Mark (TradeMark) Gunderson - 20 Examples Of My Work

Mark (TradeMark) Gunderson:
20 Examples Of My Work.

This document is online at:
http://evolution-control.com/trademarkg/works/
or use this shortcut link:
http://xrl.us/TMworks

#1: The VidiMasher 3000 (device)

The VidiMasher 3000 is a rear-projected, infrared-based fake touchscreen. A laptop screen is projected on a translucent screen, and mouse movements and clicks are made with a special infrared light pen. Standard Nintendo Wii controllers are mounted near the projector which bridge the infrared pen actions to mouse actions on the laptop. As useful and generic as any standard mouse, the VidiMasher was made to work as a music controller and to solve a problem with live performances (see #2).

Specifically, the goal was to perform (rather than DJ) live mashup music (aka audio collage) in an improvised manner but with a mix and tempo polished enough for a club crowd. The solution began with a massive set of prepared sounds/loops, all accessible from a single screen. Quickly this sound set became too large for a standard mouse interface, yet large touchscreens were nonexistent (and later, merely prohibitively expensive). The VidiMasher provided an adequate pseudo-multitouch interface, and a solution to the bottleneck. It also gives the bonus that the audience can also watch how the music and musician work, giving literal transparency in the musician's actions and skill. It also looks much better than a glowing Apple logo for an hour.

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7uLuYG62sY

#2: The Wheel Of Mashup (performance)

One recurring theme in much of my performance work is a fundamental suspicion audiences have of digital music performers ("Is he just answering email for the whole show?"). Before the VidiMasher 3000 was created, the Wheel Of Mashup provided "proof" of honesty and a chance for audience interaction. The Wheel Of Mashup is actually two independent wheels; the outer wheel selects the music of a song, and the inner wheel selects the vocals/lyrics from a different song. The two are mashed together on the spot, demonstrating that the music isn't merely pre-programmed.

Even after incorporating the VidiMasher into our shows, we kept the wheel on stage. The audience just had too much fun with it.

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-rjYewCbDI

#3: All Rights Reserved (album)

Not yet released, my newest album contains not just next-gen mashup music made from hundreds of uncleared samples but also includes novel additions including a commentary track (like on a DVD movie) and remixable songs. However, the most prominent extra is the Listener License Agreement, a lengthy legal contract like you would see and agree to while installing software. Although lengthy, there's really just one main point: the listener must agree not to listen to the album. Why? Like with software, most people will simply agree and ignore the legal contract. However for someone wishing to sue me for copyright violation, we can then countersue for their breach of our license agreement.

Album download: http://xrl.us/ECCARRzip

#4: Burning Man (sound installations)

From 2007 to 2009, I was commissioned to create site-specific sound installations for Burning Man, an annual arts and culture festival with 50,000 attendees in the Nevada desert. These installations were the main sounds visitors would hear when visiting the titular Man, and were the first audio installations ever commissioned by Burning Man for their prized Man Base area.

The soundtracks were created to run continuously, 24 hours a day, for the 7 days of the festival. Most of them were created as an ambiant soundscape which slowly evolved over the week, undergoing many complete transformations in its sound. It was created in MaxMSP and included sounds such as the resonant tones of US Army missile hulls, Yoda's swamp, and animals you might hear if the festival hadn't been there.

Video: http://www.youtube.com/user/TheECC

#5: The Thimbletron (device)

Before the VidiMasher 3000 (see #1), I created the Thimbletron as a solution to my worry of audience suspicion (see #2). Since the Thimbletron is mainly two gloves with sewing thimbles on the fingertips, it's wearable and portable. Sure, the wiring to its electronics tethers you, but that's no worse than a guitarist (plus it adds to the mad science feel of the whole thing). It's easy to learn, since triggering sounds is done by touching thimbles together, which is as intuitive and natural as touching your fingertips together. Because of that intuitiveness an audience can understand it, at least in that they can watch and learn that certain thimbles trigger certain sounds. You can stage dive with them on. And they just look insane.

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAmL-D0Lay0

#6: Rocked By Rape (song)

Rocked By Rape was intended as a 1999 follow-up to the success of the earlier Whipped Cream Mixes 7" single (see #8) and later appeared on the Plagiarhythm Nation v2.0 album (see #15). It was my first major piece using digital audio editing. Rocked By Rape took the original mashup formula laid out with the Whipped Cream Mixes (Vocal Track A + Instrumental Track B) but expanded it drastically, sampling violent words and phrases spoken by newscaster Dan Rather and then making 350 edits to put the words in place over an instrumental track of cut-up AC/DC riffs.

It also emerged as lawsuit bait, garnering a cease & desist order from lawyers for CBS (Dan Rather's network). Unable to spend the tens of thousands of dollars required for a legal defense, I waged a mostly successful war in the press. The incident gave me a reputation as something of a copyright rebel plus many lecturing gigs.

