#PrettyLights ; A Master of Mixed-Multi-Media Storytelling

Posted: November 9, 2016 in Anarchy Journal Constitutional
Tags: , , , , , ,
0

mm@C4logo2ajclogo2

20161108_231443

by @anarchyroll

When you’re in the presence of someone who is a master of their craft, you’ll only know if they want you to know. When they want you to know, you can’t actually prepare yourself for the experience that awaits you. Imitation and generic is pervasively more commonplace than the real thing these days.

Concerts are held all the time all over the place. You can go to your local dive bar on a certain night and see a band play in the corner and tell yourself you went to a concert. You can see a cover band play on a legit stage and say you went to a concert. You can go to an EDM show and say you went to a festival. But when you are in the presence of a master, you don’t go to a concert or a festival, you go sensory experience.

Derick Vincent Smith is not just another electronic music producer. He is not just another dj. He is not another dude with Ableton and a desire to cash in on the rise of electronic dance music to the pop music trend of this decade.

The rise of the EDM festival scene of the past decade is just another turn in the cycle of music audiences wanting a visual aspect to compliment their auditory experience. Just like the shock rockers and hair bands before them, electronic music festivals give their audiences a show rather than just a group doing a karaoke session on a stage in front of a large group of people.

The customization of each song/track played compared to that of a traditional band playing traditional instruments is only comparable to a jazz ensemble. But while jazz bands are essentially limited to what they can do with their instruments, a master dj like Pretty Lights has the visual element to customize and layer on top of the depth of layers that electronic music enables.

But Pretty Lights combines electronic music, instruments, and visuals.

Layering media on top of each other to create art and not just a bunch of random stuff that’s going on. Creating one thing out of layers and layers of media on media.

  • Lights
  • Lasers
  • Smoke
  • Screens
  • Instruments
  • Turn tables
  • Song samples
  • Original created music material

Layers on layers, racks on racks, experience on experience, all the feels all the way up.

I was obviously expecting to have a good time during the last weekend of summer. What I wasnt expecting was a revelation.

Not about life, nature, humanity, or the universe. But about what it means to be an entertainer, a storyteller, a master of ceremonies, a disc jockey.

To have so many different people, with so many different backgrounds, with so much different things going on individually and collectively, and to put them all on the same frequency is a skill, an art, a science, and a gift.

Pretty Lights is a group of the gifted. And they have chosen to share their gifts with those who choose to join their journey to spread good vibes and be lovers of the light(s).

Pay for #Privacy

Posted: November 9, 2016 in Anarchy Journal Constitutional
0

web-secrecy-slide

By @anarchyroll

Do we value our privacy or not?

A simple question on the surface. The difficulties come when digging deeper to give a thoughtful answer.

We as a society say we value privacy. Humans in general espouse the sanctity of our homes, as the safe place for our private lives.

If we didn’t value privacy as a people, there would not even be a fake outrage whenever a data breach is reported in the news or when whistleblowers reveal conspiracy theories about the mythical Big Brother are both real and the law of the land.

But the outrage always fades. If the masses demanded our privacy as a whole be respected by the public and private sector then Facebook would struggle to make a profit and Edward Snowden would now be running the NSA rather than a fugitive.

We will soon find out just how much the masses in America value their privacy. The term put your money where your mouth is a golden rule like indicator for measuring commitment in America. And it appears that the biggest internet service providers (ISPs) in America will be forcing the hand of legislatures and consumers alike to determine exactly how much privacy is worth and to be respected.

The gatekeepers to the internet are now officially saying that if consumers want to access the internet, the price has gone up. In addition to constantly increasing the monetary cost, consumers must now forfeit any and all objects to their online activity being monitored and mined for the monetary gain of the ISPs.

Early adopters and techies aren’t enough to move the needle on this. The masses must make their voices heard using their wallets on this one. It seems as though we are at a genuine turning point in the way we live our lives. Put up or shut up time is seemingly upon us.

  • Do we value our privacy?
  • Is digital privacy worth the same, less, or more than physical/real world privacy?
  • What are we willing to do to keep our privacy?
  • Do we want to continue trading our privacy to avoid spending money for access to online services?

Our collective answers to these questions will echo for generations and in this instance, silence is consent.

 

Cut #CarbonDioxide Distraction

Posted: October 17, 2016 in Frackishima
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
0

frackishimalogo1

By @anarchyroll

What is it about important events that will actually effect all of humanity that allows it to fly under the radar? It doesn’t bleed so I guess it doesnt lead. It’s easy to blame the gatekeepers of information but in the era of internet news, is there such a thing as news/information gatekeepers?

Humans do not like thinking about their mortality. We hate acknowledging the fact that we will die. We spend billions of dollars trying to delay death and even more trying to look not as near death as we are. I suppose its natural that we also don’t want to think about the end of the world.

Just like how we are all guaranteed death, the Earth is guarenteed to meet its end one day. That day is incomprehensibly far in the future. However, the world ending and the world being uninhabitable for human beings are two very different things.

article-2568825-1be1f72300000578-287_634x427

Hearing or reading about things like rising sea levels, coral bleaching, and global warming doesn’t shout out apocalypse. The Earth has withstood much worse than all three of those forces combined. Which is true. Global warming on steroids wont be the end of the Earth. The massive disruption in the food chain caused by coral bleaching wont come anywhere near the end of the world.

But apocalyptic scare tactics have never been the point of bring environmental news to the forefront of people’s attention. The Earth will be just fine. But will it be inhabitable for humans? That is a whole other story and is the issue at hand when environmentalists and NASA ring the alarm about carbon dioxide in the air, acidity in the sea and draughts on land.

