LoNyLa

Culture

On Art&Lit from Adam Leipzig's Cultural Weekly

  • The Happiness of Adam Yauch

    It’s hard for me to describe how big an influence the Beastie Boys have had on my life. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, I found lifesaving inspiration in records like Paul’s Boutique and Check Your Head that I could not have found anywhere else. If it were not for the Beastie Boys, I’m pretty sure there would have never been a Literary Kicks.

    I know a bit about the Beastie Boys. I’ve seen them in concert several times, though the live format didn’t play to their strengths. The best way to listen to the Beastie Boys is with earbuds in, the world shut out. Their recordings were dense, complex and sophisticated, their rhymes expertly crafted for maximum effect. Each of the three had a highly distinct voice; you can listen to any line in any Beastie Boys song and immediately know whose voice you’re hearing:

    Horovitz: Some static started
    Yauch: in the pool hall
    Horovitz: Hit a motherfucker’s face
    Diamond: with the cue ball

    I could not possibly tell you which of the Beastie Boys I related to most; they maintained a Tao-like perfect balance among the three. Adam Horovitz was the expressive one, a grimacing method actor, always mugging for the cameras. He was the rocker of the group, with a nearly un-musical Jerry Lewis whine to his voice. He was also the Beastie Boy most likely to drop a literary reference into a song:

    You slip, you slack, you clock me and you lack
    While I’m reading ‘On The Road’ by my man Jack Kerouac

    Mike Diamond was the funny one, and the one with the most skillful lyrical phrasing, though his voice had less distinctive character than the other two. But he understood hiphop, and he could scat:

    Jump the turnstile, never pay the toll
    Ding ding ding doo-wah diddy, busting with the b-roll …”

    Adam Yauch had the most memorable voice in the band, menacing, gravelly, instantly recognizable. He appeared to be the most intense and serious of the three. He rarely smiled, and on the early records he sometimes came off downright scary:

    Roses are red
    the sky is blue
    I got the barrel at your neck
    so what the fuck you gonna do?

    When he wasn’t scary, he was often highly despondent, and always made you believe he was feeling it, as when it’s 4 am and he’s got the Hassenpfeffer ale:

    I got nothing to lose and so I’m pissing on the third rail

    As a rapper, he was slow but had superb timing. “The Sounds of Science” would have been a great track even without him, but listen to what his weird drawl adds:

    An MC … to a degree … that you can’t … get in college.

    Yauch appeared at first to be the least charismatic of the three Beastie Boys, but he would gradually emerge as the George Harrison of the group, the spiritual one, and he came out as a Buddhist and a pacifist sometime between their third and fourth records, suddenly dropping references to the Dalai Lama and Martin Luther King into lyrics, writing songs with names like “Shambala” and “Boddhisatva Vow”, and coming up with rhymes like this:

    I want to say a little something that’s long overdue
    This disrespecting women has got to be through
    To all the mothers and sisters and wives and friends
    I want to offer my love and respect to the end

    Yauch’s transormation was a surprise, though in retrospect the philosophical, otherworldly sensibility had always been there:

    Diamond: I once was lost
    Horovitz: but now I’m found
    Yauch: The music washes over and you’re one with the sound.

    Quickly after revealing himself to be a Buddhist, he kicked off a series of activities including the Tibetan Freedom Concerts of the late 1990s, and founded an organization called Milarepa. Adam Yauch’s level of energy was amazing; he was also an adventurous filmmaker, and a skillful and inventive bass guitarist (note that the Beasties’ best rock song “Sabotage” has a bass solo, not a guitar solo).

    When I heard the news that he had throat cancer back in 2009, I felt terrible for the suffering I knew he’d be going through. I tried to post a cheery joke on Twitter:

    @asheresque: they say Adam Yauch’s voice won’t be harmed during cancer surgery, but it might get raspy

    The news was pretty unbelievable. Yauch appeared to be one of the most admirable and truly successful figures in the musical business, not in financial terms, but on the level of greater achievement. Like Bob Geldof (and, arguably, Bono) he was one of only a few rock stars who managed to transcend the limits of the scene and reach a higher stage — translating thoughts into action and actually stepping out to try and change the world.

