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Like the mortuary residents in Philip K. Dick's novel Ubik, some of the posts on this weblog are still ticking away in the comments section, enjoying happy and productive half-lives. The following are recommended threads:
A rousing discussion of Golan Levin's Dialtones (a Telesymphony), a new media work in which audience members' cell phones become musical instruments. After kicking it off with my customary gentle critique, artist/poet/critic/WFMU dj Kenneth Goldsmith and various digital media tree-ers chimed in, and then Levin himself responded. The nitty gritty is gotten down to here.
The discussion of 28 Days Later shifts to the film's stupid "alternate ending" strategy and iffy racial politics.
In the Marsha Cottrell vs Seldon Hunt thread, Digital Media Tree-er Mark posts a nifty chart of DCT coefficients and I try to bluff my way through a discussion of image compression technology.
In the thread on Soviet Synthesizers, Bruce Sterling's 1995 speech about "dead media" is excerpted. That brilliant bit of argument should be required reading in any college-level new media curriculum.
"With this lance of PVC, foam, and duct tape, I challenge you to joust."
"And with this lance of similar materials, I respond to your challenge." (Guy in foreground: "So, we're thinking about Thai later--are you up for it?")
More pictures from the 2003 Chunkathalon (Saturday, July 26th, 2003, North 7th and Kent, Williamsburg, Brooklyn): "a series of death-defying contests that includes...the 40 lap, powerslide competition, baby rescue, apocalyptic quickfix, the 'help-me-up,' the gauntlet, derby, flaming wall of death, jump, hurl, and spew, as well as the World Chopper and Tallbike Jousting Championships. All chopper, tallbike, etc. bike clubs [were] respectfully commanded to attend."
UPDATE: Other pictures from embedded chunkajournalists are coming to light! James Wagner has a dynamic action shot on his blog of one of the jousts, and bloggy also has great photos. (Still more pics here.) Also, check out this documentation on the C.H.U.N.K. 666 website of the possibly even more frenetic 2002 Chunkathalon, held in Portland.
Cube tower slideup, by artech-x03, 80 times
an html/internet/curatorial/appropriation piece
The film 28 Days Later is a mishmash of influences (Omega Man, George Romero's zombie trilogy, John Wyndham's "cozy catastrophes"*), but it still packs a wallop. As fellow PreReviewer Sally McKay says in an email:
The fear in this film (Danny Boyle is director, from Trainspotting, etc.) is really contemporary. Globalization protest is an undercurrent, the main character is a bike courier, and the plot is a viral plague. All this content is punched home by the fact that it's shot with consumer-technology cameras. Sort of an open-source feel to the whole thing.The use of MiniDV is discussed in this article on Anthony Dod Mantle, the cinematographer, and the gritty, grainy texture of the video and the filmmakers' keen eye for composition & detail make an unbeatable combination. Seeing the movie a second time you become more aware of how artful (not arty) some of the images are (semi-spoilers): the eerie scenes of a completely depopulated daytime London (the Dod Mantle article explains how this was done); hundreds of colored plastic rain-collecting buckets spread like a Tony Cragg piece on the roof of Brendan Gleeson's flat; the Constructivist vortex of high tension wires outside the bike messengers's parents' home (in the extreme foreground of the shot); the weirdly Photoshopped rows of flowers on the road to Manchester; the heavy sheets of rain at the military checkpoint in the last reel; the messenger's view of the jet contrail through a tangle of silhouetted branches. Many of these shots would have been effective if done on regular film stock, but the video gives the movie a documentary urgency, so the best compositions seem accidental, which is even better.
*So called because, although apocalyptic, the action is largely confined to the British Isles and the protagonists never see the worst of it. Most germane here is the book Day of the Triffids. Giant ambulatory plants, offspring of crossbreeding experiments, are slow moving, responsive to sound, and lethal to humans--killing with a deadly stinger and feeding on the carrion. They aren't actually much of a threat until a strange meteor shower, watched all over the globe, strikes most of the population inexplicably blind. Recuperating from eye surgery perfomed before the meteors fell, a man removes the bandages from his eyes in a strangely empty hospital, and discovers a changed world...
On a lighter note, below is a drawing called Gray Couple on Sofa. Both images can be clicked on for larger views.
These are sections of the World's Tallest Virtual Building (if link is busted see my update below), a collaborative pixelist project that should provide hours of astonished amusement. Unfortunately the bubble wall got trimmed on the floor with the homicidal bears, but you get the idea. This is another example of the internet being way ahead of all those seminars about "databases in collaboration" and whatnot, and it may be one of the few "exquisite corpse" ideas that actually works. I love how European it is, inevitable McDonald's "flythrough" notwithstanding. In case you're new to the pixel art craze (), each floor is drawn in the "fat bits" or zoom mode of a simple paint program, so we're talking uncountable hours of plugging in little squares to make this sucker. (hat tip to Cory A.)
UPDATE: I guess this site got too popular because the link is no longer good. If anyone notices it back up or at a new location please let me know. In the meantime, I saved a few of the images. They're not stacked like they're supposed to be. Think of it as an html jigsaw puzzle. UPDATE TO UPDATE: The site's back up! Yay!
Through weblog channels too circuitous to list, I came across this page of Soviet synthesizers. Who knew? Above is the Kvintet. Also, here's the New England Synthesizer Museum, which seems pretty comprehensive. Earlier Bill Schwarz posted a link to this site of electronic instruments from 1890-1990, which overlaps somewhat with the New England site. And as long as I'm dumping links, here's a site called the Obsolete Computer Museum. Check back later and I may have formulated something to say about all this. Or maybe not.