The Yes Men

I missed the lecture and lab last week, so I hope what I say in this post is going to be relevant.

In my opinion, what The Yes Men did is pretty cool. Their professionally-made prank website - targeting Chevron recent campaign "We Agree"- can really trick people; but if you click on their main page link "The Yes Men" at the bottom, you will be led to their main website describing their objectives and reasons playing prank on particular corporations.

Let talk about what I thought BEFORE I checked out their objectives (I wrote down my thoughts, so the level of bias will be the minimum). What did I think when I first saw the two "We Agree" websites? Personally I like the messages in the prank website - they are simple, straight to the point, and I believe, representing most of the people's thoughts.

On The Yes Men's website, they claimed that "Impersonating big-time criminals in order to publicly humiliate them. Our targets are leaders and big corporations who put profits ahead of everything else." I agree that corporations and politicians should be attacked by some intellectuals in order to raise society awareness, allow freedom of speech, allow improvement and development, and so on. No one is perfect, and someone (in this case The Yes Men) has to remind them (in this case Chevron) to improve and do something for the consumers and people's sake.

While what stroke my mind was - why weren't The Yes Men sued by corporations which they put prank on? Perhaps lawsuits were made but the Chevron seems not taking this issue seriously (at least in my opinion). I was trying to look for some press releases or public statements made by Chevron regarding the issue, but I failed. Doesn't Chevron mind when they were being fooled? Or could anyone find me a statement released by Chevron addressing this issue?

The Yes Men know what they are doing. Their FAQ page on their website is very sufficient in information and they are confident with their stand. If they are sued due to copyright and prank issue, I would love to know what both sides could say.

Reading discussion -"Creators"

I agree with most of the points stated by Lessig. Sometimes it is really hard to draw a line to determine what ideas are free and what are not. Everything comes from borrowing from other people; so we are actually copying each other in some ways. 

In current society, people can easily enquire about the notion of intellectual property and the laws protecting it. However, due to the power of media technology, this also means an idea can be exposed to more people, which can lead to more people borrowing the idea with and without intentions. 

When the idea is getting popular by being borrowed by other people, I would say it helps the publicity of the idea and the original creator - like Lessig asking this rhetoric question, "Does piracy here hurt the victims of the piracy, or does it help them?"

Written copyright law is a lengthy document to read, but it definitely has something which is not well explained; especially when there are differences between the laws in various countries.

Globalization is a positive phenomenon, notably for artists. It allows us more opportunities to be inspired and share ideas with people. Sharing is caring, isn't it? Of course original creators should be protected and paid reasonably, but stealing and sharing are two different things.

Reading source:

Lessig, Lawrence. "Creators." Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity. p.21-30. Soft copy from CreativeCommons.org. New York: The Penguin Press, 2004

Remix - Music is what stories sound like

As commonly known, music is what feelings sound like; and most of the time people associate music with emotions instead of detailed stories. As a music major, my idea in this project is "music is what stories sound like", I remixed the images of people's faces and figures on the piano keys. One same pitch can tell thousands of stories.



(I am really bad in Photoshop; please watch the videos to keep your interest going.)

In addition to the still image, I made two videos for this project. I chose only music videos and remixed them become movie trailers. Singers and videos that promote music are still there, but new stories are created. Ignore the words at the bottom since they are lyrics in the original music videos.

Remix #1 "The Love Circle" movie trailer from May Chook on Vimeo.

Addressing the idea of music telling thousands of stories, I created totally different genres for the movie trailers - one is erotic/romance film; while another one is an action thriller. Through the remix, the singers and original songs/music videos appear differently in movies. The balance blend between my idea and the final products is the challenging part; and I tried to achieve it.



"The Love Circle" trailer is pretty straightforward with the captions; but I think I should update this post with the details of "The Lawbreaker". There are only 2 leading characters (Jay and Jolin, the singers in the original music videos) and 1 supporting character (a female - Zhou Xun) who first appears on 0:54. Both Jay (a secret agent) and Jolin (an assassin) are hired by a legal agency (yes a legal agency can do unlawful things secretly - politics) to conduct missions, but they don't know each other. 

