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One of the funniest things I've seen is Dave Chappelle's routine about the bus held hostage by a masturbating homeless man. Chappelle imitates a passenger flinching and shrieking "Biological Attack!" Then he describes the homeless man walking up and down the aisle, stroking himself and saying "OK, who wants some?" while riders sit there helpless with fear. Finally a burly man at the back of the bus says, "Let's rush him! He can't hit all of us!" The attacker is subdued, but not before a man gets a "nut busted" on his balding forehead. "Can't I get AIDS from this?" the man wails. "Of course not," says Chappelle, but then admits to the audience he has no idea and just said it to make the guy feel better.
As long as we're posting animations too large or silly for the blog, here's one called Atom Kitty, or, The Philosopher.
"Clip City" [mp3 removed]. This analog drum machine (the blue thing below) is so punchy puffs of air come from the speaker; unfortunately I have no digital recorder that will capture the full bass. So I went for a gritty "I did it at home" sound--lots of hiss, hum, and clipping, hence the title. This has a slightly menacing mood, at least until the Sidstation comes in. [Update--the tune has been re-recorded and reposted. I made separate tracks and subtracted "clipboard noise" on each one--what a concept--and then remixed it, eliminating most of the extraneous noise and eponymous clipping, except for a few bad patches. I also softened the Sid.] [Update 2: re-recorded again, and this time eliminated the clipping but at the cost of reduced volume. It's all there--you just have to "play it loud," as they were always saying on '60s rock records.]
"Tasteful Triphop" [mp3 removed]. The flip side of "Clip City"--a smooth rhythm track with lots of resampling, designer bleeps, and more of that spectral delay sound. This could be a car commercial.
Update: "TT" was remixed and reposted in 2009.
Maakies presents "The Bookworm and the Junky."
Blogger Lindsay Beyerstein went to Austin, Texas with her camera and took these photos of Tom Delay's "perp walk." Obviously this alleged money launderer and still active former U.S. House Majority leader was advised by his attorney, shyster Dick DeGuerin, to keep a shit-eating grin plastered on his face at all times. Believe it or not, all of the supposedly sophisticated government honchos and media DC personages have been genuflecting to this redneck for years. Common criminal trash--sorry, alleged common criminal trash--and he's still running things in the House. Enjoy his humiliation, but it's not like it's had any effect on his career.
Pulsating optical disc internet sketchbook!
I have to pick one of these [to burn to DVD, as described in the previous post], and soon:
Number 1 (previously posted)Then I have to redo this one so it's less crunchy:
Number 2 (more oval 1)
Number 3 (more oval 2)
Number 4 (crunchy enlargement of gif posted over a year ago)
Number 5 (similar to Number 1 but more regular)
Number 5A (even more regular--smaller center hole--think this one's the keeper)
Enlarged Black and White (Crunchy)More will probably be posted as I continue to obsess and procrastinate.
I've been working on scaled-up versions of my animated GIFs for some upcoming gallery shows. Here's one called OptiDisc, which is a bit too large to put on the blog. Some interesting, and some aggravating, issues arise when you start thinking about converting Net Art type product to Video Art type product. Aggravating as in you have to redraw stuff you thought you''d finished. Another alternative is to convert the small files to vector files, which can then be safely enlarged without turning to pixely mush. That seems fetishistic to me, going to that length to preserve the character of something everyday and ephemeral--the cult of MacPaint. But I could (shudder) end up doing it. Big ups to Paul, Matthew, joester, Sally, and others who have helped as I lurch through this process.
The interview Aaron Yassin did with me in NY Arts magazine, linked to here a few weeks back, is now on the newsstands in their Sept./Oct. print edition. The photo above is a very subtle bit of personal horn-blowing. To some extent the text is an attempt to legitimize working with the computer to my brethren in the gallery world; that quest seems totally doomed if you read something like the profile of dealer Leo Koenig in the current New Yorker. It's all about painting with brushes ad nauseum (and theory? forget it), and could have been written about the neo-expressionist hothouse environment of 25 years ago.