COLORFUL Q&A WITH RAINBO VIDEO,
experimental filmmaker////&/////dance music producer
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(BACKGROUND)
Q: Could you describe ((your intentions with regard to)) Rainbo Video?

A: In a most pedestrian fashion, I must confess that my central intention in performing as Rainbo Video is quite simply to express myself through a medium of which I believe (perhaps foolishly) I have a profound understanding. The music that I produce is an attempt to realize my ideas on harmony, melody, and rhythm - or really, I should call them preferences. It'd be silly to claim I have profound theories about dance music. I really just want to make people dance and have fun. The way that I choose to do this, however, is quite particular.

Rainbo Video used to be "breakcore" music (not a label I aimed for, but something that made explaining what I did easier). Breakcore is equal parts jungle (fast breakbeat music for the dancefloor, upwards of 180 beats per minute) and modern classical/noise music (intricately edited, complexly structured, aggressive, and noisy). Sampling is not an essential part of breakcore, but certainly an extremely prevalent feature of the genre (especially: mainstream pop or rap songs; classic jungle, gabber, and happy hardcore songs; humorous or aggressive dialogue from movies, tv shows, etc.). Whatever is sampled in a given breakcore song is typically chopped and mauled into oblivion, thereby creating an aggressively subversive, extremely rhythmic and fragmented take on the original. Breakcore, generally, can be characterized as complex, hardcore dance music with a sense of humor. It appealed to me because it is was fast, fun, and had no ulterior motives on the dancefloor (it's dance music for each and every person to spazzdance their heart out to, not for grinding and juking with someone in the hopes of hooking up).

After about a year, I tired of the formal techniques I was employing - heavy distortion, extremely fast edits, very little repetition. All my emphasis on uncompromising sonic experimentation and ADD-friendly fragmentation had ironically become quite boring. I had also become quite annoyed with the posturing inherent in the breakcore scene. Every producer I encountered was trying to prove themselves more hardcore and clever than the next. Funnier, more obscure samples; more extreme distortion; faster, more complex beats. It was a pissing contest for music nerds. LAME.

I'm much happier with the new Rainbo Video material I'm working on, as the focus has moved back to formal elements I find perpetually enjoyable: good beats, pleasing melodies/harmonies, and any other sonic gestures that conveys a sense of pure unadulterated fun. The humor and sampling are still there, but the humor is subtler and the sampling is less about the novelty of/subversive implications of appropriation and more about musical integration.

I've also started making videos and films under the name Rainbo Video. This is because the RV music has an aesthetic based on humor, irreverence, and accessibility that I want people to consider when approaching the movies. That's not to say that one has to be familiar with my music before one can appreciate my movies, but I think my music has strongly influenced my films, and is worth taking into account. Put bluntly, my films are stranger than my music, because conceptually, they are aligned with American experimental films. The intent in my films is not to relate a narrative or evoke certain emotions, but to excite the senses and to challenge the mind. I think of my films as perceptual and cognitive puzzles for the viewer (not suprising, given that there are often literal puzzles within the film for the viewer to solve).

Rainbo Video is also an onscreen persona/alter ego I occasionally assume. I wear a hood and use a text-to-speech generator to communicate when I do so.

(END OF BACKGROUND)
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(BEGINNING OF SERIOUS QUESTIONS)

Q: I know that Rupert Murdoch has graciously allowed access to a compendium of RV pursuits: songs, videos, upcoming shows, blogs, attractive friends and ladyfriends (myspace.com/rainbovideo). But, he’s only one of your many hostesses (YouTube, blogspot(!), so on). How have you approached your, or RV’s, that is, participation in online networks and communities?

A: I see my involvement in the various online networks/communities as a simple way of giving exposure to my music, videos, writings, and art. The networks themselves are not inherently a part of my work, which is to say that I am not making videos, music, etc. with the sole intent of seeing how online communities react to/interact with them.
Rather, the networks serve as a simple, instantaneous way of showcasing my work to potentially millions of people. They are, for me, marketing tools, and they're currently the best tools available to me. Given that I am not signed to a label and do not have the means to print and hand out thousands of flyers or buy tv or radio commercial time, billboard space, or exhibit my work in any kind of well-known public gallery space for any extended period of time (the best I can do is hour-long music performances at bars and music venues), online marketing is the best way for me to give widespread exposure to my work. What I'm doing would be impossible were it not for the Internet.