    In June 1997 I went with my daughter Elizabeth to the Tibetan Freedom Concert at Randall’s Stadium in New York City (she was 11, and mainly wanted to see Alanis Morissette, who wasn’t very good). During a break in the all-day show, Elizabeth and I were strolling around the tents outside the main stage when we spotted a bunch of orange-robed Tibetan monks off in a not very visible corner behind a trailer, looking like they were busy doing something interesting. “Let’s go,” I told Elizabeth, and we found ourselves in a small procession of Buddhist monks walking to the East River between Randall’s Island and Astoria, Queens, under the Hells Gate Bridge, so the monks could bless the East River. COOL!

    We were silently welcomed into the group. There were maybe twenty of us, half monks and half hipsters, the monks leading and us trailing behind. As we walked I spotted a familiar face and nudged Elizabeth. “That’s Adam Yauch.” Not surprisingly, he was part of the procession, walking behind the monks, eventually participating in the ceremony as we all blessed together the waters between Manhattan and Queens. I didn’t talk to him; it seemed like a solemn moment and I couldn’t think of anything significant enough to say.

    In retrospect, I could have talked with him about happiness. Here’s an interview with Project Happiness that was published just last month. I’ll let MCA get the last word.

    PROJECT HAPPINESS: What brings you fun in life? What’s fun for you, and what brings you peace?

    ADAM: It’s such a simple question, I don’t know why it feels complicated. In terms of what brings me fun in life? Just goofing around with friends… laughing at myself. As for what brings me peace? Just trying not to do anything that’s destructive to anybody else, or trying to do things that are constructive in the world, that really brings me peace. The times when I feel unhappy, I can almost directly trace it to, oh, I shouldn’t have done that, or I shouldn’t have said this, or whatever. That’s what would take away my peace, or make me lose sleep or whatever. If I feel like I’ve done the best that I can or conducted myself in the most constructive way that I can in a situation, then I feel peace.

    Re-posted with permission from Literary Kicks.

  • Cloud Filmmaking: A Manifesto

    When YouTube first came out, I had a vivid dream that all the videos were in HD quality and had easy pull-down menus that explained how I could license the footage. I was like a kid in a candy store.

    As a filmmaker who hardly shoots anything and is primarily into remixing and recontextualizing images, this explosion of online video was not only a much bigger candy store than I had ever dreamed of, it also completely changed the way I make films. The new tools and technologies that enable video sharing have allowed me and my team at The Moxie Institute to embark on a whole new adventure that we call CLOUD FILMMAKING.

    Let me rewind. My filmmaking style of remixing came out of necessity. When I was a film theory student at UC Berkeley in the early 1990s, there were no film production facilities. None. The only way I learned to tell stories on film was by re-cutting and splicing together celluloid of old B&W movies, early animated films, home films, sound slug, or anything I could get my hands on. The idea of recontextualizing images from different eras to express larger ideas about modern times was very exciting to me.

    That archival aesthetic is the foundation of my filmmaking style. Most of our feature documentary CONNECTED: An Autoblogography About Love, Death & Technology, is comprised of a combination of archival images from many eras sewn together with new original animations, in my attempt to understand our world, where we came from, and where we’re headed.

    For most films, one of the biggest line items is the cost of shooting, but ours is licensing footage and creating animation. Unlike in college where I found footage in dusty old closets, today with the Internet, not only can I search for film and video images solely online, but with so many people having access to cameras and footage, and with the increased use of YouTube (more than 2 days worth of video is uploaded every minute), it’s an ever growing moveable visual feast of delicacies from all over around the world.

    This inspired me to create a new short film series that leverages the creativity of individuals and organizations from across the globe. The series is titled Let it Ripple: Mobile Films for Global Change.

    The first film in this series, A DECLARATION OF INTERDEPENDENCE, picks up where CONNECTED left off.

    The last section of CONNECTED featured a scene we call “the participatory revolution.” With 5 billion cell phones and 2 billion people online, the film asks, “what is the potential when everyone on the planet who wants to be online has access to the Internet?” The last line of the film states, “For centuries we’ve declared our independence. Perhaps it’s now time we declare our interdependence.” In responding to this last line of the film, we launched our foray into Cloud Filmmaking.

