==pla|\|ing lakes==

Saturday, March 29, 2003

Matthew Barney's multimedia exhibit at the Guggenheim til June 11 looks worth a visit

Walk into the Guggenheim Museum and you'll enter a world transformed into a funhouse, complete with blue Astroturf, morphing images, odd sculptures, and ramps swaddled in athletic padding. The exhibit was designed by Matthew Barney and inspired by the bizarre "Cremaster" series of five films written, directed by, and featuring Barney. For an idea of the films' tenor, imagine a kind of "Fantasia" with set designs by Salvador Dali and scripts far kookier than David Lynch's.

1:00 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Friday, March 28, 2003

"...run down by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality..."

Sam Smith reminds that 46 years ago this week, Allen Ginsberg's Howl was seized as obscene material

Oddly, I was just watching the episode of The Fifties (the series based on David Halberstam's book) which discusses the Beats, and thinking as I listened to Ginsberg's reading how completely relevant this landmark in American lit still is.

Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch the stunned governments!...

Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch whose soul is electricity and banks! Moloch whose poverty is the specter of genius! Moloch whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen! Moloch whose name is the Mind!

10:41 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

metascene's biannual check-in has some good stuff

1:30 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Thursday, March 27, 2003

Author offers web-authoring handbook free on his site; bandwidth gets $15k hit

LESSON: Use P2P nets or Creative Commons -- or charge for it.

9:34 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Somehow this old XTC tune showed up in my playlist too. Not sure why.

POOR SKELETON STEPS OUT

Poor skeleton steps out,
Dressed up in bad blood,
Bad brains, bad thoughts, and others deeds.

Poor skeleton no doubt,
One of these days,
You can cast aside your human, be free.

When the cities run with blood,
And you drink our health in mud,
"All flesh be gone."
Save your dry and joyous shout,
For the day poor skeleton steps out.

Poor skeleton steps out,
Sprung from his life sentence,
Deep inside some muscle mask.

Poor skeleton devout,
Propping up truck drivers,
Filmstars, thieves or queens, your brave task.

When technology is rust,
And you write your book in dust,
"All flesh be gone."

Can't buy tickets from a tout,
For the day poor skeleton steps out.

Poor skeleton steps out,
Liberated from sex organs,
And brown, black, white skin.

Poor skeleton you lout,
Don't you think that we might,
like to have been asked to join in?

For good skeletons are we,
And we're dying to be free,
"All flesh be gone."

I will scream or sulk and pout,
Until my poor skeleton steps out.

(Better watch out, here comes bony boy.)

2:55 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

I posted the link to a rough mix and lyrics of R.E.M.'s new song about shrub at charging the canvas

Here are the lyrics:

THE FINAL STRAW

As I raise my head to broadcast my objection
As your latest triumph draws the final straw
Who died and lifted you up to perfection?
And what silenced me is written into law.

I can't believe where circumstance has thrown me
And I turn my head away
If I look I'm not sure that I could face you.
Not again. Not today. Not today.

If hatred makes a play on me tomorrow
And forgiveness takes a back seat to revenge
There's a hurt down deep that has not been corrected
There's a voice in me that says you will not win.

And if I ignore the voice inside,
Raise a half glass to my home.
But it's there that I am most afraid,
And forgetting doesn't hold.

It doesn't hold. Now I don't believe and I never did
That two wrongs make a right.
If the world were filled with the likes of you
Then I'm putting up a fight. Putting up a fight.
Putting up a fight. Make it right. Make it right.

Now love cannot be called into question.
Forgiveness is the only hope I hold.
And love-- love will be my strongest weapon.
I do believe that I am not alone.

For this fear will not destroy me.
And the tears that have been shed
It's knowing now where I am weakest
And the voice in my head. In my head.

Then I raise my voice up higher
And I look you in the eye
And I offer love with one condition.
With conviction, tell me why.

Tell me why.
Tell me why.
Look me in the eye.
Tell me why.

Worth a listen.