Audio: http://xrl.us/ECCRBR
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DX4nsobHW8

#7: Reels Of Steel/Nosferatu Soundtrack (performance)

First composed and performed at the Wexner Center in 2004 for the Columbus Avant Garage festival, this is a soundtrack for the silent movie Nosferatu with a meticulous score for live DJ using soundtracks from other movies. The score juxtaposes on-screen actions and situations with iconic movie themes (think James Bond, Jaws, Star Wars, etc.). This is a piece that is painstaking to compose and difficult to perform, masked by its simple concept. Reels Of Steel is my project name for these DJ soundtracks (i.e. Nosferatu is not the only one).

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jnmNBAmZ1U

#8: The Whipped Cream Mixes, and the mashup formula (song and genre)

The Whipped Cream Mixes was a 7" single record released in 1996. It includes two mixes syncing up the vocals of Chuck D (of the rap group Public Enemy) with music from the ubiquitous 1966 album Whipped Cream and Other Delights by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, both of which appeared in 1994 on Gunderphonic (see #16). This formula of synchronizing a pop vocal track to the music of a different pop song is now known as a mashup, and has now become a music genre popular in clubs worldwide. The Whipped Cream Mixes is frequently cited as the origin of the genre.

Audio: http://xrl.us/ECCWCM

#9: The Sound of Plaid (radio series)

The Sound Of Plaid is a weekly radio program that is now syndicated on four internet and broadcast stations. Co-hosted by my wife Christy, the show features an incredibly wide variety of music genres, musical histories, and special guests. It also provides a regular outlet for my own original music (both new and historical) and to explore the found sound sources used to create that music.

Archives: http://xrl.us/SoundOfPlaidArchive

#10: Pwn Monkey/Grapevine Hypermash (songs)

This is a recent song from All Rights Reserved (see #3) exploring a new mashup-style concept, capitalizing on the massive prepared sample archive used to perform Wheel Of Mashup shows (see #2). Starting with the recorded vocals of Jonathon Coulton's Code Monkey, samples from 30 other songs and bands (in only 2 minutes and 40 seconds) were meticulously collaged to match the chord progressions of the original track. The result is a choppy yet in-tune track, the kind that can only ever be created "the hard way". As a study for this track I created Grapevine Hypermash using the vocal recordings from Heard It Through The Grapevine.

Pwn Monkey: http://xrl.us/ECCpwn
Grapevine Hypermash: http://xrl.us/ECCgvhm

#11: The Kitchen Of The Future (devices and performance)

Debuted at the Deep Wireless festival in Toronto, The Kitchen of the Future consists of a set of circuit-bent, MIDI-compatible kitchen appliances. The debut show featured a samba on the toaster and ended with a blender mixing frozen margaritas, while triggering samples from the song Tequila. (Now that's blendertainment!)

Video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=n_0Y83XcP2o

#12: Hillbilly Beatboxing (song)

Audio: http://xrl.us/ECChb

#13: Mic In Tracks/Default's Greatest Hits (culture jamming)

During our Napster Bombing campaign (see #14) I made an intriguing discovery: home recordings accidentally shared with the entire world (of Napster users). I originally called these Napster Nuggets, but as other popularized my discovery the common search phrase for them stuck as the name: Mic In Tracks. Users of Napster who also used a popular MP3 recording program were accidentally sharing their recordings to all of Napster -- a treasure trove of source material for found sound obsessives like myself. This candid aural peepshow into people's lives is akin to finding a photo album in a thrift store, but with the benefit that the found sounds are completely current.

These files were often found in auto-created file folders/directories named for the user ("John's Greatest Hits"), but since many users didn't fill in the name, the majority of these files were discovered as Default's Greatest Hits. A compilation album of the best finds was unofficially released under that title.

#14: Napster Bombs (culture jamming)

Faced with a possible legal threat from CBS over our song Rocked by Rape (see #6), we made MP3 versions of the song available for free. These were made available on our web site, but to ensure maximum distribution we also planted several Napster Bombs: music files that have the name of a copyrighted song, but actually contain some other song. Search by artist or song title in Napster would actually just search the MP3 filename, but not internal ID3 tags. This allowed us to offer MP3 files with names like "Beck - Slap Happy Mentos Eater (live - rare).mp3" which actually contained our endangered song (as well as correct song credits in the ID3 tags). Employing this tactic, we insured that Rocked By Rape was distributed to literally thousands of people and foiled CBS' attempt at censorship.

