Much of my research career has been spent trying to work my head around the idea of different kinds of value created through Art+Technology. There's been too much written on this to read, but maybe there's just enough to listen to. I dunno.

PODSTREAM DISTILLED: Mashups & Remixes, 1999-2024... hey! It's Art+Technology meets School of Rock!

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Artists and scientists see bullseyes differently but bullseyes they do see! It’s just the when and the how…
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April 13 2023 karaoke night on Main leads to the thesis... published here as a SoundCloud playlist and corresponding Soundtrap project links on June 6, 2024. Details to follow… but at just under double o’seven hours of runtime, I’m willing to defends this thesis as a remarkable innovation in McLuhanian rhetoric while it having completely defeated me in the process! Only took me 25 years, but hey, lifelong lessons or something like that in the academic business 🤷🏻‍♂️

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Twenty-five years ago… a mid-20s UBC Commerce grad named Joel Flynn leaves his 10-year college job at a grocery store in Campbell River BC and returns to Vancouver to begin what would turn into a 25-year digital media research career. The first stop in this academic research path was the British Columbia Institute to Technology (BCIT) and its brand new New Media Design program at the downtown campus. At the time, Flynn had just recorded a 5-song demo as the singer for a Vancouver Island indie band named “Halcyon Days”, and by the end of 1999 the rest of the band had moved to Vancouver, also to start school at BCIT and SFU.

Inspired by DIY “indie” artists (e.g. Swell, GBV), Flynn pushed his band as early adopters of Apple Macintosh CD burners in order to create packaged CD-Rs with artwork for selling at the band’s gigs. The very first project Flynn would work on at BCIT was a “remix” of the band’s five demo songs along with key audio samples - from films, soundtracks, and other songs - in order to create a cohesive 25-minute album listening experience. While incorporating a sampled monolog from the William Hurt film Altered States, the joke at the time was, “who the hell decides to make Dark Side of the Moon out of a 5-song demo tape? Ha! It’s Halcyon Days!” The band would play what proved to be its final show on March 10, 2000 at the legendary Commodore Ballroom, before then “taking a break” just as the dot.com bubble altered its state.

Flynn’s interest new media has always reflected his interests in music, particularly in live music through his skills as a singer and performer. These were just starting to develop in 1999 as lead singer/songwriter in “the Halcyon Days Project”, a version of the band name that refers to 1999’s videotape “found footage” cult classic The Blair Witch Project. Flynn has long been fixated on the historical development of media formats, especially the shift from physical albums on vinyl and cassette, to digital versions on computers through “ripped” CDs and mp3s.  Flynn’s investigation into digital media authoring tools - i.e. digital audio workstations (DAW) such as ProTools and Logic for “remixing” audio content - began in the BCIT New Media Design program in 1999. Twenty-five years later, his media research path has led to an unprecedented amount of remixed audio content for a Master of Applied Science and MBA from SFU. It's now his PhD research at Carleton U, distilled via Podstream Studios...

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"a dissertation is a long piece of writing on a particular subject, especially one that is done in order to receive a degree at college or university"

HAVE A LISTEN! Sure it's SEVEN hours long, but for all the advanced arguments contained within this *authored/written* piece of academic work, that's pretty economical! :)

PODSTREAM DISTILLED St.V: Thesis/Antithesis/Playlist (1999-2024, 6h56m)

PODSTREAM DISTILLED: Thesis/Antithesis/Playlist (1999-2024 --> 7:00:33) Published June 21, 2024

CHRONO LOGICAL: Mashups & Remixes, 1999-2024... hey! It's a riff on the film Altered States!!

Dr. George Crooney (lab results) - April 14, 2023

Dr. RD Goulet (lab results) -  April 14, 2023

Dr. Vox Morgan, K.D. (lab results) - April 14, 2023

Professor Thomas O'Fionlainnis (lab results) - April 14, 2023

Remix of a formula of songs from sixby.seven albums (up to 2006) and excerpts from the Bond film Casino Royale. It's a rough mix, for use in an academic conference paper re: remixing and cultural psychology in Sydney in 2007. Part 1 of 2.

006x7: Life of a Spy (Side 1) - a 2007 conference paper remix by Professor Playlist

George Crooney - Broken Man (orig. St. Vincent, YouTube karaoke track remix) - June 8, 2024

If Symptoms Persist, Kill Your Doctor

Six.bySeven - Secret Documents: 2007 - Prisoner's Dilemma (Adam Curtis' Trap Remix)

Prompt: “a crooner song”

https://www.udio.com/songs/gG11bqkMfKKFp7MChEJmSN

Sweet Serenade ext v2 (AI-generated, 2024/06/20)

PODSTREAM DISTILLED: Thesis/Antithesis/Playlist, a dissertation by George Crooney - June 21st, 2024

