Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Welcome!

Back in the early days of the Internet, one of the very first pages I put up online was a little thing I called the Synchronicity Arkive. I was newly graduated from college, and had found my way to the rec.arts.pink-floyd newsgroup. There, I stumbled across a discussion of the incredible synchronicity created by pairing Pink Floyd's seminal album Dark Side Of The Moon with the film The Wizard Of Oz. Since a common pastime for us in college had been matching up a variety of videos to music (mostly Pink Floyd, but some others), the idea immediately caught my imagination.

And so the Arkive itself was born. After a while, I stumbled across others who had created similar pages. We began to link up, and a community was born. Then, in 1997, the mainstream media (finally having awoken to the Internet) found us, and the Arkive went nuts. I remember the day I first checked my hit counter, and it had jumped by about a 1000 from the day before. I thought it was an error, but when I reloaded it was up another 2000. Then 5000. It just started spinning basically.

And with the addition of a message board script, the SynchBoard allowed that community to become a very vibrant and heated discussion area.

The media quickly lost interest, and over time, people did move on. But a core of community always stuck around, and even survived the migration from the SynchBoard over to Baker B's Film/Album Synchronicity Board. Then back to the Arkive again when Baker decided to step back just as my nostalgia was kicking in.

Unfortunately, the Arkive did not survive some of the turmoil in my personal life, but once again I find myself nostalgic for that community, from the early days of the net. And after reaching out, a new Synchronicity Arkive idea began to take shape. This time, a group blog to look into the history of audio/visual synching (which was a preview in a lot of ways of today's rip/remix culture), as well as what some of that old community is up to today.

So, welcome. There isn't much here yet, but hopefully that will change, over time. We can't recapture the past necessarily, but we can remember it. And learn from it. Every journey begins with a single step... but we always bring with us where we've been. Here's to synching... keep on keeping on!!

12 comments:

  1. Thanks for bringing back an online 'sandbox' for us to play in, Mike. :-) I really liked your comment that synching was sort of a precursor to the remix/mash-up thing; I've often thought that over the past several years as it went mainstream, in no small part to YouTube. I look forward to seeing what everyone's been up to.

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  2. So far, this little blog project has been pretty quiet, but I hope to change that soon.

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  3. Hey bro, I'm glad the site is back up. I have started a new channel for posting our sync movies. So far I only have a few videos up but I'd like to make this a community channel where more can post their sync movies for all to share. Will this be a forum format again? Drop by the channel and check it out. http://www.youtube.com/synchronicitymovies

    Send me messages their if you want to collaborate. Let's get this growing. I have another channel with 1800 subs so I'm sure some will migrate over from their. http://www.youtube.com/spectrethehorseman

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  4. Hey, I'm sure you guys will be interested in this: go to http://iahuasca.blogspot.com to learn how to sync 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Shining, and Pink Floyd's The Wall. It is an absolute stunning cinematic experience and I really hope you are able to experience it. Thanks.

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  5. Hi Mike and guys. Great to see this blog up and running. I have a small page attached to what’s mainly a Second Life oriented blog (Baker Blinker Blog, but also with some Actual Life photos and stories) devoted to preserving at least some of the history of synching as well, including transcripts from most of the Synchronicity Arkive podcast interviews and also a more recent one from Mike Casey that may be of particular interest to some.

    http://bakerblinker.wordpress.com/interviews/

    Unfortunately a lot of those history links at the bottom are dead now so you’ll have to go to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine to see the old pages. I’m also still working on my SID’s 1st Oz web site now and then, and maybe I can become motivated to mess with that again soon.

    Thanks again!

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  6. Thank you for bringing this back.

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  7. Thanks for bringing this back, but it doesn't seem to be going anywhere. Is anyone interested in making a forum? I don't know much about it or how much it costs for that matter. We may still be too small at the moment anyway.

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  8. Anyone have any synchs for the Marvel Cinematic Universe films?

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  9. Nice come back... Been a long time member and I'm still syncing in my universe! Take a peek I love to offer you all a glance at where syncing has taken my art and business!
    http://www.viralmediaart.com/the-dark-side-of-oz.html new next DSOOZ show August 17th
    https://www.youtube.com/user/ViralMediaArt
    VIRAL MEDIA ART...

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  10. Greetings! I have been a loooong time member here,,, ( fEaRnOaERt Entertainment) I have been producing live staged sync shows featuring my version of Dark Side of Oz for well over 8 years here in North Cali! I have recently been contacted by someone named Lor Aldridge from Arcata Ca. who claims to be the creator of original sync in 92' The Dark Side of The Rainbow... Is this name familiar to you... I seem to remember in the early Arkive membership... can you help me shed some light on the subject? FB @ https://www.facebook.com/fEaRnOaRtEnT - web site www.ViralMediaArt.com :-)

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