The highlight of today's 27C3 was the world premiere of "The Concert", a disconcerting moment for free culture. Canadian violinist Corey Cerovsek, French pianist Julien Quentin and artist manager Alex Antener hacked this hacker's convention, injecting excellent classical music in a performance about the evils of non-free culture.
There is a mix of projected chat, video, and visuals with some great music underlying it - played on some of the best hardware, a Stradivarius violin, a Steinway piano, and a MacBook Pro. The auditorium, used to listening to deep technical talks, was enraptured. Cerovsek and his violin unite to produce lively sweet melodies, as the fingers of Quentin flow in waves over the keyboard. They sound as if they have been playing together forever, when actually only Corey and Alex got together three days ago, Julien joined two days ago, and they created this work - remixing Bach, Debussey, and Beethoven with Wikipedia, some fair-use video, and their own texts.
They play a video by Richard Stallman about Beethoven making the point about patent absurdity - if music had been patented 200 years ago, you would have a hard time writing a symphony that would not get you sued, much less one which sounds nice.
They received a standing ovation, and after a fun discussion gave one encore with Alex standing in as a music stand, and another after the crowd would not let them leave the room. I think they converted a number of people to classical music this evening!
I enjoyed it tremendously, and would go see Cerovsek any chance I get!
There is a mix of projected chat, video, and visuals with some great music underlying it - played on some of the best hardware, a Stradivarius violin, a Steinway piano, and a MacBook Pro. The auditorium, used to listening to deep technical talks, was enraptured. Cerovsek and his violin unite to produce lively sweet melodies, as the fingers of Quentin flow in waves over the keyboard. They sound as if they have been playing together forever, when actually only Corey and Alex got together three days ago, Julien joined two days ago, and they created this work - remixing Bach, Debussey, and Beethoven with Wikipedia, some fair-use video, and their own texts.
They play a video by Richard Stallman about Beethoven making the point about patent absurdity - if music had been patented 200 years ago, you would have a hard time writing a symphony that would not get you sued, much less one which sounds nice.
They received a standing ovation, and after a fun discussion gave one encore with Alex standing in as a music stand, and another after the crowd would not let them leave the room. I think they converted a number of people to classical music this evening!
I enjoyed it tremendously, and would go see Cerovsek any chance I get!
Posts
1 comment:
... thanks for your article. We had so much fun preparing and giving this presentation!
Best, Lx
Post a Comment