    To create A DECLARATION OF INTERDEPENDENCE, we first rewrote the U.S. Declaration of Independence to be a “Declaration of Interdependence,” and on July 4, 2011 we posted it on the Internet. We then asked people through social media either to video themselves reading the script, or to submit artwork that represented ideas in the script. Videos and art submissions poured in from all over the world, in all different languages. The experiment was not only working, it was bigger than we imagined. We edited everything together with music by Moby, and what resulted was a four minute film, a global mash-up demonstrating the vast potential of creative collaboration in the 21st century. An example of “the participatory revolution” in action.

    What was so powerful for us was that we were no longer divided simply as filmmaker and audience, or creators and receivers. With Cloud Filmmaking, we were collaborating on the film as one. Although I still directed the finished piece and the others were working from our script, I was working with footage that people shot and sent from all over the world, many of whom I don’t know and will never meet. Nonetheless, we were all invested in seeing the film happen and the final message.

    Since so much about the creation of the film was new and different, we also wanted to find a different way to premiere it. We decided to do a simultaneous online and live premiere — YouTube selected it to be featured on their homepage on the same day that it would premiere live in New York City for Interdependence Day. I remember being in a taxi in NYC when I saw YouTube feature it… it actually happened around an hour before the live premiere. So there I was, having that magical adrenaline-pumping “premiere” moment holding my iPhone with a sweaty nervous hand as I bumped over pot holes in the taxi racing to get to the theater where the “live” premiere would be. It felt like a space-time-cinema shift.

    Then this other cool thing started to happen. We used social media to ask the world to help us translate this collaboratively-created message of interdependence. And using the cloud, people from all over the world, from every continent, volunteered to translate it.

    The film has now been volunteer-translated into 65 languages.

    A few months after the film’s launch, we launched the next phase of Cloud Filmmaking — giving back. We started offering free customized versions of the film for nonprofits and organizations all over the world. We work with them to craft a custom “call to action” then replace our “call to action” with theirs. They can then use their customized version of “A Declaration of Interdependence” to help activate and inspire their base, spread their message, drive fundraising, and support other goals and initiatives. Because the film has been translated into so many languages, its potential is limitless. In the first four months, we’ve already made 80 of these free versions of the film for organizations.

    If you work with a nonprofit organization that strives to make the world a better place, we would love to make a free customized four minute version for you. You can learn more and see examples of the amazing range of participating organizations here.

    Now, we are taking Cloud Filmmaking to a mobile app. In the coming weeks, we will release the free CONNECTED app for iPhone, android and iPad that will add even more tools to the collective toolbox of participation for both CONNECTED and the LET IT RIPPLE series. This free mobile app has built-in recording so that you can participate by contributing to the next film, sharing your stories about using the films or about interdependence, or your ideas on the “participatory revolution.”

    The app also includes a regularly updated database of research and posts about “connectedness in the 21st century,” information on how to host a screening, and instructions on how to use interactive discussion tools where both the host and the audience can engage with the research, conversation cards, and discussion book before and after the film. You can also license our Educator’s Edition and receive both printed materials for the class and the mobile app to engage, participate, and give back. The app is yet another way of redefining the relationship between the creator and the receiver. Cloud Filmmaking is about everyone participating.

    We are now embarking on production of our second film in the Let it Ripple series. The film is called “Brain Power,” and it is based on exciting research from Harvard, University of Washington, and UCBerkeley on how to best nurture a young child’s brain. Based on this research, we looked at the parallels between nurturing the growth of the brain and nurturing the growth of the Internet —the global brain that is enabling the participatory revolution to happen. People have sent us many videos and art contributions and you can too.

    Over the next four years we will make 20 of these short films, evolving the way we collaborate with people and organizations.

    I think when they look back on this period of time, it will be called “The Age of Collaboration.” People around the world are able to share strategies when catastrophe strikes; scientists are opening up problems to gamers to solve previously unsolvable problems, and artists and inventors can gather groups of supporters to help them fund their projects. My team at The Moxie Institute and I are cloudsourcing creativity to tell collaborative, universal stories that can be used by organizations all over the world.

    Today, with more people than ever having a camera in their phone, the possibilities keep expanding for people to tell their stories. I love when Apple added a second camera to the front of the phone so people can now film themselves with ease, removing any mediation between people recording their ideas and stories.

