blackrimglasses.com

I guess. Murmurs had about 10,000 today, this site had only 130 or so. So be it.

For you newcomers, allow me to introduce myself: I am Ethan Kaplan. Former Webmaster for the Orange County Register (1995-1998) and Online Community Director for Freedom Communications (1998-2001). Former MFA and MA student at UC Santa Barbara as well. Currently: Director of Technology, Warner Bros. Records. Owner: Murmurs.com. I like art, computers, movies and music. It’s nice to meet you all.

Monday, as in the 28th, I go up to Santa Barbara for the first time since I left on June 14 to lecture to a class of 200 people about digital media, copyright, reductivity, etc. Basically the theory of binary as applied to the mutability of media artifacts. Which, essentially, is a nice way of saying that I’m lecturing on Walter Benjamin, Deleuze, Derrida and Barthe with examples from Apple/MySpace/BitTorrent rather than from post-structural texts.

Which is to say, I hope it isn’t boring.

More importantly: I’m going back up to Santa Barbara. It is strange that a place I didn’t want to leave is also now a place I have not gone back to. While I can say I was busy (I was), I was also trepedatious for the sole reason that I loved it up there, and I miss it. I miss the weather, the way that the days kind of bled together so that the weekend didn’t matter. I don’t miss a lot about it, but I do miss the permanent vacation (gotta get away) feeling.

Monday should be good. I love lecturing, and its the reason I wanted to teach. I’m also damn good at it, I must say. I once lectured in a ski-cap that said “I am Vibrating at the Speed of Light” on a day that was 90 degrees out. Because I had a bad hair moment. True story. Also, the last time I lectured up in Santa Barbara was ten minutes after I got the call that I had gotten hired at Warner Bros. Records, which meant I eventually was going to have to remove myself from Murmurs a bit. While that didn’t happen as planned, it did effect the lecture, as it was all about REM, Murmurs and fanatacism.

The lecture I’m giving is in a blog post about four entries down, about the value of a ringtone vs. a digital download, and the concept of abstraction effecting inherent value. I have to do my Keynote presentation and get my visuals together. Now that I have readers, maybe some of you can read through the post and see if it makes sense? Maybe if you’re in Santa Barbara you could come to the lecture? Pretty please?

Ethan Lecturing About Stuff
Monday, November 28, 3:30PM
IV Theater 1, UCSB Campus, Santa Barbara, CA

Drinks and refreshments will be consumed afterwards (hopefully) in downtown Santa Barbara, probably at Firebird or Blue Agave.