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Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker explains the shifting dynamics behind our hating al Qaeda-promoting countries and helping Shiites to reversing that depending on whether the country or ethnic group in question likes or hates the current purveyor of absolute evil, Iran. Saudi Prince Bandar (aka "Bandar Bush") is once again actively involved with American foreign policy making, you might be interested to know. It's good to understand what's going on as we prepare to launch a war (just a little one--air and sea) against the Iranians. What--you think President Cheney won't do it? You think Congress will stop it? Ha ha ha ha.
Impeach, ASAP. Then impeach Congress.
A great mp3 blog I've been following has been offering whole LPs for download as .rar files. The content is obscure prog and postpunk gems from the 70s, early 80s mostly. Obscure as in...extremely limited releases, cassettes, some major label product that hit the cut out bins six months after it came out. The blog offers extensive research notes, cover scans. It's a labor of love, but the Internet doesn't always appreciate love, and this recent post makes you say "ouch":
Till now i was laughing at all these offensive comments ,but i'm really tired of this situation.My purpose creating this blog was not to read offensive comments.Just silly romantic i just wanted to create somekind of community to spread music long forgotten and obscure.But it seems some assholes does not like that.Possibly i'm making their valuable items for sale cheapier, perhaps they didn't ever realise that music is not their property ,perhaps they are just silly jealeous.I don't know... But under these circumstances i started thinking of closing the blog down...this is not something decided...just a thought....i know ,they are possibly happy,possibly their purposes are achieved....but i do not intent to leave this blog take my whole life and make me nervous and upset...i started with good purposes....but ...i don't know...no posts for the next 2 days...i just wanna think and decide....A big thank to all supporters...at least i found some friends here... [...] ...sorry if i have forgotten some it's not done by purpose...i'm very upset right now to let myself think clearly...thank you all guysUpdate, Feb. 27:
After this real big amount of comments and deep thought i decided that it would not be fair by my side to close this blog down.So we keep on mutating!With 2 new contributors now and hope more to be added soon!And by next weekend everything will be on mediafire.I will try to keep my posts in a limit of 3 or 4 per day.For people complaining for mistakes:i track every single complain down and as soon as i got time all these will be fixed. I had ,due to family bussiness, not to be on my PC yesterday and today it was a very hard work to moderate this vast of comments.And big pleasure perhaps.Thank you all guys for your support and i'll try to do the best from my side.It's really amazing to get support from too many people you do not even know in person....We are a community:) A Mutated community...We keep on mutating!
Following up on some earlier posts about showing new media work in the gallery and digital non-sites, here's some recent writing on gallery friendly hardware set-ups, for art that absolutely has to be shown on a computer screen (as opposed to DVDs). Olia Lialina discusses the "Torch" brand of screen-with-built-in-computer here. I still have some questions about that device (photo above), asked in the spirit of being open source:
--The website says there is no hard drive for the slim computer--how is the data stored for a piece?Many of these same issues are raised and answered with respect to a Mac Mini or PC setup in this post Showing Video via Computers by artist Paul Slocum, who is also running a gallery. It's very thorough and helpful even though it makes me want to stick with just popping a DVD in a hundred dollar player and dealing as an artist with the compression artifacts. It's a lot to ask a harried gallerist to memorize this how-to and/or constantly go yourself to the space to see what's wrong with the computer. Especially for work that anyone in the world can see displayed perfectly well on the Internet, at home. But that's just me ducking responsibility--artists are obviously coping with these issues.
--Why do they have all the USB ports and such? It looks like an awful lot of computer just to run GIFs (or whatever programs are providing content for the screen). When I saw Lialina's work at Bryce Wolkowitz gallery I assumed it was some kind of flash memory built into the screen.
