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"Fear and Tremolo" [mp3 removed]. The same instruments as "Drum Machine" (audio and video), but with a different tune, and a grittier, more industrial texture via the AdrenaLinn II "synchro-trem" beat modulated filter setting.
"Drum Machine (Audio Only)" [mp3 removed].
2005 Internet Top Ten: Special Blogosphere Edition.
Originally posted on Michael Bell-Smith's and Cory Arcangel's Year in the Internet 2005 page. Already started revising it (see below).
SCREENFULL. This blog is now an archived project but what a great run it had. Audiovisual graffiti, deconstruction as Xtreme Sports, internet addiction as a generative principle.
RIP del.ico.us? 2005 saw this link community's rapid rise to stardom and immediate fall into the sweaty embrace of Yahoo! Will the art/geek spirit survive?
Represent or die. Lots of great quirky and f-ed up videos: the flagship del.icio.us channel (for DTV) hopefully will not be turned by Yahoo! into internet MTV, with Quicktime clips of reality shows and beach contests.
Paper Rad Info. Their blog. Prediction: because it's very easy to update it could eclipse their main page. Mine sort of did.
jenghizkhan (John Parker) live at The Front Room. Not a blog; just wanted to mention it. Sub-Troggs, Sub-Stooges fuzzbox-grungy Monomachine and circuit-bent Casio performance clocks in at 33 minutes; chatty audience tries to see if it can make more noise.
Steve Gilliard: the most razor-tongued sunny optimist on the Net. Indispensable political commentary.
WFMU's Beware of the Blog. NY area cult radio station's in-depth music (and everything else) coverage thrives in blog form. One of my favorite past FMU djs returns with a fine conversational blog style: Rise, William Berger, rise.
Rhizome.org. Another welcome addition to the (re)blog world--hopefully they'll start archiving front page content and add comments in the new year.
Other great blogs that have launched or gone into high gear in the last year: Cory Arcangel, Paul Slocum, Michael Bell-Smith.
Flag on the Moon. Blog of Jack Masters, of castlezzt fame. The post specifically linked to, "1/30th of my pictures directory, in chronological order," has been
"Drum Machine" [Quicktime removed -- see embedded .mp4 version]
Regarding my artwork in the previous post, Kara had these questions:
--Have you photographed the backs of any of these? I'd be curious to see this nest of webs.On pieces of this type, I'm using lightfast inks (pigments as opposed to dyes) and framing the work behind UV-resistant plexiGlas. No fading has occurred. I like having them around to look at.
--BTW, how light safe or fade-proof is the ink you're using?
This is the back of a similar piece I posted a while back:
She also wondered what one might be missing by seeing my object-type artwork on the Internet. I'd say what you're getting is about 60% of the experience. But it sure beats mailing f*ing slides.
Cannibalized some older pieces to make this. Lots of scissoring and X-acto knifing. Dimensions are 24 1/2 X 19 inches; it's ink on paper--all rendered with the "vintage" program MSPaintbrush, printed, cut into pieces (repeatedly), and linen-taped on the back in a network resembling a nest of bricolage spiderwebs.
Adrien75, a West Coast turned East Coast turned West Coast musician who has been written about a number of times on this page (glowingly), has posted some new .mp3s. Nice to hear some of that experimental breaks influence come back in from the old days ('99) with "January's Tributaries," along with a dollop of Michael Karoli-like dreamy acid guitar. The pieces are all excellent: atmospheric, catchy, unpredictable, accomplished. If you like the Feelies, Krautrock, the Canterbury scene, and/or The Black Dog this is music you should be listening to. (Those are personal benchmarks anyway--my etymological way of saying "really good.")
Update, Jan 17, holy shit, I forgot to post a link to Adrien75's mp3 page. My five readers (Digby's phrase) need to help me out here a little bit.
Aeon Flux Geek Musings
Started doing some research on writer Mark Mars, an entertaining, somewhat Kim Fowleyesque black leather-clad wild man who livens up the Aeon Flux DVD interviews and commentaries. A friend of series creator Peter Chung's from CalArts in the early '80s, he wrote several key Flux episodes. Found this message board [dead link], where Chung and Mars both post. Which led to a very thoughtful interview with Chung on the Livejournal fan site Monican Spies. And this earlier interview [wayback], given before the Charlize Theron movie came out. Chung had practically nothing to do with the feature film and dislikes it, for its "failure of nerve" in not testing the audience the way the series did--lots of back story and character motivations were added, the usual Hollywood efforts were made to "humanize" the property.
Other things I learned from the Monican Spies interview:
1. Chung revised some of the Aeon episodes for the new DVD because he disagreed with how other directors or writers interpreted the characters, such as an "evil" Trevor Goodchild in the episode "End Sinister"--Chung doesn't see the Breen dictator as evil, just power mad. My earlier question about whether the pool of blood Aeon keeps waking up in in "Chronophasia," tinted grey by MTV, was restored was answered in the negative from the DVD. Chung talks about it quite a bit on the commentary track but for some reason didn't change it. Too bad, as long as things were being revised--would have made the episode more cohesive and even scarier.
2. Chung also went to CalArts with '80s art star Ashley Bickerton. Trevor Goodchild's face is loosely based on a sketch of Bickerton's.
3. One of three admired filmmakers Chung lists is Koji Morimoto, who directed the "Beyond" episode of the Animatrix. In a review posted of that film here, Morimoto's and Chung's were my two favorite shorts.