2:46 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Tuesday, March 25, 2003

Huh. Sonicblue giving up the ghost

I have an old Rio with a parallel port connection stashed away somewhere, and liked the balls of their Replay digital recorder idea.

I guess this will all continue under another company, but it won't be the same.

Definitely pioneers.

2:47 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Computer Associates' new stream-lined EZ Anti-Virus looks pretty damn good

One of the user comments notes that you don't have to disable it for downloads, one of the reasons I just couldn't abide McAfee etc.

For home users, this would probably do the trick, if the set-up isn't daunting. It doesn't scan email or have a firewall, but you can get that in a $50 version if you want it -- though the cheap version will disable anything that gloms onto your drive anyway.

Price: $19.95.

No I'm not getting a kickback on this -- and let me know what you think.

2:42 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Reluctant yet gushing puff by Michael Wolff on the new Steven Brill tome After: How America Confronted the September 12 Era [Romanesko]

There are many reasons -- not least of all the bullying -- that have made media people, and especially other journalists, not love Steve Brill. But the main reason there is no love lost, I think, is that finally, he is just too exhausting. Always in your face. Always the presumptive boss. The preternatural big man. The consummate know-it-all. The total prick. And he just keeps coming. Now, in a startling break from his fevered, ever-onward-and-upward machinations, or -- with a little critical interpretation -- as part and parcel of his vast competitiveness, Brill has emerged from a year and a half of modesty and quiet since the termination of his business ventures with a book.

After begins on September 12, 2001, and chronicles, for nearly 700 pages, and on an almost day-by-day basis, the nation's systemic response to 9/11. Insurance, philanthropy, security, infrastructure, transportation, lobbying, law enforcement. Never before has bureaucracy been the subject of such a sweeping, dramatic, and, in a way, loving portrait. The granular becomes epic.

At the very least, it certainly seems unfair, if not infuriating, that overblown Steve Brill could have the stick-to-itiveness and antlike attention to detail to produce such a massively researched, deeply compelling (in blurbers' terms) "towering achievement" book -- and to have done it in fifteen months (it's really a five-to-ten-year-size work).

Might be worth a look.

Might also be the kind of book everyone buys for the historical value and then never reads.

Look for many copies at a cheap price down the road a piece.

BTW, I've been weak and out-of-commission from the weird gut-locking coda to this bug that's gone around. Hopefully it's pretty much over.

1:53 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Thursday, March 20, 2003

iMac is history

Built around a 15-inch CRT (cathode-ray tube), the original iMac debuted in 1998 for $1,299. The computer eventually sold for as little as $799, keeping its trademark design virtually unchanged while adding features like FireWire, CD burners and DVD players.

However, on Tuesday, Apple removed the lone CRT-based iMac from Apple's main online store, and a source confirmed that Apple does not plan to keep selling it publicly. The machine is still listed on Apple's online education store and schools have been the main reason Apple has continued to make the device.

Introduced in a shade known as Bondi Blue, the iMac spent its childhood in candy colors like grape and lime and its early adulthood in wild hues like Blue Dalmatian and Flower Power before spending its later years in subtle shades like graphite and snow.

3:33 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Increasingly heavy manners from BigMedia forcing companies to spy even more on employees

With early generations of file-swapping software, it was a relatively simple task for network administrators to simply block the network "ports," or designated paths, that the software would use to communicate with the outside world. Many software programs use specific ports to communicate with each other, and so this proved effective.

That capability has been lost with recent generations of file-swapping programs, however. Programs including Kazaa can switch which port they use, essentially trying all the network doors available until they find one that is open. Some also use the same path used by ordinary Web traffic--blocking this would block all of an employee's ability to visit outside Web sites, an unacceptable outcome for many companies.

In response, a generation of tools has emerged that looks closely at network traffic to see exactly what kind of information is included in the data stream, or scans employees' computers to see what kinds of software they have running.