    We ultimately are a species of storytellers. This is how we share, empathize and learn. Now that so many people can record their story effortlessly, filmmaking feels a whole lot lighter and has a movement both in its creation and its dissemination that feels like clouds blowing in the sky. Great circulation that allows you to breath more deeply, more creatively, more collaboratively.

    Abraham Maslow once wrote, “I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.” So if you have a hammer in your hand everything looks like a nail, if you have a camera in your hand, everything looks like a story.

    THE CLOUD FILMMAKING MANIFESTO

    by Tiffany Shlain & The Moxie Institute

    The 5 Principles of Cloud Filmmaking

    1. To use the cloud to collaboratively create films with people from all over the world.

    2. To create films about ideas that speak to the most universal qualities of human life, focusing on what connects us, rather than what divides us.

    3. To give back as much as is received, by offering free customized films to organizations around the world to further their message.

    4. To use the cloud to translate films into as many languages as possible.

    5. To push the boundaries of both filmmaking and distribution by combining the newest collaborative tools available online with the potential of all the people in the world.

    Tiffany Shlain is a filmmaker and founder of The Webby Awards. She will receive one of the 2012 Disruptive Innovation Awards from the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival. Her film Connected: An Autoblogography about Love, Death & Technology was recently selected by The US State Department & USC for The 2012 America Film Showcase, which will bring 19 feature documentaries from the last 10 years to embassies around the world to foster dialogue. Follow Tiffany on Twitter at @tiffanyshlain.

  • What’s So California About Bill Stern?

     

    When did you first get excited about California design?

    In the 1980s I bought a set of solid color pottery dinnerware from a neighbor who was moving. I didn’t actually need more dinnerware than I already had but after I put this eye-catching 4-color luncheon service made by Vernon Kilns in a display cabinet I started searching for more of it. Soon I heard that Vernon was just one of many companies that began producing “California pottery” in the 1930s. And then I learned that California pottery was just one expression of “California design” which encompassed all manner of industrially made products including household goods like furniture and lamps.

    Did California design just happen because a few creative people got inspired, or were there social and economic factors at work as well?

    I’d say that social and economic, as well as geologic and topographical factors came first. In architecture, Santa Barbara’s Spanish Colonial Revival stucco look was decreed after much of what had been a wooden Victorian city burned in the aftermath of the 1925 earthquake. The immediate causes of the unprecedented surges in product design in California were the state’s dramatic increases in population, notably in the 1920’s when the population of Los Angeles doubled in 10 years – and then during and after World War II when the state’s population grew by almost 8 million people in twenty years. All those newcomers, who had to furnish thousands of new homes with dinnerware and furniture and decorative items, created a large new market for locally designed and produced goods.

    You can take the design out of California, but can you ever take California out of the design?

    Yes, but only if you consider imitation to be a form of admiration.

    Mass-manufactured solid-color pottery dinnerware originated in California in about 1930 and became one of the state’s first nationally distributed man-made products. (Levi’s had been shipped to the rest of the country since the 1870s.) Then in 1936 a dinnerware company in West Virginia began marketing an imitation of California pottery whose very name, Fiesta, was a deceptive allusion to the state’s Mexican heritage

    You’re the founder and executive director of the Museum of California Design. What’s next for the museum?

    On August 10 our next exhibition, CALIFORNIA’S DESIGNING WOMEN, 1896-1986, will open at the Autry in Griffith Park. It honors forty-six women designers whose work spans a century of major aesthetic movements from Arts & Crafts to Art Deco to Mid-century Modern and beyond, including many who worked with the cutting-edge technologies and materials of their day such as Lucite, molded plywood and computer-aided graphics.

    And on May 14 I will be giving a talk at LACMA called “What’s So California About California Design?” in conjunction with that museum’s exhibition “California Design 1930-1965: Living in a Modern Way” for which I was the consulting curator.

    Your house is a veritable mini-museum of California pottery. Did you ever break anything?

    Rarely. Recently a painting fell off a wall and hit a particularly beautiful Mid-century California pitcher. I felt guilty because I consider myself to be the conservator of these fragile expressions of American culture.

    (Happy ending: the Edmund Ronaky pitcher for Jaru Art Products is being restored.)

    Photograph of Bill Stern by Peter Brenner

  • TED Ed: The Power of Simple Words

  • Happy birthday week Irving Berlin (born Israel Isidore Baline), singing his song ‘God Bless America’