This is a remix created in 2006 as an .m4a podcast, later incorporated into an academic journal paper and conference presentation in early '07 (see link below). Its purpose was to demonstrate the "mechanics" of how digital remixes are created by way of their underlying building blocks of culture, as well as through the applications that give the whole process value (what I called a "metaphrame" at the time but not sure I've done since... puns!). The work features songs selected by algorithm out of the various albums from "the godfathers of indie rock", San Francisco band, and quite possibly my favourite band ever, Swell.

https://www.academia.edu/1324801/Metaphrames_and_Interaction_This_is_How_it_Goes_

Swell - (This is) How It Goes: a conference paper remix by Professor Playlist - May 28, 2006

This was originally an .m4a iTunes podcast from early 2006, created specifically for a masters degree project in Applied Science from SFU's School of Interactive Arts and Technology (SIAT). As a piece of technology-driven digital culture, it explores the "mechanics" remixing songs, sound recordings, and film excerpts to produce an audio-based (podcasted) narrative. There's some degree of interactivity here for the listener, but more clearly on the production side in term of constructing this work from disparate "building blocks" of digital culture that leads to something of (at least personal) value. And it's exactly because this "digital object" has a very subjective and personal quality of expression, it HAS to be the most artistic thing I've ever created. I remember making it way back in the day, at least partly in order to prepare for a loss I'd have to face one day, and unfortunately, another one I hoped would never happen. It is what it is.

Big Fish, Desolate Sound (a.k.a "Flynnegan's Wake"): MASc thesis remix demo, SFU 2006

Remix of a formula of songs from sixby.seven albums (up to 2006) and excerpts from the Bond film Casino Royale. It's a rough mix, for use in an academic conference paper re: remixing and cultural psychology in Sydney in 2007. Part 2 of 2. 

006x7: For Queen & Country (Side 2) - a 2007 conference paper remix by Professor Playlist

Artifact 5.2: The Tragically Hip’s In Between Forgetting and Coldplay’s XYZ (December 2004, June 2005)

As opposed to the previous artifact (5.1: the 2005 demo track "Fan of Yours", see link below), the remixes discussed here have actually materialized through the reconfiguration of two popular albums, specifically, The Tragically Hip’s In Between Evolution(2004) and Coldplay’s X&Y (2005).The individual song objects from these albums are supplemented with “b-sides” that were omitted from the officially released album. These were made available and purchased from via digital download in order to create a pool of artifacts for remixing purposes. The intent of this example is to demonstrate how individual songs can be considered as building blocks (primary artifacts) for user-driven remixes (secondary artifacts), not only as source material for sampling, but also as whole pieces to be rearranged in a new version of the album. In these cases, the remixes were created by sampling portions of the album’s songs and creating loops that help to bridge the songs from one song to the next. The objective is then to create a sequence of songs witha “flow” that improves the listening experience of the albums. The example also attempts to show the issues presented by technological, cultural, and marketing restrictions on the ability of users to engage with their culture in ways that extend upon the idea of creating a playlist, i.e. remixing the songs together rather than just reordering them.

- From J. Flynn, Travels in Intertextuality, 2006, p. 285
https://www.academia.edu/1320506/Travels_in_Intertextuality_the_autopoetic_identity_of_remix_culture

"Fan of Yours", recorded and performed by R. Pollock and J. Flynn, June 1st, 2005 in Burnaby BC: 
https://soundcloud.com/podstream/fan-of-yours-original-from-the

The Tragically Hip - In Between Evolution: Slight Return 2005 (a marginal remix)

https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/leonard-cohen-advice-young-songwriters

So it's officially the end of 2020's "halcyon days" - i.e. a week past the winter solstice - and you find an old CD-R of an old band you were in back in the day. But now you're stuck in a pandemic, and in a mad scientist frame of mind, so here's what to (re)order from Amazon...

1) Must Be the Day
2) Dover
3) Hyena
4) Road Weary
5) Halcyone

**[EDIT: "Fan of Yours" from 2005 has since been moved to a separate track for this playlist]

So these recordings originally were done for a 5-song demo from a couple studio sessions that the short-lived Campbell River band "Halcyon Days" recorded in Nanaimo BC at Island Pacific Studios with Joel Spillette in 1999. 
Also the track order was switched to put the intro to the song "Hyena" in the middle, including the excerpt from the 1980 psychological thriller "Altered States" (which has something to do with floatation tanks, mad scientists, and Faust freaks!). 

Here's the full quote for context... 

EDDIE JESSUP: "What dignifies the Yogic practices is that the belief system itself is not truly religious. There is no Buddhist God per se. It is the Self, the individual Mind, that contains immortality and ultimate truth."

EMILY JESSUP: "What the hell is not religious about that? You've simply replaced God with the Original Self."

EDDIE JESSUP: "Yes, but we've localized it. Now I know where the Self is. It's in our own minds. It's a form of human energy. Our atoms are six billion years old. We've got six billion years of memory in our minds. Memory is energy! It doesn't disappear — it's still in there. There's a physiological pathway to our earlier consciousnesses. There has to be; and I'm telling you it's in the goddamned limbic system."

