From a short talk presented at the AIGA FutureHistory conference (Chicago, October 16-17, 2004).
If we were to take a snapshot of writing and thinking about graphic design in North America right now—and here I mean the kind of graphic design “criticism,†“journalism†or “history†that we find in a wealth of books, journals, magazines, edited collections, conference papers, discussions and weblogs—I think we would find that there are several recurrent themes that can, in some senses, be considered as characteristic (if not quite definitive) of this outpouring; this “discourse.†[1]
When designers and invested observers pause to reflect on the state of this profession—or “practice,†as some would have it—the kind of hand-wringing that ensues has much to do with an abiding sense that: (a) graphic design is important, goddamn it; (b) as hard as “they†try, “they†don’t understand who we are and what we do; and (c) if only our importance was recognized by the wider world—for the right reasons, of course—then everyone would somehow be better off. Alas, this insularity is not so much imposed as self-inflicted.
The brainchild of artist Gursoy Dogtas, Matt Magazine bills itself as “a synthesis between a fanzine and a current affairs magazine,†but while it comments on contemporary political and social issues with a zine-style combination of appropriated material and original content, it has a more restrained take on the cut-and-paste aesthetic than the average D.I.Y. publication. Crossing subjects and historical moments, each story combines a previously published text–typically classics on subjects ranging from philosophy to natural science–from a single source with images from another origin to create telling pairings. Every issue also has a similarly two-part theme: the first issue focused on ‘Freizeit und Konsum’ (leisure and consumption), and the second, which was released on October 10th with an opening and short-running exhibition at Les Complices in Zurich, tackles ‘Mobility and Surveillance’ with a series of five stories. The issue opens with Duncan Campbell’s investigation of a global surveillance system, ‘Inside Echelon,’ accompanied by photos from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi desert. Other pieces branch out to include ‘Attacks on Civil Aviation’ by Ariel Merari set against stills from a video work by Natalie Jeremijenko in which she attempts to board a plane wearing rollerskates, and Carl Schmitt on ‘The Theory of the Partisan’ matched to images of the Surveillance Camera Players. Dogtas’s own photography is offset by both selections from Carl von Clausewitz’s ‘On War’ and an essay by geographic theorist Tim Cresswell. Every piece in the issue sketches the sometimes enabling, sometimes conflicting relationship between two phenomena that increasingly frame modern life.
A women named “Paiges†recalls hearing the band Portishead for the first time at a spot in New York’s Upper West Side, while she was meeting a man with whom she was having a torrid affair. “I was in NYC, your wife was out of town,†she writes. “We were in the bathroom and Portishead was playing. I remember being terrified that we would get caught.†She bought the album on her way home, and 12 years later still associates it with seeing her lover in that place.
That intimate memory isn’t locked in a diary or shared on a blog. It’s pinned to a spot near the intersection of West End Avenue and 104th Street on a new and growing community site called Platial that’s spreading a decidedly personal layer of geographic data atop the familiar terrain of online mapping.
NBC’s recent withdraw from the iTunes store leaves the millions of users of Apple iPods without a legitimate way to purchase and watch NBC’s content. Could this be the push that brings easy-to-use ‘piracy’ to the masses? This article discusses the issues, and then provides step-by-step instructions to setup a computer to automatically download any of hundreds of TV shows as soon as they are broadcast and put online.
With Apple’s recent lovers’s spat with NBC making the headlines, it seems like a good opportunity to examine the state of the online TV downloads, be they paid or ‘pirated’. The end result of the dispute between the companies is that NBC’s shows, which currently count for approximately one third of iTunes’ TV show sales will no longer be available for sale at Apple’s iTunes store. Customers wishing to purchase NBC’s shows will now need to go through Amazon’s Unbox service. While Unbox supports users of Windows and TiVo, Mac users, as well as those millions of iPod users are left out in the cold. Linux geeks, and those customers who have purchased divx/avi capable portable music players are also excluded, but this small subset of the market were equally ignored by Apple. Read the rest of this entry »
Lawrence Lessig, left, a law professor, spoke at “Who Owns Culture?,” a talk moderated by Steven Johnson, an editor at Wired magazine.
Image and text source: NY Times
Published: April 9, 2005
he tickets for the event Thursday sold out in five minutes on the Internet, and on the evening itself the lines stretched down the block. The reverent young fans might as well have been holding cellphones aloft as totems of their fealty.
Then again, this was the New York Public Library, a place of very high ceilings and even higher cultural aspirations, so the rock concert vibe created some dissonance. Inside, things became clearer as two high priests of very different tribes came together to address the question of “Who Owns Culture?” – a discussion of digital file-sharing sponsored by Wired magazine, part of a library series called “Live From the NYPL.”
Originally published on February 4, 2005
Socially and culturally aware, this DJ is the harbinger of change, writes Ashley Crawford.