3:28 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Richard K Morgan's Altered Carbon: Powell's review

To say that Richard K. Morgan's debut novel Altered Carbon succeeds in following the pattern of his precursors would not do it justice. This novel is explosively original: combining the techno-fetish of William Gibson, the hardboiled detective narrative of Dashiell Hammett and the rapid-fire heroic bloodshed of the films of John Woo.

Publisher's Weekly:

Morgan's 25th-century Earth is convincing, while the questions he poses about how much Self is tied to body chemistry and how the rich believe themselves above the law are especially timely.

8:15 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Wednesday, March 19, 2003

I see Wire's send full-length won't be out til early May, late April in the UK

However, 7 of the 11 tracks are from the Read and Burn EPs. The second EP was only available through Posteverything and on the tour, but most Wire fans have picked them up somewhere ;).

So the wise move would be to order send from Posteverything, since aside from the 4 new tracks you get a limited edition CD of live mixes from the Chicago Metro show that's not available anywhere else.

send tracklist:

1.01 'In the Art of Stopping (3.34)'
1.02 'Mr Marx's Table (3.02)'
1.03 'Being Watched (2.57)'
1.04 'Comet (3.17)'
1.05 'The Agfers of Kodack (3.13)'
1.06 'Nice Streets Above (full version) (3.46)'
1.07 'Spent (4:43)'
1.08 'Read & Burn (2:35)'
1.09 'You Can't Leave Now (3.41)'
1.10 'Half Eaten (1.58)'
1.11 '99.9 (7:38)'

Looks like they'll be doing a short tour in the US as they'll be over for "the Matt Groening curated All Tomorrow's Parties" (whatever that is) on June 21 in L.A..


4:15 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

I see Leif has added mp3s of his 9 Beet Stretch to the site, accompanying the RealAudio

Well worth a listen.

I've added the link to the "Music > Artists" section at left.

Original post here.

3:45 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

U of Cincinnati team virtually reconstructs ancient settlements in Ohio which were aligned with astronomical observances

EarthWorks is the most comprehensive virtual reconstruction of archaeological remnants, both in the digital re-creation and in the size of the original archeological structures, said project leader John Hancock of the Center for the Reconstruction of Historic Sites at the university.

"Ancient cultures need vivid images to gain a prominent place in the popular imagination," Hancock said. "These computer renderings of the mound's secrets allow the modern imagination to see and to understand what has been destroyed over the last 200 years."

The earliest mounds were large, simple cones; later works included giant geometric shapes, and the structures eventually evolved into animal outlines -- snakes and possum figures being the most popular, according to Hancock.

The earthen structures weren't as showy as the Mayan and Roman temples that ancient architects were constructing around the same era. But they were amazing technical achievements, precisely plotting and marking the moon's rhythms, and serving as historical monuments and landscape markers.

There are images, movies and VRML models at the EarthWorks site (2nd link).

Pretty neat.

Ancient civilizations have always fascinated me.

2:22 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Monday, March 17, 2003

Pauline Oliveros at 70

Her latest piece, written for a 13-piece chamber orchestra, combines the sounds of the ensemble with Oliveros' Expanded Instrument System, a sort of sound "time machine," as she calls it. While the musicians play in the present, the acoustic sounds are recorded on the computer and played a few seconds later in the piece. Oliveros says it's a sound-processing method that expands time in both directions: into the past and into the future. In Sound Geometries the music is modified to send sounds to the speakers in auditory geometric patterns.

"You hear the sounds moving and the patterns changing and the rates of speed changing," Oliveros said. "You'll hear the acoustic sound of the ensemble and the reflected sounds flying around in space."

