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Peter Coffin, ASCII Weaves, from KnitKnit #2
Elliot Winard, iPod Cozy, also from KnitKnit #2
Virtual Craft Project
Make a needlepoint of the paperback cover image for William Gibson's collection Burning Chrome. See explanatory notes under pics below.
The above "video cyborg" by Richard Berry is très 1987 (but kind of good)--check out those Max Headroom stripes in the background. This is just a scan of a paperback cover, but my idea would be to contract out the sewing so that a detail would look like the image below (assuming anyone has about a year):
Nintendo Ocean, 1994, by Bill Davenport. This Houston-based artist had a ten year jump on a lot of the lowtech Komputer Kraft stuff that's going on now, with the Providence collectives and whatnot. He did go to RISD, but in the '80s. This 8.5" X 12" needlepoint was stitched by Olga Vanucci. Note: the image is cropped at the top and more cyan than the original. More needlepoints from this series are here (click on thumbnails for enlarged views), and a 2002 exhibition of Davenport's faux-lumpen sculptures and crafts, which I prefer to his recent trompe l'oeil book cover paintings, is documented here.
A new piece of music I made: "Eine Zwei Drei" [1 min - 1.37MB - .mp3]. I find it kind of sinister. Coming this soon after talking about Monotrona, it might be compared to that, but I'd say it's closer to Laibach. That's it--a kind of abject, basement Laibach (Slovenian dirge-y synth stuff, but this is goofier.)
Joe McKay's preReview, where yrs truly occasionally moonlights with trenchantly uninformed coverage of Hollywood crapola, was named "Unfortunate Site of the Week" by Time Out NY this week. Here's what they said: "Everyone's a critic--only some people think they're so smart they can review a film based on previews alone. Encourage them to get a life by not going to homepage.mac.com/joester5/prereview for 'prereviews' of soon-to-be-released films." This is what's known in the preReviewing trade as an "inverted psych maneuver" or the less technical "stroke'n'slap." Tell'em not to go and then give'em the URL, ri-iii-ght. Yet beneath that passive aggressive unplug you can smell the stench of fear hovering over a trade that knows its day is about over. I mean, these people expect you to shell out at the box office for a product you know you'll hate, and then plunk down coin AGAIN to read what they say about it. preReview on the other hand saves you both payments and is actually entertaining. So by all means, don't pick up Time Out NY this week to read their plug of McKay's site.
An earlier post described a "radio musical" I heard several years back by Electro musician and performance artist Monotrona (it might be called the first Electro opera.) I taped it on cassette and am now posting it here in all its hissy, lo-fi glory. [36 min, 33.6MB] Here's what I wrote before:
I first heard Monotrona on the Stork Club on WFMU-FM (a sadly missed live music show), around '97 or '98, performing "Joey, a Mechanical Boy,” which was described as the "fourth in a 14-section work called the 'Fourteen Imitations of Man.'" The story--told in music and dialogue, all performed by the artist using a variety of accents, vocoderlike filters, etc.--was extremely weird. Joey is an ectopically-spawned robot child who goes to work for NASA. His mother, in a ridiculous Chicago accent, tries to reach him on the phone and is headed off by the "Dark Technical Force," a gnostic demiurge that has a strange hold over Joey. Meanwhile, two shadowy government operatives discuss a rogue scientific scheme to create a ManWoman. The piezoelectric puppet show includes some really beautiful songs in the Chrome/Suicide/Throbbing Gristle postpunk vein, performed with buzzy, distorted keyboards. After the performance, Stork described Monotrona's equipment for listeners as "a mountain of unpatented cheap toy electronics adapted for her use--an indescribable array of electronics centered around a Casio machine, using light sabres, pistols, all sorts of mixers, and an oscillating device that looks like a little recipe box with two joysticks coming out of it..."Combining music and stand-up with the sheer Cage-ean randomness of these toy store electronics, "Joey" is brilliant even in a crappy, taped-off-the-radio recording. The bleeping, buzzing acoustics wed the arcade with the abyss, as Joey struggles to master simple digestive and muscular functions under the tutelage of a scary voice recalling Tron's Master Control Program. Monotrona is considerably more than just an entertainer or proto-Electroclash musician or what have you (although her recent songs are tight, smart pop): she is a poet of the "dark technology" embracing us whether we hug back or not. (video still from punkcast 237)
One More Half-Truth for the Road
Former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer has a letter in the New York Times today, attempting to set the record straight on a creepy statement he made in the immediate aftermath of 9/11/01. Read it carefully:
In "Lifting the Shroud" (column, March 23), Paul Krugman alleges that at my White House press briefing on Sept. 26, 2001, I "ominously warned" Americans to "watch what they say, watch what they do." He accuses me of telling citizens "to accept the administration's version of events, not ask awkward questions.""They're reminders"--meaning both the statement by the racist congressman and the Maher statement. Nice try, Ari.At that briefing two weeks after Sept. 11, I was asked about a racist comment made by a Republican congressman from Louisiana who said that if he saw a Sikh-American with a towel wrapped around his head, he would tell the Sikh to get out of his state.