We all love Earth, but we love ourselves more. Distracting ourselves from our problems is a natural part of the human condition. Without memes and gifs my slow work days would be soul dissolving. But the distractions must not continue to overshadow the purpose when we are reaching external benchmarks for disaster such as the carbon dioxide tipping point.

 

 

#PardonSnowden ‘s Interruption

Posted: September 27, 2016 in Anarchy Journal Constitutional
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
0

by @anarchyroll

Life is shades of gray. Black and white, right and wrong seems to increasingly be in the eye of the beholder. Edward Snowden to say the least is a controversial figure. A hero to some, a traitor to others? Did he break numerous laws? Yes. Did he do the American public a great service? Yes.

Privacy is a unique topic of discussion. It is a special issue in that the vast majority of people regardless of political affiliation, gender, race, or religion believe we as humans are entitled to our privacy. From the strictest catholic straight white man to the most flamboyant, liberal, multi racial, transgender. If we didn’t value privacy, there would be no suburbs, there would be no houses, there would be no doors.

The first world may have given up its privacy unknowingly/ignorantly as it embraced smartphones and free internet services over the past decade. When Edward Snowden helped reveal to America and the world the scale of privacy invasion being purposefully deployed by the US government on its citizens, the outrage was split evenly.

One part anger at the government for abuse of power, one part at Snowden for breaking the law and potentially endangering military operation(s), and one part anger at ourselves for being willfully blind to what we as a society didn’t want to think about or acknowledge…that there is no such thing as a free lunch. The free services that seemed too good to be true, were. We have been paying for Facebook, Google, Spotify and the like with our personal data and privacy.

It is human nature to direct and reflect self-hatred outward. That is what Edward Snowden‘s critics are doing. They are angry that he let the world know that which we wish we didn’t. That we are being watched.

That is what he blew the whistle about. That is why he is in exile in Russia. That is why the newspapers that he leaked his information to are swimming in Pulitzer Prizes. Because he removed all shadow of doubt that the government is indeed watching us. They’re watching us, listening to us, tracking us, and there is nothing we can do to stop them. Just typing that out makes me angry. Reading it probably makes you angry or apathetic, both are natural.

It’s natural to point the finger and blame a person. It’s natural to label one person as an enemy.

Snowden is not the enemy. Trying to profit from the information would have made him the enemy. Staying silent, blind, deaf, and dumb would have made him the enemy. But rather than stay comfortable, he took the road less traveled by. He faced the fear of being classified an enemy of the US government. But whistleblowers are not the enemy of the people. They are some of our greatest allies. Snowden is an ally of freedom, an ally of privacy, an ally of innate human rights. Snowden shouldn’t need a pardon but whistleblower protections have failed him. He did the right thing for the public, let’s do the right thing for him, and push for a pardon so he can come home.

#TPP & Me

Posted: September 19, 2016 in Anarchy Journal Constitutional, Excess and Algorithms
Tags: , , , , ,
0

eanda logo

tpp

By @anarchyroll

Current events and news topics don’t come much more complex and far-reaching than the TPP. The entire thing has been constructed in the shadows of backrooms under the table off the record. Everything that is publicly known about it doesn’t even count as a starting point for the ramifications of this deal.

Sound like hyperbole and conspiracy theory fringe? Then why is this not a topic covered on nightly news? This trade deal if passed will affect millions of people. Forget pro or con, there is no denying that millions of lives will be effected by legislative change that the Trans Pacific Partnership will bring. So why not cover it at depth like a news story or event? Does it not warrant similar coverage to the 2016 Presidential Election, Rio Olympics, or Harambe’s death?

International free trade deals are certainly no naked, lubed-up Kim Kardashian holding a champagne bottle. Butt, NAFTA wasn’t considered a sexy issue until it bubbled up in the 2008 Democratic party primary debates. Sometimes people just need to get warmed up and have a few drinks before something dry and dense becomes cute and sexy.

The TPP got moved from the shadows of being one of those third tier news stories on a newspaper website that is so far down the page the text isn’t bold, highlighted, or even a larger font size ; to stealing some of President Obama’s thunder during his speech at the DNC.

 So what does all of this mean? Who gives a shit about the TPP? Why would anyone who isn’t in the 1% care about some international trade deals off the record, earmark ramifications? Does this whole thing not scream of white people problems?
If I had answers, I wouldn’t just have a blog. But the questions anyone and everyone who reads this or any piece of writing involving the TPP needs to ask themselves are;

  1. Why was the TPP constructed and negotiated in secret?
  2. Why are environmentalists and labor unions passionately against it?
  3. Why would Democrats protest it during Obama’s last major speech as President?

The TPP has more questions than answers. That tends to happen when a massive bill with massive legislations is bred and conceived in secret. The TPP is to trade what the Patriot Act is to civil liberties. With the TPP though there is no act of economic terrorism to induce its passage into permanent fruition. Mainly because the economic terrorists of the world are the rich white folks in mansions as opposed to terrorism’s impoverished brown folks in caves.

The TPP is so shady to its core that it is probably the one issue that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton agree on during this 2016 campaign season. The bill has been declared all but dead in terms of passage this year. So again the question is, who gives a shit? Why does this matter?

The TPP is a symbol. Both literally and metaphorically.

Literally, on the record, it is a symbol towards China.

Metaphorically, the TPP has come to represent globalization itself. Much like communism and laissez faire capitalism it reads well on paper and sounds good in theory as a utopia of equality. In practice however, it’s just another means of exploitation for the 1% to get richer and the 99% to get poorer. Something this big requires the most transperancy. The fact it has been treated with the least, makes it’s intent see through. The TPP’s hush hush, secret negotiations speak so loudly, it’s legalese need not be orated.

Older Entries
Newer Entries