MASON PARRISH: "You're a whacko!"

EDDIE JESSUP: "What's whacko about it, Mason? I'm a man in search of his true self. How archetypically American can you get? Everybody's looking for their true selves. We're all trying to fulfill ourselves, understand ourselves, get in touch with ourselves, face the reality of ourselves, explore ourselves, expand ourselves. Ever since we dispensed with God, we've got nothing but ourselves to explain this meaningless horror of life....Well, I think that that true self, that original self, that first self is a real, mensurate, quantifiable thing, tangible and incarnate. And I'm going to find the fucker."

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Altered_States

*NOTE: the original studio recordings from 1999 were "remixed" later in the year as part of a audio design course for BCIT's New Media Design program. Samples of Tom Waits' "The Ocean Doesn't Want Me Today" from 1994's "Bone Machine" and the opening water sounds to PInk Floyd's 1987 reunion album "A Momentary Lapse of Reason". The British Navy sound effects were from a disc of BBC audio clips available to BCIT New Media students.

** All songs written and performed by Joel Flynn, Derek Lee, Ryan Pollock, and Matt Wilson of the band Halcyon Days, 1998-2005

*** And what the hell's is with the rain stick at the beggining? :) Okay, it happened to have arrived in the studio that day and we kinda threw it on there for a lark, but also because the song had a bit of a water/floaty thing going on. We always assumed we could take it out later, but since we were the last band to record reel-to-reel at Island Pacific, we had to go back to get the tapes. When I went back to pick the tapes up in September of '99 before starting classes at BCIT, they'd gotten lost in the shuffle of replacing the analog recording system with a brand one (MOTU, I think). So that was that... HOWEVER... the reason I did the sound design sampling experiment in class with these recordings was to lessen the rain stick's effect by way of sampled water sounds from Pink Floyd. I think I got an "A" in the class... i dunno...  it was a long long time ago! :)

Halcyon Days 1999 – "The Floatation Tank Demos" - a BCIT New Media Design project

OLD ADVENTURES IN LO-FI... 

Next to a small little cobblestone street on the edge of Vancouver's Gastown used to be a bunch of rehearsal spaces for local bands, with all the aesthetics, trappings, and varmints of a set from David Fincher's Fight Club. Matt Wilson, the ex-bassist from from late 90s Campbell River rock band halcyon days had a shared room here with his other band and in late 2008 suggested to former bandmates Joel Flynn (vocals, acoustic guitar) and Derek Lee (drums) to come on by and make use of the space. After the sudden passing of Flynn's father in December of that year, the ex-Riverite singer needed some music to work through the situation. He recruited two other ex-Riverites, his nephew Luke Schuss on guitar and Erin Lahay on piano/keyboards. 

To honour the infamous old singing fisherman - Flynn's father Doug, who had moved on to Fiddler's Green - the five-piece put together a bunch of mostly Irish-themed songs to play at a St. Patrick's Day memorial at the Media Club. The nameless group continued to get together and learn songs, some new originals and holdovers from the halcyon days era, but mostly just a bunch of cover songs that were fun to play. Borrowing Flynn's nom-de-plume of that he used for his digital media art experiments, the band played one other show at the Media Club in July of 2009, but never did anything else outside the walls and microphones of, ahem, "Cobblestone Road Studios". 

Of course, "studios" is saying a bit much, as it is basically a 15'x15' room with some randomly placed microphones. These consisted of either a Rode Podcaster or an iPod nano with a Belkin stereo mic attachment, which were later thrown together into multitrack Garageband projects. Yet this bare minimal approach did the lo-fi job and the Campbell River collective continued to play away in the space until it was closed down in early 2010. Some informal recording took place during this time, but was more note-taking and reference material for the band members than anything else. 

Later in the year, while backing up all these recordings to a new hard drive, Flynn ended up losing most of them when the brand new drive crashed within a  week (damn you LaCie!). File recovery software couldn't identify the Garageband files, and the old "throw the drive in the freezer" last resort couldn't get the drive spinning. The still nameless band never ended up finding another full rehearsal space, or play another show as a full band, while the lost Garageband recordings are still sitting unrecoverable on the busted LaCie (with the eye-catching design by Porsche). 

FAST FORWARD: While rummaging through discs, drives, and other piled up office stuff in early 2011, Flynn came across an old recovery disc from the busted LaCie drive. On it were some raw and rough mp3s taken during the group's rehearsals in 2009 that he gave a listen. With Erin now on a two-year 'round the world adventure, and the rest of the band still in limbo with other projects and a lack of a regular rehearsal space, Flynn decided to collect and coordinate some of these lo-fi recordings through a SoundCloud page, which has now been repurposed for Podstream Studio's uses.