#15: Plagiarhythm Nation (album)

I released Plagiarhythm Nation v2.0, another album comprised of 100% sampled works, in 2003 on the Seeland Records label (run by culture-jamming band Negativland). The album met with mostly good reviews and enjoyed relative success, spending 13 weeks on the CMJ Top 200 list and charting #1 plays at radio stations in New York, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, and elsewhere. The album included notable tracks such as Rocked By Rape (see #6) and I Want A Cookie (see #17). I supported this release with tours in the US, Canada, UK, Netherlands, Germany, Spain and elsewhere. I intended the title word Plagiarhythm to be a term for melodic misappropriation or recontextualized works, a genre for which the term mashup is now largely used. Even still, Plagiarhythm earned an entry in the Macmillan Dictionary (credited to myself).

Link: http://xrl.us/Plagiarhythm

#16: Gunderphonic (album)

Being a musician that creates his work from sampling and audio collage, I was very inspired by John Oswald's infamous Plunderphonic album and his accompanying manifesto Audio Piracy as a Compositional Prerogative (both from 1985). Since my last name is Gunderson, I decided to release Gunderphonics as a nod to Oswald's seminal work as well as a signal that I too was making music from heavy sampling. This album is my first collaged from 100% sampled materials, and because this was the late 80's/early 90's, it was 95% analog -- this was when "cut and paste" involved real cutting and real pasting. This release is another example of using recycled materials not only for the music but also to create the actual packaging of the media. Here I opened up old 8-track tapes, emptied the shells, and inserted my cassette albums into them as a kind of media-in-media concept package.

Link: http://xrl.us/Gunderphonic

#17: I Want A Cookie (song)

This song is one of my favorites and has enjoyed quite a bit of airplay on college radio. For this track, I discovered the lead “singer” from a cassette that I purchased at a thrift store. Susan Cocco's Assertiveness Training self-help cassette was rife with expressions like, “We can assertively express our anger if we handle our anger assertively.” Susan’s vocal track is layered over instrumentals by the Sammy Davis Jr. song Get It On (remember the "A plus B" mashup formula?). To further the theme of found collage, my partner and I used only found visuals to create the video for this song, including Google Image Search results, public domain content, and items from collections at The Internet Archive (www.archive.org), especially the infamous Prelinger Collection.

Link: http://xrl.us/ECCMP3

#18: Dazzle Hearse (art car)

For the past 11 years, I’ve driven a hearse. It has been a great vehicle for transporting equipment and large projects. It is also a great low-rent RV to sleep in on long road trips or tours. For years I had wanted to paint it so that it no longer looked like an “in-service” vehicle; to transform it into an art piece that would give people feelings of joy (rather than dread, or concern) when they saw it pass by on the road. I finally realized that goal in 2004 when I painted the hearse in the “Dazzle Ship” style of military camouflage used by the US Navy during the WWI era. I was always inspired by the intent of this type of camouflage that works by disrupting an outline by merging it with its surroundings, making a target harder to spot or hit, and confusing the observer as to its direction and intention. The Dazzle Hearse has been in many art installations and events, and has left a wake of smiles from all who see it.

#19: Double The Phat (album)

This early work employs my love for recycling in all of its various forms. For starters, the music is 100% sampled/found sounds acquired from everywhere -- even from a toll-free voicemail number we set up for people to contribute their own sounds. This album is also notable because it was the first album release that I put out on CD. For the packaging, I took 5½" computer floppy discs, sliced them open, and replaced the contents with my own CD. The limited edition run packaged that "floppy CD" in an entire floppy disk drive, complete with user manual and with explicit warnings not to try the album in a real computer.

Link: http://xrl.us/ECCdtp

#20: BMIR/Shouting Fire (radio station)

For several years, I was responsible for managing BMIR, Burning Man's official radio station during their annual event outside of Reno, Nevada. During the weeklong event I managed not only people at the radio station but also served as technical director, ensuring that equipment and software operated properly -- very challenging in such extreme weather conditions in the desert where the event is held. Part of my duties included establishing a music library, programming the radio software servers, setting up transmitter and antenna, and broadcasting the station over internet (yes, all from the middle of the desert!). In 2008, we extended the station to a year round broadcast, Shouting Fire (internet stream only). I have also DJ'd many Burning Man radio shows including The Sound of Plaid (see #9) at BMIR and Shouting Fire since 2003.

Link: http://bmir.org/

#21: What Would You Think If I Sang AutoTune? (bonus song!)

As a bonus for your perserverance in getting this far, here's another track from the upcoming All Rights Reserved album. I wondered what would happen if I took Ringo's vocals from the Beatles song With a Little Help From My Friends and actually made him sing out of tune as he queries on the track. Technically speaking, this turned out to be much harder to do that I had anticipated, as software is made to put things in tune, not out. Success came with the third program used (Melodyne), and the result sounds like an unheard studio bootleg of the original recordings.

I like how something that sounds so simple can be so complicated, but also be so successful that one might mistake it for the untouched original.

Audio: http://xrl.us/ECCautotune
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72BlHrHFsgY