VidiMasher 3000, mashup on a screen

VidiMasher 3000

The mashup master Mark Gunderson, aka The Evolution Control Committee, has been in the music plagiarism field for the last couple of decades. One of his latest tactical products (after so many others) is called VidiMasher 3000. It’s a 122-centimeter rear-projected faux touchscreen, which shows the overloaded Ableton Live software setup of loops Gunderson uses during his live, plagiaristic shows. He pretends to control this fake touchscreen with his characteristic thimbles. But, in fact, he actually does this because inside there’s a hidden infrared transmitter that is detected by a Wiimote nearby, converted into a mouse-click and sent to the computer running Live. The real time visualization of the loops in an all-embracing view has two consequences: the “sequencing” activity can be perceived as a whole in a single screen (as we’re used to); and the direct correspondence between the music heard and the abstract representation of the tracks to be mashed up gives to this process the same legitimization as DJ or VJ practices.