What's especially great is that a central purpose of online communities is not simply to meet people, but to meet people who have interests similar to yours. This is especially useful for musicians, filmmakers, and artists of all kinds because it allows for creating instant, personalized networks for niche art genres. Networks of like-minded artists grow because the artists express interest in one another's work, thereby establishing professional, artistic, and personal relationships with people whose aesthetic output is similar. This is useful for planning and executing collaborations, performances, and exhibitions

Equally important is the fact that each of these artists has, to however small an extent, a group of people/fans/admirers/critics who follow their progress. These fans (when there is an established network of like-minded artists available to them) are then introduced to other artists that they are highly likely to appreciate, given their preference for one of the similar artists with which they are already familiar. Thus, networking helps increase your exposure not just to anyone, but to people who are more likely than not to appreciate your work. Because I correspond and network via MySpace with other dance music producers whose output is also aligned with the baltimore club, breakstep, ghettotech, mashup, house, electro, and synth pop genres, fans of those producers have actually requested my online friendship because they found me through this network and appreciate the kind of music I'm producing. Being a part of a style/genre network is important for attracting a strong base of people who will more than likely than not become fans of yours, and sites like MurdochSpace make that possible.

Side note. A problem I have encountered in the music scene in general, but particularly in the dance music scene, is a palpable move away from textual analysis. Music may be sound, but producing text-based analytical essays about it and one's ideas about it is not inherently boring or "academic." I think a general perception of art, music, and film theory is that it is stuffy and pretentious. While a great deal of it is, the best of it isn't, and it engages the given art form in a way that is highly relevant to all the artists producing work in that medium. Sure, dance music is about having fun. I don't expect club producers to start writing manifestos and tracts citing Deleuze or Baudrillard. However, the reason I have started both a blog and vlog is because I want to contribute, in some way, to an analytical discussion regarding music, video, art, the Internet, and media in general. Most of my posts or videos will not likely be straightforward analytical essays about a given topic, but instead some sort of creative, playful exploration of it.

In sharp contrast to music producers, most experimental filmmakers have no aversion whatsoever to writing analytical essays of their own and other artists' works. Of course, most of these filmmakers are also utterly humorless and manage to suck the fun out of any discussion. I guess I'm trying to find the middle ground between the non-intellectual pleasure of the dancefloor and the thoughtful evaluation of film theory.

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Q: What online community best suits your project(s)? Which is least conducive? I guess I’m mostly thinking of your RV vlogs and what sort of responses you have received and what sort of responses you would like to receive? Is participation more important or is accessibility? What would be the main features of the ideal online network or community?

A: First, I'd have to say that I think MySpace has the highest degree/best form of interactivity for me. (Actually, Facebook is perhaps best of all the communities, but I only use that for personal networking, not networking related to my Rainbo Video output, so it's not really relevant). The fact that each person's MySpace profile page is headquarters for everything - posting original music, posting comments, sending messages, listing favorites, hobbies, etc. - means that the interaction is highly centralized. When you want to send a message to someone, you go to his profile page. When you want to listen to an artist's music and post a comment about it, you go to their profile page. Everything happens on this one page.

On YouTube, the structure is very different. While there are Channel pages - where each user can post their personal information, the other channels they subscribe to, and where thumbnails of the videos they upload are visible - the videos themselves are viewed on a separate page (a page dedicated to each video). This divorces the content page from the creator page, and means comments about a video are associated directly with that video (which is good), but disconnects those comments from the direct feedback to/discussion regarding the artist (which is bad).

With MySpace, I'm a little more interested in the way people are reacting to what I put out there, simply because it's important that people actually want to dance to the music that I produce, and also want to come out to my concerts, which are interactive events. With the films I put on YouTube, there's less of a necessity for feedback, simply because there's not the same level of interaction with them. They're films conceptually based on the activity of the mind and the senses, and while they certainly require a level of intellectual interaction, it's not the same kind of outward reaction that I think is more typical of listening to dance music at a party, say, or at one of my shows. So, with the Rainbo Video vlog, as you mention, I'm less interested in how people interact with it, and more interested, simply, in them experiencing it.

Of course, it would be silly to claim that video blogs on YouTube are not interactive. They are - comments and video responses actualize this. I'm just less interested in this aspect. However, the vlog is certainly meant, in some way, to trouble and blur the distinction between experimental film - which has in the past been characterized as a passive experience and one that is distinct from common, everyday activity, given that you have to go to a screening of it at an underground art theater - and web video blogs, which are not only much more interactive, but also ubiquitous, given the new omnipresence of the Internet in global culture. Surfing the Internet has become as mundane as turning on a light switch, and certainly no more difficult. This is in sharp contrast to going to a see a movie, which is a scheduled diversion that takes time, money, and energy. I make these films in the hopes of rendering strange and fun film experiences more prevalent in everyday life. I'd be quite pleased if one of my films managed to receive the kind of exposure that American Idol has received.

