulturtrgern und deren Anhngern den Kampf ansagte. Die Zerstrung von Bibliotheken, Museen und Akademien als Hort des Passatismus (berlebte Anschauungen) sollte der neuen Kultur den Weg ebnen und Italien eine neue kulturelle Identitt verleihen. Dazu Giovanni Lista:[2]

Die italienischen Knstler waren stets von der Idee gelhmt, nur die Nachkommen eines nunmehr verschwundenen Ruhms zu sein. Gegen diese Zwangsvorstellung von der unerreichbaren Vergangenheit verkndete Marinetti, dass sich eine neue Welt ankndige, und dass Italien jetzt seinen jahrhundertealten Ruhm zu Grabe tragen und vom Gewicht seiner herrlichen Vergangenheit befreien msse.

Selbst dieses provokative Manifest wre im skandalgewohnten Paris wohl ber ein Tagesgesprch nicht hinausgekommen, htte nicht Marinetti das in Knstlerkreisen geweckte Interesse dazu gentzt, einen Kreis junger Knstler um sich zu scharen und zu konzertiertem Schaffen zu bewegen, was er durch finanzielle Zuwendungen zu frdern verstand.

Zum Grundritual des Futurismus gehrten die zahlreichen Manifeste, mit denen sich der Futurismus in seiner Gesamtheit und in seinen Teilbereichen prsentierte.

Was den Futurismus von anderen Kunstrichtungen deutlich unterschied und zu dessen Verbreitung entscheidend beitrug, war die Art der Prsentation. Marinettis Serate futuriste (Futuristische Abende), die er ab 1910 vor allem in norditalienischen Theaterslen veranstaltete, sollten primr provozieren.[3] Deshalb begannen solche Abende grundstzlich mit der verbalen Herabsetzung der jeweiligen Stadt und ihrer Brger. Anschlieend wurden Manifeste verlesen, futuristische Kunstwerke gezeigt, futuristische Musik gespielt sowie Ausschnitte aus futuristischer Theaterkunst geboten. Solche Abende waren aus der Sicht Marinettis nur dann erfolgreich, wenn es sptestens zu Ende der Veranstaltung zu einem Tumult mit Einschreiten der Sicherheitskrfte kam und das Medienecho entsprechend gro war.

Read more here:
Futurismus Wikipedia