He travels to Trinidad and Istanbul, Paris and Jakarta, Moscow and New Orleans. He hangs out with Yoko Ono, Merce Cunningham, Sonic Youth and Wu-Tang Clan. He tosses off cultural references from James Joyce to Gertrude Stein, Jean Baudrillard to Mikhail Bakhtin, and he writes for a range of journals and magazines from Artforum to The Village Voice.
He is in Australia to promote his new book, Rhythm Science (published by the prestigious MIT Press) – a meditation on the “flow of patterns in sound and culture”, and he has just screened Rebirth of a Nation, his re-mix of D. W. Griffith’s 1915 film classic, Birth of a Nation, at the Sydney Festival.
One of the most exciting developments in recent times is that of the Mash Up. The term Mash-Up can seem initially confusing, especially as it has more than one meaning. As Wikipedia points out a Mash Up can refer to:
A Musical Mash Up that works on the basis of cutting often mismatched samples together to create new and interesting hybrids in dgital music. One of most famous musical Mash Ups of recent times is the now banned DJ Danger Mouse album ‘The Grey Album’ – created from the fusion of The Beatles White Album and Jay-Z’s Black Album.
A Video Mash Up in which video and audio from different sources is cut together into a new Mashed Up union. One of the best video Mash Ups of recent times has to be the Bush/Blair Gay Bar video.
A Mash-Up “Web Application hybrid“, which seamlessly combines tools or data from one or more online sources into a new, integrated whole. Examples of this latter type of Mash Up, the focus of our Marshall Kirkpatrick interview, can be found in abundance at Programmable Web.
Earlier we have already reviewed a series of albums remixing old-timer Commodore-64 tunes, called Back In Time 2 and 3. Since then a few other similar initiatives have appeared, probably the best of them is the new CD from the Danish Press Play On Tape band with their debut album Loading Ready Run, which I’ll talk about now. Even the name of the band itself causes nostalgic feelings in many (since those who had tapes remember that after the LOAD command was issued the computer gave this instruction: press play on tape). After this came “Loading” (which is present in the title), then Ready, and finally we started the program with Run.
We have seen remixes that were created with the classic band setup (the BIT series wasn’t exactly like this), but this new album is probably the best of them. The band has 6 members: 2 guitar players, one guy on the synth, one base player and a drummer (although he doesn’t play on acoustic, rather on electronic drums, but the difference can be noticed only by audiophiles).
Remember the time when we announced Facebook as a platform? Well, a lot has changed since then: thousands of great applications for Facebook have appeared, and having a “naked†Facebook profile is just not that cool these days. This time, we’ve assembled a list of 20 great music-related apps for Facebook that you simply must try out.
My Music – here’s one for all you iTunes users: this handy little app enables you to access your entire iTunes library directly from Facebook.
Pandora – tune into Pandora from Facebook and find your new favorite songs and artists.
Last.FM Music – the official Last.FM Facebook app lets you turn your music into playlists and compare musical tastes with friends. Read more about it here.
Last.FM Charts – import up to 5 charts from Last.FM into your Facebook profile.
iLike – somewhat of a competitor to Last.FM, iLike lets you see which concerts your friends are going to as well as add music and videos to your Facebook profile.
MixLister – create a personal theme song; import and create playlists and share them with everyone.
BandTracker – track your favorite bands and their shows and check out who your friends are tracking.
Music Videos – add favorite music videos to your profile. Simple and effective.
Yahoo! Music Videos – another way to import music videos to your profile, this time from Yahoo!’s vast collection.
Upcoming – track all the events you plan on attending. Great for tracking live shows.
What I’m Listening To – a must-have app that shows the world what song you’re currently listening to; powered by Last.FM’s audioscrobbler application.
Currenty Listening – similar to What I’m Listening To, this app shows the artist name and cover art of whatever song is currently playing on your computer.
My Last Songs Played – display the last songs played in iTunes or any other media player.
“It’s a bootleg!†says Geralyn Huxley, a curator at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh.
Which is odd. The Italian company Raro Video has released several Warhol films on DVD over the last couple of years. Andy Warhol: 4 Silent Movies is listed as a 2005 release on Amazon, and there’s a Chelsea Girls DVD, too.Last year, Raro compiled 11 films and 8 discs into a box set, Andy Warhol Anthology, which–like all the films–is issued in region-free PAL format. There are extensive bilingual notes, interviews, and bonus material accompanying the discs, but there are also odd errors in formatting:
At least two of the silent films, Kiss and Blow Job, are mastered at the wrong speed [25fps instead of 16fps], and the once-randomly silent or audible soundtracks on the split-screen Chelsea Girls are provided in a single, seemingly arbitrary configuration which omits much well-documented dialogue.