I said, "It's important for all Americans to remember the traditions of our country that make us so strong and so free, our tolerance and openness and acceptance." The president, I said, was disturbed by Representative John Cooksey's remarks.
Moments later, I was asked about Bill Maher's statement that the members of our armed forces who fire missiles are cowards while terrorists who crashed planes into buildings are not cowards.
I answered: "It's a terrible thing to say, and it's unfortunate. And that's why — there was an earlier question about has the president said anything to people in his own party — they're reminders to all Americans that they need to watch what they say, watch what they do."
My remarks urged tolerance and openness and were addressed to those who made statements and threatened actions against Muslims or Sikhs in America.
ARI FLEISCHER
Washington, March 23, 2004
The writer was White House press secretary from 2001 to 2003.
UPDATE: To make his argument work, even though it doesn't, Fleischer also has to paraphrase Maher's comments. Here's an excerpt from an article giving the context of what Maher said:
Of course, all this was said before President Bush put soldiers in harm's way with an unnecessary land war--forcing them to prove their courage on the ground. The article doesn't mention that Maher groveled to try to save the show, or that there was another prominent dissenter--Susan Sontag--who got slimed around the same time.In the weeks after September 11, critics wondered how late-night talk shows would change. Predictably, Leno and Letterman told fewer and safer jokes, mostly at the expense of easy targets like the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. The Daily Show's Jon Stewart was so shaken he cried. But Politically Incorrect, true to form, crashed the somber late-night party. Appearing on Sept. 17 for the first show since the attacks, Maher made it starkly clear his show would live up to its name.
"I do not relinquish - nor should any of you - the right to criticize, even as we support, our government," Maher said. "This is still a democracy and they're still politicians, so we need to let our government know that we can't afford a lot of things that we used to be able to afford. Like a missile shield that will never work for an enemy that doesn't exist. We can't afford to be fighting wrong and silly wars. The cold war. The drug war. The culture war."
What Maher said later in the show, however, is what made headlines. Panelist Dinesh D'Souza [a young conservative --ed.] mentioned that he didn't think the terrorists were "cowards," as George Bush had described them. Maher replied: "We have been the cowards. Lobbing cruise missiles from two thousand miles away. That's cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building. Say what you want about it. Not cowardly. You're right."
Res Ipsa Loquitur
While I'm getting a bagel this morning I see a photo of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on the front page of a local newspaper, testifying before Congress. His hands are raised in a weird gesture, half-imploring, half balling his fists, his mouth a rictus of mock-agony. "Even if bin Laden had been captured or killed in the weeks before 9/11, no one I know believes it could have prevented 9/11," the caption has him saying. The same day, President Bush said, "Had my administration had any information that terrorists were going to attack New York City on September the 11th, we would have acted." These statements make 9/11 sound like an inevitability, a work of subtle genius that no one could have stopped or anticipated.
But think about it--how subtle was it, really? 19 terrorists pass airport security, four planes are hijacked from three different locations, three planes reach their targets, one of which is the military command center of the United States. No fighter jets intervene during their copious flight time. In law, there is an expression "res ipsa loquitur" (the thing speaks for itself), as when a surgeon sews up a sponge inside someone's body after operating. Meaning, this is the type of thing that would never happen absent negligence. 9/11 is one of those events. And yet no one, not one person, has been fired. The dissemblers in the Administration think if they refer to it often enough as an unpreventable, act of God-like event, people will be worn down and start to disbelieve their own common sense about it.