--Doesn't it have an operating system that has to boot up each time it's turned on, and then a program on the operating system to run the GIFs, all accessed by hooking a mouse and keyboard to the ports on the computer? Can it run without Windows XP, which Torch describes as "optional"? (Lialina says via email that hers was Linux and there was no boot screen. Linux--aiee!) [update--some answers to these qs below]
Update: Some late thoughts. That Torch Computer screen is elegant in person, very generic, and I like that they deliberately made it without a logo anywhere visible. I'd like to own a few (once I get my mundane practical questions answered), and I think it would be a good investment for galleries that show new media art on a regular basis to own a few. I would even like to see it be something that collectors buy. My questions are aimed at making some kind of "display lingua franca" that everyone is accustomed to using for certain types of work. As opposed to reinventing the wheel with every show or making the show be "about" what major corporation's hardware you are plugging. I believe that is what Lialina is proposing in her article.
Update 2: Paul learned the following from Torch: "19 inch LCD screen, 1280 X 1024 resolution, with built-in mini-ITX computer...with built-in 1GHz CPU, 256MB RAM. There are two versions of this. The Linux version comes with a flash memory of 1GB and operating software that reads a web page from a USB pendrive, also supplied, that is displayed on the screen without any visible indication that it is a browser. That is, there are no visible frames, scroll bars, menu bars, tool bars, etc. This version is priced at 595.00 pounds ($1169). The other version is supplied with a 40GB hard disk drive and Windows XP Home. This is priced at 665.00 pounds ($1307). All prices exclude shipment charges, duties and and taxes." (As Paul notes, shipping and taxes for the cheaper of these UK products could be $300-600 to the US. They are custom-made and take 4-8 weeks to prepare.)
Neg-Fi live at Union Pool in Brooklyn, last night. In the top photo Evelyne works the Neg-Box's sole lever; the bottom shows Ryan and Evelyne in characteristic stage posture for most of the songs, which are short metalloid guitar duets. Imagine a No New York-ish riff stripped down to a few bars, straight up, loud, for under two minutes. The riffs are all good--"Neg OK" and "NegButter" on their MySpace page give you the flavor if not the volume.
Working on some video pieces. I like/hate this medium. Like it when it's the right balance of clumsy and novel but hate that you can so rarely get that. The top piece is that html grid of jewel GIFs I keep posting, captured off the web--about 15 times--each capture is a different sequence and then the best (most fluid) sequences are edited roughly in time to the music piece I wrote. (I reposted the Quicktime .mov, which gives an idea.) I had to redo this yet again last night because my captures weren't consistently cropped. I wanted the "shaky GIF effect" to happen entirely within the boundaries of the piece. The bottom piece is Vortex 2, which I showed in Mobile, AL last fall. I have no idea what it looked like in the gallery so I made my own installation shot.
Thursday, February 22nd, 8:30pm (doors), Union Pool, 484 Union Ave (at Meeker), Brooklyn, $8
9 pm - Mushroom Cloud
9:30 - Neg-Fi
10:15 - Escape By Ostrich
11:15 - Notekillers
From Neg-Fi:
"Debut of our first LP release "Listen-OK!"- features most of the songs we've been playing as part of our live set the past few shows. Available on LP (limited edition of 200) and cdr. Also available for the first time will be a cdr collection of some older material culled from our cassette and other releases called "-1 and other big numbers."
My description of a Neg-Fi talk at Dorkbot:
"In the '50s, a time of postwar optimism and faith in science, there was Hi-Fi. In the '90s, an era of slackers and diminished expectations, there was Lo-Fi. In the '00s, a time of neanderthal government and outright contempt for the arts, there is Neg-Fi. A watershed moment in the history of art and music--some might say sub-nadir--was reached tonight when this New York noise-rock duo demonstrated its Wireless UFDs (uncontrollable feedback devices) to an audience of 100 or so at Dorkbot-NYC. Walkie talkies from the dollar store have been reinstalled in custom cardboard cases. When placed in proximity to each other and turned on, they make squealing and static noises. And that's about it!"
I've been enjoying the diverse selection of material on the Neg-Butter mini-CD--it's low-key noise rock/electronics but not unmusical by any means. (Note double negative.)
Today is the sixth aniversary of this blog. Thanks to anyone who has commented, linked, or relevantly emailed. This feels like a group page even if no one else has Wiki-like editing powers. OK, enough sloppy sentimentality, let's get back to work.
Update: A longer "looking back" post was written and scrapped as too self-indulgent. The only reason this update is being added is to provide a bit more of a text buffer between the preceding and following images, for design reasons.