About the Flaneur
![Gustave Caillebotte. Paris Street, Rainy Day (La Place de l’Europe, temps de pluie). 1877. Oil on canvas. Art Institute of Chicago. [Source: Wikimedia Commons]](../../wp-content/uploads/2009/02/gustave_caillebotte_paris_street_rainy_day_1877_wiki.jpg "gustave_caillebotte_paris_street_rainy_day")
I walk through my blindness the way I wander down streets in Paris: unfettered and alive, alert to the raw material of the senses. I am a flaneur. Come along with me. Just don’t try to take my arm, unless I ask. What’s a flaneur? Read the first post, Return of the Flaneur to Galerie Vivienne. After that, try Foot Rage and the Blind Flaneur. Then stay tuned.Letting Go of Sight
![Fog at Isle Royale [Source: wildmengoneborneo.com]](../../wp-content/uploads/2008/04/isle_royale_fog.jpg "Fog at Isle Royale [Source: wildmengoneborneo.com]")
I’ve canoed on Lake Superior for almost as many years as I’ve been losing eyesight. I return year after year like a migrating loon to learn the other side of a slow, uncertain process that we could call “going blind.” After 35 years with the lake as my teacher, I know what lies on the other side. I call it letting go of sight. Read Big Water. See more about the Great Lakes.Not This Pig
If there is an emerging genetic underclass, I could run for class president or class clown. Read more in Not This Pig (2003).Media in Transition @ MiT
Disabled Americans today have to negotiate for the kinds of accommodations made for FDR, and the caveat “reasonable accommodation” is built into the law. President Franklin Roosevelt did not have to negotiate. He could summon vast resources of the federal government – money as well as brains – to accomplish the work of disability. And it was accomplished with such thoroughness and efficiency that its scale could be called the Accessibility-Industrial Complex had it been directed toward public accommodations and not solely the needs of a single man. Read FDR and the Hidden Work of Disability [MiT8 2013]
Shepard Fairey claimed that his posterization of a copyrighted AP news photo of Barack Obama was a transformative work protected by the fair use doctrine. In other words, it was a shape-shifter. I claim fair use, too, when I reproduce and transform copyrighted works into media formats that are accessible to me as a blind reader. Read Shape-Shifters in the Fair Use Lab [MiT6 2009]
The social engineers who created a system for licensing beggars in New York never imagined that a blind woman had culture or could make culture. She herself may not have imagined it, either. In the moment when Paul Strand photographed her surreptitiously on the street in 1916, he could not have expected that one day blind photographers would reverse the camera’s gaze. Read Curiosity & The Blind Photographer. [MiT5 2007]
Tag Archives: remix
Café Mouffe: Remixing Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep”
It isn’t often that chart-toppers like Adele turn up in Café Mouffe. I hadn’t heard her smash hit, Rolling in the Deep, in its entirety until NPR did a feature about it. I just don’t listen much to pop radio. What caught my attention? All the remixes. I loved this quote from DJ Voodoo Farm (Liam Dirlam): “When you’re in the remixing game you look for certain things in a song. Certain songs have a lot going on in them that are really hard to eliminate when all you want is the vocal sample or basic idea. Every single DJ that has remixed ‘Rolling In The Deep’ owes Rick Rubin a huge kiss on the lips. Rubin strips down songs and exposes them for what they are. Here you have claps, guitars, bass, piano, her voice, and that’s it.” Continue reading →
Lady Gaga & Maria Aragon Sing “Born This Way”
The first media consumed after pondering McLuhan’s enigmatic koan was this marvelous video clip of Lady Gaga and 10-year-old Maria Aragon performing Born This Way. Maria had recorded a cover of the song in her bedroom in Winnipeg; as of this morning, her cover has had 19,245,026 views on YouTube. She realized every fan’s wildest dream when she was invited to join Lady Gaga onstage at the Air Canada Center in Toronto on Thursday night. Call it fan culture, call it participatory culture, call it one medium absorbing another – the effect is wildly moving, transcending the boundaries of fan and superstar, performer and audience.
Zenga Zenga: Remixing the Dictator’s Speech
via noyalooshemusic: “Libyan(Ex?) leader Muammar Kadafi with his Auto Tuned version to “Hey Baby” by Pitbull & T pain. Remix by Noy Alooshe.”
Natacha Atlas: “Egypt: Rise to Freedom”
Natacha Atlas recorded a subversive political song on her 2010 album, Mounqaliba. Now Natacha and producer Basha Beats have remixed it with video footage from the Egyptian revolution in Tahrir Square. The original recording of Batkallim included a sample from Barack Obama’s 2009 Cairo speech. The remix, Egypt: Rise to Freedom, switches the sample to an ominous admonition from Hosni Mubarak. The remix was released on Feb.11, shortly before the tyrant stepped down. Singer and producer talk about their motivation on PRI The World’s Global Hit. See the song’s English translation on Natacha’s website.
#Jan25 Egypt - “Freedom Is the Answer”
Inspired by the resilience of Egyptian people during their recent uprising, several notable musicians from North America have teamed up to release a song of solidarity and empowerment. The track is fittingly titled “#Jan25” as a reference to both the date the protests officially began in Egypt, and its prominence as a trending topic on Twitter. Produced by Sami Matar, a Palestinian-American composer from Southern California, and featuring the likes of Freeway, The Narcicyst, Omar Offendum, HBO Def Poet Amir Sulaiman, and Canadian R&B vocalist Ayah - this track serves as a testament to the revolution’s effect on the hearts and minds of today’s youth, and the spirit of resistance it has come to symbolize for oppressed people worldwide.