2:10 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Sunday, March 16, 2003

Scanner interview

I was recently invited to work on a commission that has been the most responsible work I have ever created in a public place, at The Hopital Raymond Poincare in Garches, near Paris, which is famous for treating road injury victims. The chief pathologist Doctor Michel Durigon decided it was time to create a Salle des Departs, a place where families and friends could come to say goodbye to their loved ones without, as he says, "having to suffer sickly background music and a red carpet," and to follow this through I was commissioned to write the soundtrack to this special place. It has been an extraordinary humanitarian project to be offered this chance to create a musical and artistic space in a hospital morgue, and was personally a remarkable artistic journey of discovery. It was a daunting work, having no idea what culture, religion, age of the visitors may be that would be passing through this space to bid farewell to their loved ones but to be part of project to humanise such a difficult experience, and to be a source of sustenance to mourners cannot simply be expressed in words here. The work is permanent and will be heard by an unexpected audience for years to come.

4:28 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Saturday, March 15, 2003

Gus Van Sant on his new experiment in film time, Gerry

Van Sant drew on the influence of experimental filmmakers from his younger days, like Stan Brakhage and Chantal Akerman, as well as contemporary Hungarian director B?la Tarr. Breaking from the comparatively quick-cutting of traditional Hollywood films, "Gerry" often goes several minutes without a single edit.

5:46 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Quelle dommage, as they say in France

Looks like that fire sale of Bréton's collection is happening in April

See previous post.

10:48 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Thursday, March 13, 2003

Art Spiegelman (Maus) quits The New Yorker due to "the widespread conformism of the mass media in the Bush era" [memepool]

(Q) Do you consider yourself a victim of September 11?

"Exactly so. From the time that the Twin Towers fell, it seems as if I've been living in internal exile, or like a political dissident confined to an island. I no longer feel in harmony with American culture, especially now that the entire media has become conservative and tremendously timid. Unfortunately, even The New Yorker has not escaped this trend: Remnick is unable to accept the challenge, while, on the contrary, I am more and more inclined to provocation."

9:03 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

UPI "Religion Correspondent" revels in "postmodern rot" as Dutch woman to marry self

In more ways than one, Jennifer ought to be congratulated. Intentionally or unintentionally, she is taking the Mickey out of a nutty society determined to deconstruct matrimony, a state most religions and cultures have since time immemorial held up as holy and essential for the health of communities and nations.

Um. . .OK.

3:47 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Wednesday, March 12, 2003

Beastie Boys release anti-war song "In a World Gone Mad" on their website as a free download

Well I'm not pro Bush and I'm not pro Saddam
We need these fools to remain calm
George Bush you're looking like Zoolander
Trying to play tough for the camera
What am I on crazy pills? We've got to stop it
Get your hand out my grandma's pocket
We need health care more than going to war
You think it's democracy they're fighting for?

12:18 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Tuesday, March 11, 2003

Newsbytes on search engines: Search Engine Showdown

2:03 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Monday, March 10, 2003

Nice to see Twyla's still at it

I used to go see her troupe in New York back in the 80s, Catherine Wheel, Little Deuce Coupe and all. Always a lot of fun, even though I didn't know dick about dance and didn't feel the need to know more.

9:45 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

In a shaken, broke, newly prurient New York, burlesque is back

As the country gears up for war, there's an eerie similarity to the World War II era. More than one person wonders if people just need a little escapism amid increasingly dire straits. "Going to a burlesque night is a great way not to think about troubles," says Lady Ace, a member of the Bombshell! Girls, a burlesque troupe that performs the Slipper Room on March 23.

History confirms this. "Burlesque thrives on depression," wrote Irving Zeidman in his 1967 book The American Burlesque Show. "Prettier girls are obtainable at burlesque wages, and the unemployed or indigent male reverts to simple and less expensive forms of entertainment."

The same is true for down-and-out downtown residents who frequent affordable venues like the Slipper Room or the Marquee, the sister performance space to Marion's Continental, where they can watch divas like Darling Star, Harvest Moon, and the bodacious troupe the Glamazons tickle the ribs while titillating the libido.

At first I thought -- right, since 9/11 anything from another, more "innocent" era is going to thrive (how many times will America lose its innocence? -- I posted once before about this).

But perhaps it's natural that in an age when you can get pretty much anything you can imagine online -- and lots of it for free, one way or another -- it makes sense that live, cheap risqué entertainment would make a comeback.

