Big Mac Attack!

The following image was forwarded to me by Janet Sternberg, who got it from Brazilian scholar and media ecologist Edison Gastaldo, who took the photograph during the MEA convention, during a visit to the Communication School of the Universidad IberoAmericana in Mexico City (a Jesuit school like Fordham University):





I'm not sure how to interpret this, but I think old Mac himself would appreciate the punny business involved here.

And while we're on the subject, let me add on a series of YouTube videos coming from St. Louis-based media ecologist and artist Paul Guzzardo. These are recordings of a performance art event, which presents a problem in translation, as something is always lost when a live performance is recorded, and in this case it looks like it would be impossible to capture more than a small slice of the event. Nevertheless, as a dedicated blogist, it is my duty to bring to you the footage that has become available. There are five different videos posted, and there is no indication as to what order they are to be viewed in, perhaps it doesn't matter, as long as your taste runs to the experimental, avant-garde, kinda stuff.

Anyway, first, here's the write-up from YouTube:

This is one of five YouTube posted video shorts from "A Sam Clemens Remix". "A Sam Clemens Remix" concert opened the 2007 National Media Education Conference (NMEC) on June 23, 2007. NMEC was sponsored by the Alliance for a Media Literate America http://www.amlainfo.org/ . The venue was St. Louis Missouri. The concert was produced by Paul Guzzardo.

"A Sam Clemens Remix" was a live -- largely improvisational -- thirty minute multimedia remix concert. The artists previously worked together on "The Secretbaker Cycle" of multimedia productions http://www.secretbaker.com/. In Secretbaker we used digital tools and toys to navigate through information environments; thousands of pages of FBI files. In "A Sam Clemens Remix" we grabbed on to three of Samuel Clemens' texts; "Life on the Mississippi", "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" and "A Tramp Abroad". In the concert we explored how the texts and associated archival imagery might be used to fashion new narrative and myth building platforms.

Hemingway said Huckleberry Finn gave birth to the American novel. We're not novelists and don't intend to write novels, but we think Sam Clemens gave us the gear we need to plot a course just like he did Huckleberry Finn and his raft-mate Jim.


THE ARTISTS:
Paul Guzzardo: Designer and Writer
http://www.secretbaker.com/recursive-urbanism.html
Leon Lamont: Digital Disc Jockey- Composer - St. Louis
http://www.myspace.com/djleonlamont
Zlatko Cosic: Digital Video Jockey- Video Artist
http://www.eyeproduction.com/
Amin Hinds: Musician and videographer
Cora Lowry: Musician and Dancer
http://www.myspace.com/finalveil

A Sam Clemens Remix was praxis to a March 2007 polemical article on digital remix and landscape design. The article -- "Is There A Digital Future Landscape Terrain"- was published in AD - Architectural Design and was co-authored by Paul Guzzardo and Lorens Holm. The abstract can be found at http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/114171216/ABSTRACT?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0.

And now for something completely different:

A Sam Clemens Remix Video: "Pretend To Read It As A Book"





A Sam Clemens Remix Video: "All Right Then I'll Go To Hell"




A Sam Clemens Remix Video: "We Passed St. Louis"




A Sam Clemens Remix Video: "Hemp and Potatoes"




A Sam Clemens Remix Video: "I Took His Name"




Looks like Cirque de Media Ecologique to me! I hope I get a chance to see one of these things live someday!