I shall bestow you with truth, I hath indeed shared your mother's bed from Thomas Zukowski on Vimeo.
Part 2 of The Remix Project. Building on dm.finearts.yorku.ca/~banruby/a3/index.html
-in this video I add photos of nude panhandlers, underlining the montage of contemporary rap videos and a score by Frederik Chopin.
The title taken from the meme of Joseph Ducreux, where rap lyrics are translated into "proper english."
Online Empathy Remix from Thomas Zukowski on Vimeo.
In this video I juxtapose video/images indicative of the contemporary online cabinet of curiosities in which silly dances, drunk people, and celebrity rants fill our virtual shelves. And in continuation of my interest in the affects of such online technologies on human behavior, I again ask if this archival of memories on this scale through this technology makes us more empathetic or narcissistic.
As a result a juxtapose the visual zeitgeist with a lecture that discusses theories of an empathetic civilizations. In retrospect of the video where, "are we really an empathetic civilization?"
Sometimes things considered erroneous or 'rubbish' actually produce the most amazing things. Like urban 'junk space' and its inspiration of skateboarding and parkour.Obsessive-Compulsive from Thomas Zukowski on Vimeo.
A continuation of Me, Myself & I.Assignment 2: Lab 4 Group 4 from FACS 1939 on Vimeo.
The multimedia performance piece of Me, Myself & I, stems from the overarching question of “why do we do what we do?” The piece is a collaborative attempt in exploring the human obsession with memory and the archival of memories. Hence, in attempt to answer the central conundrum of why humans are so obsessed with the archival of memory, the performance positions this question in the context of contemporary web culture, where millions upon millions have become active archivists, storing private memories in public spaces like video recordings on YouTube, photographs on Facebook, as well as diary entries on Twitter. In reference to these digital technologies, Me, Myself & I’s digital zeitgeist asks more directly whether these archival technologies make us more empathetic or increasingly narcissistic? All in aims to answer humanity’s true motivations for the persistent archival of memory throughout human history.
Me, Myself & I acts as a kind of cultural critique, passively suggesting an answer through a kind of montage of digital-social-zeitgeist-montage, highlighting the irony in the banality of the narcissistic cultural behavior. The extraction of the predominant ‘web user content’ points to the fundamental dreams and desires that underly the basis of much of humankind’s history. As a result, Me, Myself & I suggests that humanity’s compulsive-obsessive drive to archive its memories is not a contemporary phenomenon. It is not a result of technologies bending and manipulating humans to their will. It is a result of a simple desire that I believe existed embedded in the human race from the times of our ancestors, to the times of Caesar and Napoleon, and all the way to the present day. It is a dream not exclusive to those in positions of power. It is a dream shared by all classes and all races. It is a dream shared by both you and I.
“What I dream of is what all humans dream of, the dream of eternal life promised to us by our Gods. I want to live on like our memories of the Great Romans. I want my footprint to be immune to the high-tides of the sea. I dream of being relevant.’
