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from 2002, when I still used a CRT
Update: detail below added to show the materials:
A piece that Rick Silva showed at Dorkbot here in NY is now online: Rough Mix [Quicktime .mov] features Silva outdoors with his DJ mixing board doing turntablist moves on rocks, leaves, snow, sand, water: "scratching nature" if you will, treating the landscape as a series of imaginary vinyl LPs to be mixed. In his talk Silva discussed the importance of the hand and touch to the DJ, and here it's as if he's lost nature and is desperately (joyfully?) reconnecting with it by clawing, patting, swiping, rubbing, and scattering it. These seem like the actions of a crazy man since he has no turntables, only an unplugged board resting on various surfaces in the middle of nowhere (a gorgeous mountain landscape), but the piece makes it funny rather than alarming.
Aside from the obsessive performance aspect of it, the work thrills through its use of high-def cinematography but especially through its state-of-the-art collage of electronic sounds. One of Rough Mix's paradoxes is that turntablism is an "analog art" and the piece is about connecting with nature yet the sounds and images are quite distinctively digitally realized, that is, artificial. The abstract "music concrete" recalls urban dance music but densely filtered and "glitched"--imagine skipping CDs reverberating in a dreamy aural haze with the occasional hip hop beat cutting in and out. The timing pulls it together: the piece is long but the quick editing of the music in sync with closeups of Silva's scratching hand, spinning geosat views of the land, and the "surprise factor" of never quite knowing where the mixing board will turn up in the ecstatically empty, Western terrain, keeps you engaged. The DJ is the focal point, a crossing point of the real and the digitally mapped.
America Supports the Arts in Baghdad: Provides Large Unblemished Surface for Artists to Paint On
Photo caption from the UK Telegraph: "Local artists display their skills with murals on the blast barriers and concrete walls that dot Baghdad"
Article from the same publication accompanying the above photo:
Anger in Baghdad as Americans finish wallUpdate: Goddam, I'm tired of my tax money going for this shite--from Channel 6 news, Corpus Christi TX: "Construction of the wall has drawn strong criticism from residents who say it is a form of sectarian discrimination. Followers of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr (mook-TAH'-duh ehl SAH'-dur) say they fear Shiite areas in Baghdad, such as Sadr City, will be next to see the U-S-built barriers. Much of the construction is being done at night by troops wearing night-vision goggles." That's just sick, man. We need the money, here, for New Orleans, for anywhere. So corrupt.
American forces have completed construction of a concrete wall around the Baghdad district of Adhamiya despite protests from the Iraqi prime minister and local residents who claim that they are now at the mercy of militants.
The wall was intended to help control the activities of militants in the predominantly Sunni Muslim district. But it remains a bastion of extremist al-Qa'eda linked groups. Parts of the district are so thick with armed militants that they are no-go zones to coalition forces.
Capt Mohammad Jasim, an Iraqi soldier manning a checkpoint on the Adhamiya bridge, said: "The Americans did not listen to us. We think this wall has made the area inside the wall more dangerous for people.
Um Doraid, a middle-aged housewife, said: "We here inside the wall are still as vulnerable as ever."
The tinkertoy stealth fighter that used to be on the Hasbro website is gone. US jingoism has cooled down and now we have world peace. Here is an image of it and an imaginary molecule piece based on it, circa 2002.
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This blog has had a moratorium on pictures of this knucklehead, believing they add to his cult, but I want to post this one today, "Mission Accomplished Day." The rightwingers love this image because it makes their idol seem manly and the leftwingers took to calling him "Commander Codpiece" because of it, but I recently learned that the groin accentuation is because he forgot to undo his parachute strap.
I posted these photos on May 2, 2003, a day after the "flight stunt," with the caption: "The photo above and left is from Agence France-Presse. As documented here, an AP story changed the wording of the banner to make the protestors sound more violent, or desperate, from 'Sooner or later US killers we'll kick you out' to 'Sooner or later US killers we'll kill you.' Hardly any US media ran the above photo, only AP's altered description." The photo on the left was taken in Fallujah, which the US subsequently flattened. Bush had his little jollies, but it does appear that sooner or later we're going to get kicked out. A chilling video of the aircraft carrier legions deafeningly but mechanically applauding Bush's propagandistic "Mission Accomplished" speech, with Bush's speech edited out, can be seen on YouTube (thx mark).
Four years ago, it seemed like it was only bloggers who thought the US war was wrong. The news media were 100% behind it, so millions of TV-dazzled people across the US were behind it, too. I had an argument with one of my cousins in Dallas when I told him I'd marched against the war. He said, "I've just gotta believe that the government has access to information we don't have and that they made the right decision." Steam was coming out from my collar but what could I say to convince him? "Well, I read a lot of blogs and you are one naive MoFo." Months after the Kay Report concluded that Iraq had no WMDs I was talking to a woman in NY who insisted Saddam was crafty and we just hadn't found where he had buried the weapons yet. It's taken Americans four years to conclude maybe the war wasn't a good idea but still Congress is afraid to end it and Bush and Cheney still haven't been impeached for lying us into it. It is Vietnam all over again.