One day they are given a mission to hunt each other, which in fact the agency is using them for a self-benefit reason which can endanger the society as well. Jay and Jolin have OBLIGATION to fulfill their mission but later they figured out their boss' real intention. Zhou Xun who supposed to help Jay is actually stealing information from him. Therefore I use the word "TRUST" in the trailer right before the scene of Zhou Xun stealing information from Jay's computer. 

Then the caption "Betrayal is a virtue, when truth unfolds" appears in the trailer to explain that Jay and Jolin betray their agency when they know the truth. In order to save their own lives and stop their agency from doing "legally unlawful" things, they work together and rebel their agency (you can see the bag throwing act on 1:15). So there is the movie title "The Lawbreaker". I keep it in singular to address the distinction between the two characters, since they should be enemies in the story.

I understand that the images switch pretty fast therefore viewers cannot catch everything in first watching; that is fairly normal for action movie trailers. 

Sources for still image:
Piano keys

innocent-looking girl

hugging kids

kissing couple

poor kid

friends

holding hands

wounded man

smiling kid<

beaten kids

father and son

teacher

crying woman

couple hugging

old woman

Sources for video #1 "The Love Circle"

BIGBANG "Beautiful Hangover"
BIGBANG "My Heaven"
BIGBANG "Tell Me Goodbye"
Penny Tai "Lafite"
Yoga Lim "眼色" (Yan Se - Eye Signal)
Song used: Tokio Hotel "Rescue Me"


Sources for video #2 "The Lawbreaker"

Jolin Tsai "Agent J" music movie
Jay Chou's music videos:  
"以父之名" (Yi Fu Zhi Ming - In the name of Father) 
"四面楚歌" (Si Mian Chu Ge - Attacked from all Sides) 
"夜的第七章" (Ye De Di Qi Zhang - Twilight's Seventh Chapter)
"你听得到" (Ni Ting De Dao - You Can Hear It)
"她的睫毛" (Ta De Jie Mao - Her Eyelashes)
Theme music - edited version of "Midnight Run" from Korean drama "IRIS" original soundtrack.

(I have clear version of sources for video #2; Youtube links provided are only for reference.)

Nuit Blanche~~

Octobr 2nd was Nuit Blanche in Toronto, it was a sleepless night indeed for me, when I walked almost the whole downtown for the whole night.

There were two art works which I was fascinating with. _scape with 6 and 7 by Annie Onyi Cheung is a video installation with multi-channel sound. Taking place in Cloud Gardens which is an open space and sounding really scary (why were people scared?) , the sound is actually amplified sound of human breathing. And the video, which looks like a desert, is human chest rising and falling while breathing.

Breathing seems to be the most normal thing for us to do, but we never expected to hear and see it in such a way; while this artwork really opened my mind.

On the other hand, Endgame by Max Streicher caught my attention before I looked at it carefully. There are two huge clown balloons stuck on the back alley between two buildings. The clowns - supposed to be entertaining - look depressed and as if they have so much to say but they can only smile and make people happy.

Personally, I prefer artworks which took place in the public and open space, because they could provide people different ways to see a familiar place.

Notion of Home

To get some ideas for the remix project, I have been looking for something that I am familiar with. As a Malaysian international student, I came out some ideas about studying abroad, issues of migration, and some issues related to my country.

"Home" - this might be the central idea of my project.

Because I do not like to address much political issues, I would focus more on the sentiments of the notion of home.

Short film "Chocolate" is so thought-provoking - it started with addressing very-sensitive political issues in my country - and ends with a sense of bittersweetness. It was directed by the late Yasmin Ahmad (1958-2009), who was one of the influential filmmakers in Malaysia.

Chinese Malaysians have better education opportunities in other countries (admission and scholarship), but we do not hate the Malays who are well financially-supported by the government. The boy wants to run out from the store to give the chocolate to the girl, but he just realized there are so much boundaries between them. Who created the boundaries? Many people, but not everyone.




In addition to "Chocolate", "House" directed by Linus Chung under the same short-film project also gave me some ideas about home.




Big house or small house, it does not matter.

Other than these short films, I would like to share a post written by the late Yasmin Ahmad-

"Artists today think of everything they do as a work of art. It is important to forget about what you are doing - then a work of art may happen."

Cheers to art, cheers to life.