A Bicycle Built for two

The song “A Bicycle Built for Two” has progressed through time historically with technology.

I went to the u-tube link here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwMltbsIsqo&feature=player_embedded# and listened to the piano play a 1920’s version of a bicycle built for two. This was played automatically on the piano on what is called a piano roll piano player. Here technology moves away from the body and lets the purely technical mechanical piano roll do the music making.

Then I went to this site http://www.vortex.com/av#DAISY and listened to the first text to speech song on a computer. This was done on an IBM computer in 1961 at Bells Labs. A popular movie, “2001 A Space Odyssey” had a scene in it where a computer dies while singing a bike build for two. Here human speech is recorded and then used by the computer to form speech.

Next I went to this link http://www.vortex.com/av#DAISY and watched Clara Rockmore play the theremin. I think the theremin is neat but I don’t really like it with classical music. The theremin was the first electrical instrument ever invented. When you play the theremin it usually has two sensors you control with your hands. One is for volume and the other frequency. The theremin was the beginning of technology going back to using the body.

The theremin is some place in-between digital and analog. It uses radio waves. The digitizer replaced it. With digital we all went away from the body. Instead of playing instruments we made them play with our computers.

Now we have contemporary artists like Scott Snibbe who is back towards the body. Where he gets people interacting with his art. His computers record their shadows and play them back. This shows us that new media art today is about humanity. The new media today is participatorier. It is not just there to be viewed but they’re to be interacted with.

Today certain technology can take a music sample and rework it into something else. This makes me think about popular hip-hop artists that do covers of older artists. This brings us ethical copywriting issues. Would those artists want the hip-hop artists to be doing covers and drastically changing their music? My opinion is go for it hip hop artists! Take whatever you want. As long as you’re creating something new it’s cool.