View current page
...more recent posts
Belatedly discovered Bleep.com, an electronic music site specializing in, um, bleepy dance music of recent vintage (and some classics). The mp3s cost money, but I'd pay a little for decent quality DRM-free mp3s of such things I've been looking for (or just came across on their site) as: A Guy Called Gerald's Black Secret Technology, miscellaneous early Black Dog, previously unreleased Swayzak tracks, Elektroids Elektroworld, CiM CDs I don't have, and Lab Rat XL (a Drexciya alias). The site is all about labels, which I don't really get at this point--with no CD printing or promotional costs, why is another middleman between musician and the public necessary?
GIF by unknown artist X 9
From Curbed:
Intellectually, we always understood that the far-more-attractive-than-it-needed-to-be temporary PATH Transit Hub at the World Trade Center site wouldn't be with us forever, but seeing photos of the rubble on the just-demolished site is, nonetheless, jarring. Writes our phototipster BrianVan, "I'd think they'd at least be a little less brazen than this. The nicest temporary transit station New York's ever had, gone forever. (But soon to be replaced by that Calatrava wings thing.)"If you know a structure is going to be up for only two years, build something that can be taken apart and assembled elsewhere. Don't smash it and then melt it for scrap. This photo is sickening. Way to go, Port Authority.
Protein synthesis as an epic hippie folk dance (classroom film--1971): [YouTube, via Patrick May in AFC's comments]
More on the Rhizome 2007-2008 Commissions, from the comments:
The part of your post that bothered me was where you talked about ShiftSpace. This is a great project. The trend of Web 2.0 has been to wrest order from the chaos of the early web; ShiftSpace is a project that intends to re-inject this spirit of anarchy. For example, the comment criticizing your writing ("how long has your criticism sucked") was removed from this page; ShiftSpace would allow this comment to remain on the page for other users to see. It could be read as a critique of the increasingly moderated Wikipedia, and it's attempt at "authoritativeness"; it's infused with nostalgia for the early web when people produced their own messy pages instead of buying into the myspace prefab system; it's a classic example of a "not just art" project. [...]
- anonymous (guest) 6-24-2007 7:28 pm
With much of this art the proposal is the work. Once you've come up with your sentence explaining the tech innovation and how it benefits others you're done.
[...]
The comment criticizing my writing ("how long has your criticism sucked") was fictional. [...] You assumed it was real and I deleted it--interesting.
-tom moody [6-24-2007 8:03 pm, 6-24-2007 8:13 pm]
I would agree that "the proposal is the work" if I wasn't aware of how many artists do a terrible job of writing about their work. Those sentences usually end up being a pale reflection of the work. [...]
- anonymous (guest) 6-24-2007 8:32 pm
The goals of ShiftSpace do indeed sound worthwhile and noble but I have to confess I'm not very interested in art as sociopolitical activism, especially when the success of the project is presumed in the proposal.
I'm as concerned as the next person about the constrictions of these social networking sites but feel the way to approach them is to go elsewhere, and if there's no elsewhere then lobby for more elsewhere.
It feels like a contradiction to apply for a grant to an institution so you can be an anarchist, especially when the steps of your anarchy are carefully planned out and result in another ordered system.
- tom moody 6-25-2007 8:51 am
(previous comment self-edited for tone, substance--ShiftSpace would reveal my first draft--great)
- tom moody 6-25-2007 8:53 am
"Blowout (YT Remix)" [mp3 removed]
Audio remix of a YouTube posted to Nasty Nets [link removed].
Caveat: Some might describe this as "off color."
Since at least the '60s philosopher Walter Benjamin's essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" has been a favorite for conceptualist artists working with imagery to cite in support of their work whether it actually supports it or not. Benjamin's style is murky and delphic compared to say, Clement Greenberg's, making it easier for people to pick and choose suitable phrases from it, even though much of "WAAMR"'s content was aimed at a very specific set of political circumstances (the rise of fascism in the '30s--the print era) that would seem to make it inapplicable to someone making present day art. To the extent it is used as the basis for a discussion of multiples vs originals in the art market it is a blueprint for boredom, and not good boredom. That kind of talk is dull because it's mostly about money--the context here was Creative Commons licenses and how much freedom they give the artist to also sell work.
The "here" in the last sentence is a discussion over at Paddy Johnson's blog between artist Nathaniel Stern and commenter David McBride. McBride attempts to correct Stern's reading of the Benjamin essay and then they spend several paragraphs wrangling over what the essay means, both back in the day and now. It doesn't help that the two aren't speaking the same language: Stern uses "meme" as an adjective ("meme'd") and McBride thinks he means "copied"; Stern thinks "aura" as Benjamin uses it is a form of "value" (it was really more like "residue of religious power"). Then there's the question of whether "to exploit" is good or bad. These appear to be generational misunderstandings. In any case the back and forth is interesting, if only to convince you to stay out of Benjamin country and stick to something informative and fun like "Avant Garde & Kitsch."
