{"id":468221,"date":"2026-09-18T19:30:54","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T19:30:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/468221\/"},"modified":"2026-09-18T19:30:54","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T19:30:54","slug":"at-the-internet-archive-negativland-reminds-the-world-why-they-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/468221\/","title":{"rendered":"At the Internet Archive, Negativland Reminds the World Why They Matter"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two Bay Area institutions came together for a night of soundscapes, sampling and discussion about art.<\/p>\n

Sep 18, 2026<\/p>\n

Updated 11:53 am PT<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

(L\u2013R) Mark Hosler and Jon Leidecker of Negativland at the Internet Archive in San Francisco on Sept. 16, 2026. \u00a0(Gabe Meline\/KQED)<\/p>\n

The American music industry has a long history of exploitation, but Negativland really got fleeced. With their long, expensive legal fight over fair use, the Contra Costa County collective changed the trajectory of art, culture and mass media in America. Now, the very principles Negativland defended have been commandeered by full-speed-ahead AI companies to invade, steal and poorly regurgitate the world\u2019s body of knowledge and information.<\/p>\n

Or, as they put it during their sold-out show Wednesday night at the San Francisco headquarters of the Internet Archive<\/a>, \u201cThe AI people are using the Negativland model to justify their business model. Fuck them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle introduces Negativland on Sept. 16, 2026.\u00a0(Gabe Meline\/KQED)<\/p>\n

The Internet Archive and Negativland make a perfect pair. The Internet Archive is dedicated to preserving knowledge and culture, no matter how mundane or fleeting. Since 1979, Negativland has resurfaced and remixed the world\u2019s culture into entirely new works of art. (In fact, while driving to the show, I stumbled upon an accidental opening act by tuning in to 89.9 KDFC, where a Schumann symphony clashed with broadcast static and snippets of news announcers\u2019 voices \u2014 \u201cglass bottles\u201d \u2026 \u201cWest Marin\u201d \u2026 \u201ca Russian envoy\u201d \u2014 from a competing radio station.)<\/p>\n

Before the set, Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle held up a copy of the group\u2019s best-known release, U2, and said that, a decade ago, the Internet Archive began hosting more than 4,000 hours of the Negativland radio show Over the Edge<\/a>. \u201cI can\u2019t tell you how meaningful it was to us,\u201d Kahle said.<\/p>\n

Negativland fans are a lovable bunch. Inside the Internet Archive\u2019s giant hall \u2014 a former church, with wooden pews and hymn numbers sharing space with giant servers \u2014 strangers struck up conversations that I did not understand. (\u201cWe\u2019re big fans of the MX204 and 2100 switch,\u201d for one.) People took photos of the band\u2019s onstage pile of electronic gear. Someone near me reeked of stale weed. Few attendees appeared under the age of 40.<\/p>\n

\"\"The crowd before Negativland\u2019s performance at the Internet Archive in San Francisco on Sept. 16, 2026. \u00a0(Gabe Meline\/KQED)<\/p>\n

And then, with members Mark Hosler and Jon Leidecker at a long table covered in mixing boards, cables, wires, homemade electronic units and hand-scrawled notes, the show began.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe point is this \u2026 we\u2019re getting a little off-course.\u201d<\/p>\n

So repeated an NPR-style voice over new-age synths and oscillations hard-panned across the room\u2019s speakers. For over an hour, gurgling sounds, or the sound of raindrops, or strange tympani, bells or drones programmed by Hosler shared space with Leidecker\u2019s vocal samples: \u201cIs the universe just one big brain?\u201d \u201cPlease just tell me what is illegal, and I\u2019ll stop doing it.\u201d \u201cIs this real, and do we care?\u201d<\/p>\n

This being Negativland, plenty of subversive humor ran through the set. The audience laughed at the more absurd moments, like a man\u2019s voice suggesting that we melt the North Pole, or another\u2019s declaring that \u201cpretty much everything David Lynch does is right-wing coded.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"(L\u2013R) Mark Hosler and Jon Leidecker of Negativland perform at the Internet Archive in San Francisco on Sept. 16, 2026. \u00a0(Gabe Meline\/KQED)<\/p>\n

But the night\u2019s jest blurred with reality. One man\u2019s voice declared that achieving AI goals, despite its ruinous effects on the planet, is more important than achieving climate goals. How many AI zealots think this way? On a similar note, I was plucked from my sound-collage reverie when I actually recognized a sample, of Suno CEO Mike Shulman, claiming that \u201cIt\u2019s not really enjoyable to make music now<\/a>.\u201d (I wrote in my notebook: \u201cIdiots Talking About Art & Technology\u201d \u2190 Theme of the set??\u201d)<\/p>\n

This overlap of humor and doom came to a head when men\u2019s voices discussed the need for technology to be violent, and Leidecker, expressionless, introduced an exasperated, terrified woman\u2019s voice into their dialogue, repeating, \u201cFriend?! Friend?! FRIEND?!\u201d<\/p>\n

Throughout, Hosler manned the giant board, sometimes spanning his fingers across something that looked like a flux capacitor, sometimes picking up a Fender bass and playing it with an electric toothbrush, sometimes wincing as if he were playing a heavy metal guitar solo. And just when it was needed most, levity came over the phone lines: David \u201cThe Weatherman\u201d Wills, calling in from his home in Seattle, providing a running monologue about refrigerator lights, Kaopectate, short-wave radios and eating Speed Stick deodorant.<\/p>\n

Afterward, the band announced that they rarely if ever played songs from their albums live, but for an encore, the beat dropped to their 1987 track (and media hoax material<\/a>) \u201cChristianity is Stupid<\/a>.\u201d The crowd audibly whooped.<\/p>\n

\"\"(L\u2013R) Mark Hosler and Jon Leidecker of Negativland at the Internet Archive in San Francisco on Sept. 16, 2026. \u00a0(Gabe Meline\/KQED)<\/p>\n

A Q&A followed, during which Trump was declared \u201cthe evil culture-jammer.\u201d Leidecker asked out loud, \u201cHow do you have a functioning democracy when there\u2019s no reality?\u201d and advised that while the ideals Negativland worked for have spread wider than they could have imagined, it was important to \u201cmake sure you\u2019re pranking upwards, instead of deceiving everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n

A confession: the main reason I like Negativland isn\u2019t their agitating, or the ways they\u2019ve undeniably made the music industry and creativity at large better. I like them for their sound output. That may seem like a superficial way of interacting with one of the world\u2019s most important experimental groups, and one could surely argue that their aesthetics are inseparable from their advocacy. But what can I say? I fell in love with them because of their records, not their lawsuits.<\/p>\n

Or, as a twisted, effects-laden voice said, and burbled, and sung, at the end of their set on Wednesday: If you don\u2019t understand, the least you can do is enjoy the beautiful music.<\/p>\n

\"\"The Internet Archive in San Francisco, pictured on Sept. 16, 2026.\u00a0(Gabe Meline\/KQED)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two Bay Area institutions came together for a night of soundscapes, sampling and discussion about art. Sep 18,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":468222,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-468221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=468221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468221\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/468222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=468221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=468221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=468221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}