In this week, we talked about Hip Hop as a contemporary art practice and a use of creative technology. On Monday we had a lecture from Dr. Charity Marsh, who's research is primarily in the area of hip hop culture in Northern First Nations and Inuit communities. The first things I found most interesting was how hip hop culture is being re-appropriated by Canadian youth in a way that references hip hop "tradition" while making changes to be more specific to Inuit communities in Nunavut (an example of such would be NWA: Natives With Attitude). Hip hop has been an important art form for Black communities and is often a really successful tool to discuss the marginalization and oppression people of colour face, and I think it's really interesting that it is being used by First Nations and Inuit communities in Canada for the same purpose.My favourite piece shown by Dr. Marsh was the beat boxing/throat singing combination, both art forms are impressive on their own and the way the young women put them together was amazing.
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| image via interactivemediaandperformance.com |
For the workshop portion of the week, we visited the Interactive Media and Performance (IMP) labs. I had heard a bit about the IMP labs when I took intermedia last year, but I didn't know much about it and was always a bit hesitant to find out more despite knowing that it was available to the public. In our lecture the class before Dr. Marsh spoke about the five parts of hip hop, which are DJing, rapping, break dancing, beat making, and graffiti art, and we had the chance to experience two of those aspects (DJing and beat making) in the IMP labs. I tend to be nervous around electronic equipment I'm not familiar with (which is a lot of it) but once given a bit of direction I had a lot of fun with both of them. The DJ pod in particular was really cool, and I enjoyed hearing the DJing other students were doing, as well as the quick demonstration of the research assistant who was in the pod with us.