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Q: We were asked to identify “an artist, art or design group and/or cultural entrepreneur who works on relational projects that have creativity, lifestyle, community, and/or daily life as their theme.” You, my friend, I crown, as per Bourriaud, “Semionaut,” extraordinaire. I don’t say this just because of your DJing. I say this more in reference to what Bourriaud describes as the semionaut’s assiduous navigation and, more importantly, selective activation and thereby organization/disorganization/reorganization of the “established.”

You unquestionably play with accessibility, functionality, integration, participation, signification, and, in particular, relational signification. Yet, the reverent irreverence, or irreverent reverence, of your efforts is violently juxtaposed with assertions of relative or ephemeral power or control in the creation or production of meaning, of value, especially in your wry manipulation, exploitation (?), of “establisheds.” And, in your efforts’ openness to further manipulation, exploitation.

I struggle with not dubbing the 10 yearold I babysit a semionaut. After all, who doesn’t “produce original pathways through signs”? What isn’t performative? But, I also can’t commit to universalizing (and thereby seemingly effacing the supposed agency of) the semionaut... It must be that there are semionauts and then there are Semionauts.

But then who are the uppercased?

Has your participation in online networks or communities encouraged you to reassess your understanding of a Semionaut/semionaut (or the semionaut/non-semionaut) divide? Or to disengage Bourriaud, have your online endeavors encouraged you to rethink your relationship to those who view or listen to your works? To what extent is (are) your project(s) informed by, (re)defined by, fellow or potential YouTubers and the like?

A: My work is less invested in a relational aesthetics than in one more classically modernist. Certainly, I display my work on the Internet, which is a medium inherently based on interactivity. However, it is more important for me to use the Internet as space to present the original, defined, static works than it is to create some sort of variable, interactive experience that only materializes and gains meaning when a person interacts with it. While all art needs to be heard or experienced until it can have any impact on anyone other than the artist, the films and music I make are essentially texts whose fundamental meaning exists regardless of whether someone is experiencing it or not. The work is there to be seen/heard, and does not require any further action from me or from the viewer/listener for it to transform into some more fully realized form. For instance, the films I make, while drastically different in content and structure, have essentially the same aesthetic presentation as Hollywood blockbusters. The work is produced, distributed, and made available to viewers, who approach it as a closed, personal experience. Imagine the viewer watching a matinee film screening in an empty theater. This is seen by many filmmakers as an ideal way for someone to experience their films. I feel the same way. For me, however, an equally legitimate way to experience my films are by opening up an Internet browser, navigating to my You Tube channel, and clicking on one of my videos. The screen - and likely, the size of the screening room - has shrunk, but the method for experiencing it is the same: the subjective, personal experience of a preexisting text.

Contrast this, for instance, with a masochistic performance piece that gains meaning only when the people watching become increasingly anxious as the artist continues to hurt himself. The choice of the bystanders to intervene or not intervene would become a fundamental part of the performance, perhaps even THE central purpose for it. Perhaps the artist is interested to see precisely to what extent he needs to hurt himself before someone makes the judgment that he has gone too far and is in danger of seriously injuring - or possibly killing - himself. This would be a piece that gains meaning through
the interaction of the artist and the viewers, whereby all involved parties add in some way to its meaning. My films and music do not operate in this way. (However, I certainly appreciate the participation of people who come to my concerts and dance, as that personal, subjective desire to react physically to my music by dancing provides instantaneous feedback, adding not necessarily to the meaning of the performance, but to the fun of it.)

I'd also like to add that the fact that I am exhibiting my films on the a site like YouTube is a drastic break with most of the experimental film community, which largely comprises old filmmakers so out of touch with digital technology and the direction media is heading that they are convinced that experimental films NEED to be seen on 16mm film for it to have any meaning, and that anything shown on video or the Internet has nothing to do with the values and aesthetics established by experimental film as presented on celluloid. Very narrow-minded indeed.

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Q: Do you sometimes resent, or do your works sometimes resist, the openness of networks like MySpace or YouTube insofar as this openness seems to frustrate, or even emasculate, expression by their very commitment to communication? Or, do you work to exploit this openness as well? Even encouraging the appropriation or misappropration of what you offer? Simply offering up, offering to, fellow onliners? Always a DJ of sorts?

A: I love the openness that has been made possible by the Internet and digital technology in general. While I do not make a point of telling people that they can, or should, sample/remix my films or songs, I would have very little problem with it if they did, provided they don't claim that they created the source material. There's a difference between blatantly sampling a song by another artist, reworking it, and admitting it's a creative remix, and surreptitiously sampling it and claiming you created the original. I do the former, and support other people who do (Girl Talk, Drop the Lime, and many others come to mind). However, the latter is a kind of stealing that I would argue is completely unacceptable, and one rarely acknowledged (though probably very common). Here's one example: http://youtube.com/watch?v=M4KX7SkDe4Q