Anf there's a conceptual edge to some of these new shows too.

Nostalgia, it seems, is also in high demand. Even though burlesque was frequently dismissed in its heyday for being lewd, today the "kute kuties" hark back to a more innocent time. "Smart people under 30 know they've missed something entirely and are interested in seeing something not coming through a monitor," says Show's owner, Norman Gosney.

But the new burlesque isn't simply a throwback. "The thing that's interesting about the revival is that so many people doing it are very, very aware of the history and yet are reinventing the form," says Kimb Giunta, an assistant curator at the New York Museum of Sex.

Today's performers are edgier than their predecessors. They twist gender roles in their skits: MsTickle's belly-dance strip ends by revealing a merkin -- fake pubic hair -- in her crotch area as well as a full beard, while Lady Ace portrays a stressed-out career woman who lets loose to Van Halen's "Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love."

"We are not so concerned with duplicating [classic burlesque]," says Lady Ace. "We do things with something sick and twisted thrown in."

Julie Atlas Muz, who many consider to be the most conceptual of the new guard, has a routine where she breaks free of rope ? la Houdini while stripping down to pasties and not much else. "Julie is the cutting edge of burlesque, period," says *BOB*. "A lot of girls are doing completely new things."

*BOB* could just as easily be talking about herself. At Fez, she slips out of a shiny gold lam? gown and then makes a martini using her breasts?which, it should be noted, are considerable. (They are an F cup.) She tops off the confection by producing two olives from the depths of her underpants, before offering it to a red-faced customer in the front row.

9:35 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

CNN says: "Blogging goes mainstream"

...what once seemed like a passing fancy has morphed into a cutting-edge phenomenon that may provide the platform for the Internet's next wave of innovation and moneymaking opportunities.

[...]

Dr. Pepper/Seven Up is already testing this theory by mining the Blogosphere to launch an unusual marketing campaign for a new flavored milk drink called Raging Cow.

[...]

Richards Interactive also created a blog, ostensibly written by the raging cow herself, punctuated with the slogan, "The Revolution Will Be Homogenized."

Mercy.

Current poll percentiles:

Yes, I blog - 26
No, but will blog - 19
Don't intend to blog - 55

8:07 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

No escape

Common Criminals: L.A. Crime Stories by Larry Fondation: review

Seething with the energy of streets, bars and bedrooms, Los Angeles author Larry Fondation?s second book reads like a collaboration among Elmore Leonard, Dennis Cooper and Eminem. Its author may well be the best unknown writer in America -- and this brilliant collection of short fiction will probably not change that.

12:42 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Sunday, March 09, 2003

Mad Mel?

OK. So here's the list:

Mel Gibson

-- is making a $25mil film about Jesus Christ in Latin and Aramaic -- without subtitles.

-- is a member of the Catholic traditionalists who think the Church went astray after the Council of Trent in the 16th century, and only attend Mass spoken in Latin (and don't eat meat on Friday, and whose female members wear headdresses in church).

-- is in fact the sole benefactor of a traditionalist chapel being built near Malibu.

-- whose father Hutton -- who thinks the Holocaust never happened and calls the Pope the "Koran Kisser" -- is clearly his inspiration (Hutton also thinks the 9/11 attacks were done "by remote control" and that al Qaeda had nothing to do with them -- I'll reserve judgment on that til more facts are in).

-- who has only spoken about speaking about his beliefs on The O'Reilly Factor -- in only the most circumspect way.

Gotta respect him for sticking to his guns. And I may agree with some of the conspiratorial questions his father brings up (not concerning the Holocaust, mind you) -- Mel won't say exactly what he believes.

But . . . wow.

Oh -- and he's optioned the film rights to O'Reilly's mystery novel.

6:27 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Youssou N'Dour cancels US tour in war protest

1:25 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Saturday, March 08, 2003

Public access computers increase library traffic by 25b>

5:32 PM - [Link] - Comments ()